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There's a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that's because it can't be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufactu
by tompccs 7y ago
There's a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that's because it can't be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances.
Plus, assembly looks quite intricate and probably highly manual.
It's beautiful, sure, but go and buy a toaster today and see how much premium people are willing to pay for a designer brand with no functional advantage.
Sadly toasters all work "well enough". This is a textbook example of great engineering being trumped by globalised economics and fickle consumers.
- hinkley 7y agoExcept we live in a world where YouTube videos are interrupted by photogenic hipsters selling sunglasses made of titanium and hand cut, old school soap. Recreating this toaster is exactly the kind of thing I hope that set gets around to. Plus, there are toasters that cost more than my tablet which don’t have this feature. If you can make a toaster that infuriatingly stupidly expensive and sell it, you can sure as hell afford to make a workalike [of] this mechanism.
- smacktoward 7y agoEven for that market, the way you make money isn't by making products that are better than the commodity alternative. It's by taking the commodity alternative and dressing it up in fancy packaging and marketing so it looks like a product that's better than the commodity alternative. Making unique, superior products is expensive. Your profit margins are much better if you just take the same crap everyone else is selling and put a sharp suit of clothes on it.
- puranjay 7y agoMy biggest pet peeve is all sorts of appliance manufacturers sticking touchscreen displays everywhere. The coffee machine in my office has a touchscreen display. It only dispenses 4 things - lattes, cappuccinos, black coffee, and espressos. Why does this have to be a touchscreen? It could have easily been more usable buttons. But I guess you can't charge a $100 premium for buttons
- lb1lf 7y agoProbably cheaper to localise. Rather than having to do X front panels, you just put all localisation data in a config file and be done with it. And yes, I would much prefer actual pushbuttons.
- rzzzt 7y agoThe labels can still go on the LCD, with hardware buttons on the side. The machine at work has those, and there is definitely a language selector hiding somewhere within its menu system...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hrktb 7y agoDoesn’t it also display warnings, cleaning and maintenance messages ? All coffee machines I’ve seen with any kind of screen made extensive use of it for messaging purposes. It is a lot more useful than some led blinking twice for cleaning and three times when there’s no water in the tank.
- detaro 7y agoMany with screens have actual buttons for input though.
- war1025 7y agoWe share a kitchenette at work with another company. They had a Keurig with a LCD display on it that didn't look like it did much of anything. A few months ago they replaced it with a newer model, and this one just has buttons. I don't know if that's people getting some design sense and not using screens where they don't need to, or just happenstance. But it seemed relevant.
- ahartmetz 7y agoI have worked on embedded software with and without touchscreen UIs, and in some cases a touchscreen was used where it did not make sense. Peak touchscreen was around the time of the huge iPhone / iPad media sensation. Since that is over, it's probably getting better.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoWell Dualit are still making them manually, and seem quite successful. Repairable and last decades. Sage have tried for the market of "premium, but made like crap really". £120+ for a regular toaster with added LEDs, displays, etc. They sell purely as they paid a celeb chef for their adverts.
- abcdefabcdef456 7y agoYes! Sage's "Heston" coffee machine is absolute pants too...
- gonzo41 7y agoIsn't the great engineering the fact that all toasters are made from commodity parts and are cheap and able to be had by all.
- braythwayt 7y agoThere are many kinds of great engineering. Lego making billions and billions of really cheap little plastic bricks that last forever and click together no matter when you bought them is one kind of great engineering, so is SpaceX.
- taylorfinley 7y agoReally cheap? I have a friend who is a single mother with a 7-year-old Lego addict, who also loves all things Jurassic World. The only Lego sets available in the aisles of the big box stores around us (conveniently placed at 7-year-old height) are the egregiously over-priced officially licensed movie tie-in kits. I was shocked to see some of these relatively small kits selling for over $100, the cheap ones being in the $40s to $60s. My friend's income (with food stamps) is roughly $1,000 a month... So her son has to feel constantly deprived of the cool toys he really wants. I confess I ordered a knock-off set from AliExpress for his Christmas present last year, he got dozens of Jurassic World-ish Lego-like bricks and it cost me less than $20, shipped. I had very positive feelings about Lego as a kid. Now I see them as just like any other business, engineering desires into their target market and exploiting those desires for maximum profit.
- braythwayt 7y agoFor the purpose of a discussion about engineering, each brick _is_ really cheap. The argument is that something they manufacture and retail for a dime or less is engineered to exacting tolerances. Think about it: You buy a Tesla Model X for Unobtainium money, and there are panel gaps. But you buy a bucket of Lego bricks for $20, and each one clicks together perfectly. Lego may be expensive for a tiny blob of plastic, but the point I'm making is that their engineering is amazing relative to the cost of each brick. p.s. That being said, I hear you! The sets with authorized franchise tie-ins are expensive, in large part because a sizeable part of their market are adults with disposable income. There is no other explanation for a CAD800 Millennium Falcon with 7,500 pieces.
- coldtea 7y ago>There's a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that's because it can't be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances. That's definitely not the reason. We have automation robots and people do kinds of manual assembly for much less than a $200 or so this could easily command (besides, it's still being made). We also have toasters with custom parts made today, they just aren't purely electro-mechanical like this. That you can have one for a century and it will still work/be repairable easily is more likely the reason.
- stuart78 7y agowhere did you find it still being made?
- coldtea 7y agoI meant mechanical toaster that strays from modern comodity designs. Not the same brand, but Dualit e.g. still makes 50s still serviceable chrome-platted long running traditional toast making machines: https://www.dualit.com/products/4-slice-newgen https://www.dualit.com/products/4-slice-newgen You can still find the old Sunbeam units on ebay. And there are fan sites: http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/ http://www.automaticbeyondbelief.org/ And even investigative pieces on them: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/who-killed-the-great-american-toaster/245542/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/who-k...
- denton-scratch 7y agoToasters do not all "work well enough". Shout if you have a toaster that you bought less than 5 years ago, that is still working. I think they're supposed to start failing after a year or two. [Edit: if it's older than ten years, say how old - they made them better back in the olden daze] These devices are sold for ten euros/dollars, or so. You really can't do good product design to that sort of price point. People expect to have to "recycle" them. I bought a toaster for which you can order replacement heater elements, or a new timer. You can dismantle it and reassemble it with a normal electrician's screwdriver. The timer is clockwork. The whole thing's very steampunk. It cost about 8 times as much as a "disposable" toaster. I don't know if it was a good deal; I'll tell you in a few decades. But if I don't have to bother with replacing it, from my POV that will be money well-spent; I'm sick of replacing stuff that should still be working. I'm sick of "hardware" that's really made of tissue-paper. And I'm sick of furniture that's made of wood-chips. </rant>
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI agree with every point you made, especially the wood chips. however I am still peeved at you because you did not include a link to this toaster you bought. How do I get one?
- denton-scratch 7y agoThis toaster is a Dualit. I cannot recommend it as a consumer product; the company is quite nasty to deal with, I think. Also, my Dualit toaster is only two years old; for the price I paid, I'd need something more like 10 years service to be able to recommend. HTH.
- cdubzzz 7y agoWe bought the cheapest toaster we could find at a Target probably 5 - 6 years ago. Still works fine.
- nextos 7y agoWhat you are saying is sadly the reality today within most product categories. For example, go to a totally different category: clothing. In the great age of US sports clothing, tees were slowly knitted by machines called loopwheelers. E.g. tees from Champion. These days, they are crap. If you want a nice tee that will age well and last really long, you need to buy from some Japanese brands that try to imitate old Champion tees. The price is really high, and you'd most likely need to import or buy from a high end shop. I try to buy good stuff that lasts ages. I don't care paying a big premium. I try to live with around 100 items. But its really hard.
- abcdefabcdef456 7y agoI went through 4 toasters in quick succession, never bothered keeping box or receipts so had no recourse. 18 months ago I bought a Tesco own brand, under a tenner, and it's still going. BUT it can't take a standard size piece of bread. Beyond the absurd, I rotate my toast daily whilst banging my forehead on the counter. (I did keep the box and receipt this time, I really must take it back)
- nullc 7y ago> There's a simple reason why this toaster was discontinued, and that's because it can't be made from commodity components which are used by all toaster manufacturers, as well as in a variety of other domestic appliances. The youtube comments include a response from a former sunbeam employee that suggests that it was discontinued because the companies CEO at the time was someone known for stripping companies and likely laid off the manufacturing staff.
- lazyjones 7y ago> It's beautiful, sure, but go and buy a toaster today and see how much premium people are willing to pay for a designer brand with no functional advantage. $200+ easily, just look at KitchenAid or Magimix toasters...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago> great engineering being trumped by globalised economics The art of engineering is not to create a beautiful machine, it's to build something that does the job as efficiently as possible. It's easy to build a machine that does something, it's hard to build it so it can also be manufactured cheaply. See e.g. the Juicero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero#Controversies).
- yummypaint 7y agoI don't think the juicero was about solving a problem people actually had. It's real purpose was to add DRM to fruit.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoWell, yes, of course, bad engineering was not Juicero's biggest problem, but it was part of the issue and the reason why their DRM machine was so expensive to manufacture.