At last, burnt toast is toast

IT IS a hallmark of great inventions that they are greeted with the cry, "Why on earth didn't someone think of that before?" Such will be the reception for a product from kitchenware company Magimix. Its see-through toaster is an innovation of such stunning practicality and obviousness that we wonder less at its technological smartness than the time it has taken for such a simple innovation to arrive on our breakfast tables.

And a great invention it is. Here at last is a toaster that takes the burning – and in cases inflaming – out of toasting. No more the millions of households filled each morning with the acrid smell of burnt toast and the smoke alarm going off in the hallway. The final result can now be honed to perfection.

Conventional toasters may well sport an impressive array of dials and knobs claiming to cater for the most exacting demands. But "toast mark five" can mean incineration if the toaster has been heavily used earlier by other members of the family, while the first "load" positively invites the temptation to pull out the bread (with resulting burnt fingers) well before it shows any toast marks at all.

The see-through toaster promises to make history of all that second-guessing. It doesn't come cheap at 160. But then neither did the space shuttle or the Hadron Collider. And they're both useless at toast.