Our One Year Anniversary: On Toasters
June 24th, 2008
The electric toaster is the canonical Reasonable Good. It’s a required small appliance for any modern kitchen, and there are so many different makes and models all clamoring for your attention. This one’s transparent! This one prints on your toast! And yet, what do 99% of people who use a kitchen toaster want it to do? Toast bread. And bagels. Not cost too much. Not set the kitchen on fire. And that’s about it.
In fact, the very first post I made to Reasonable Goods was for a toaster. Our business cards say “It shouldn’t take all day to buy a toaster”. This is exactly the kind of product that Reasonable Goods was made for.
So when I was doing the research on the Reasonable Toaster, I did what any reasonable person would do if they were actually shopping for a toaster. I went to consumersearch.com and consumerreports.org, and I chose what I would have bought: the best toaster for the cheapest price, which happened to be a CR Best Buy–always a good sign if CR thinks the product is in a sweet spot of price/quality too. I checked around the web for negative reviews, made sure it was available on Amazon, and I posted it. “It makes toast, two pieces at a time.”
Well, now it’s been exactly one year since I made that first post. We’ve made 50-odd recommendations since then, and although I’m not as regular at posting new content as I should be, overall I’m proud of the values that Reasonable Goods stands for and the progress we’ve made.
About That Toaster
Ironically, that toaster–the Proctor Silex Cool Touch 22450–turned out to be a bust. While fixing some broken images, I saw that the Proctor-Silex was no longer for sale on Amazon. After a bit of research, I found that there were 63 reports of the heating element not turning off when the toast was done, and 3 reports of food fires (no injuries), so the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall in March. Not very reasonable after all.
Well, over the past year I’ve come to understand a lot more about What Is Reasonable. And honestly, I still think that first recommendation was pretty reasonable, at the time. The toaster was simple, it did what 90% of people expected it to do, it was well-reviewed by Consumer Reports, and it cost less than $20.
In fact, there are only two factors that I overlooked in that recommendation:
- The toaster was not an established model with a history of reliability and customer satisfaction.
- Proctor-Silex previously recalled 95,000 toasters in 2000…for this exact issue.
Even though the electric toaster is a basic product whose design has not changed much in the last 50 years, there don’t appear to be any standard issue toasters that have actually been around for several years. I don’t know why. But there’s no obvious forerunners in the longevity marathon, and my particular trusty Black & Decker 10-year-old toaster is out of production.
I should have found this one in my original research. I would have called it out, but it may not have even changed the recommendation, the argument being that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. I won’t be making that argument now.
I was wrong. I sincerely apologize. If you bought one of these toasters, you can contact Proctor Silex and get a free replacement toaster, which will hopefully not set your food on fire.
Everyone makes mistakes. A reasonable person will acknowledge their mistake, apologize, offer compensation if anyone was hurt, and then just keep on bein’ reasonable. I have learned my lesson, and I endeavor to be even more wary of new products than I already am. (Sorry, iPhone.) But I am going to get right back on that horse and announce the new Reasonable Toaster (this weekend; shopping for a toaster actually does take all day), which I absolutely guarantee will make toast, two pieces at a time.
Happy anniversary, Reasonable Goods!
Saul :: Jun.24.2008 :: Metareasonable :: 2 Comments »
2 Responses to “Our One Year Anniversary: On Toasters”
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Hi Saul!
Happy anniversary, first off! Whenever I buy something from amazon, I get there via reasonable goods. Not very often do I buy things, though.
So, where’s the toaster? This was written in late June and it’s now late July. We could use a new toaster (and, MAN, do I love toast).
Asta,
-CC (Chris Canterbury)
P.S. Say Hi to Beth for me.
Hi Chris,
I haven’t been able to find a reasonable toaster at $30, which is what I thought was the reasonable price point. I use ConsumerSearch.com for some of my research, and their page on toasters recommends a KitchenAid KMTT200 for $70. (They also recommend a Proctor-Silex 22605 for $19, but after the recall mentioned above, I’m extremely reticent to continue to recommend the Proctor-Silex brand). A friend of mine recommends the ikon 2-slice toaster, also for $70. I just haven’t yet brought myself to accept that the reasonable price point is actually $70, but it’s been over 2 years, so maybe it’s time.
Thanks for reading!
Saul