Is This the World’s Silliest (and Most Expensive) Toaster?

Toast is a big deal in America today — toast with avocado, toast with hummus, toast with burrata, toast with mashed bananas, toast with just butter and jam…

Almost every kitchen in the country probably has a pop-up toaster or a toaster oven or both. But are American toast-lovers ready for a new Japanese toaster that can hold just one piece of bread at a time and costs more than $270?

The appliance, developed by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and put on the market last month, is actually called a “Bread Oven,” and comes with a price tag of as much as 30,000 yen (about $273 at the current exchange rate).

The device uses technology developed for rice cookers to seal in moisture as it toasts the bread, enclosing it in a metal box that transfers heat through a metal plate on each side of the slice at temperatures as high as 500ºF. Those who have tried the Bread Oven describe the results as “perfect.” Some have also commented that it would make very good French toast, and work very well to produce grilled cheese sandwiches, which are among America’s most popular sandwiches.

Of course, an appliance that only produces one piece of toast (or grilled cheese sandwich) at a time isn’t going to be very popular at the family breakfast table. But as the man in charge of Mitsubishi’s home appliance division, Akirhiro Iwahara, explained to Bloomberg, “We wanted to focus on the single slice, and treat it with respect.”

So what do you think? Will the Mitsubishi Bread Oven win fans in our toast-happy society, or will it turn out to be one of the 50 worst product flops of all time?