Space Invaders toaster

Chris Naylor, a student designer in London, designed this jim-dandy Space Invaders toaster that toasts individual invaders into your bread. I would absolutely buy one of these if he went into production.

Invader Toaster (via Cribcandy)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Art and Design • Gadgets

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

theawesomerobot

I guess I like toast to much to want a toaster that just burns one area of bread. Since when is design half-assing something into a cool shape?
loonquawl

It’s supposedly an invader shaped toaster that burns invader shapes onto toast. While this would be excusable freshmanship, it is not even acutally invader-shaped; there are four pixels too many, which in a ~100 pixel image is kind of a lot.
Anonymous

How about a space invaders bread maker? One that would mold the bread into a space invader shape. The same for making waffles and other things. I’d buy them especially if there were of all 4 or 5 space invaders.
That would be a great way to make money, then they’d buy all 4 bread makers, waffle makers, or whatever makers. Since people do like collecting.
Jellybit

I think when you say “toasts”, you mean “severely burns”.
pauldavis

Cory, I hope you’re doing well enough from your multifaceted activities in life to buy an enormous home. Either that or I hope that most of the “cool” design ideas that show up on BB never actually make it into production, because otherwise, your family must be living in an increasing impossible-to-maneuver-in space. I’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve reported your desire to be a purchaser of some new chair, shelving system, kitchen gadget, game, and what have you. Tell me you don’t just toss out the old to make room for the new, please!
Anonymous

Whenever I see these novelty toasters that burn whatever design in to your bread all I can think is that they’re a great example of style over functionality. Sure it’s a little clever to have a design on there but at the end of the day they’re lousy at actually being toasters. What you really want from a toaster is good even coverage all over and such novelty toasters set out to deliberately fail to achieve that.
Donald Petersen

I have the Virgin Mary toast-making thingy. Essentially a plastic cookie-cutter that doesn’t go all the way through, you stamp your bread with it, and then toast as usual in the toaster of your choice. Her holy image miraculously appears faintly in the toast, which is otherwise evenly toasted to the best ability of the toaster in question.

Kinda neato, but wouldn’t have gotten anyone more than a C+ in any design class. This Space Invaders one, fundamentally flawed though it may be as a breakfast-food preparing device, certainly earns points for panache and effort. I’d get one, too, if I didn’t kinda hate Space Invaders as a lad. I was more of a Tempest man, myself.
mn_camera

I have a better design in mind. Does something else.

I refuse to talk about it until I can pour some aluminum and proto it.
- Anonymous
  
  @all
  
  What a bunch of pessimists on here… I think it’s a fun idea.
  
  @mn_camera
  
  If you’re not going to talk about it then why would you bring it up?
  - mn_camera
    
    @mn_camera
    
    If you’re not going to talk about it then why would you bring it up?
    
    1) Felt like it.
    
    2) It is the very first, minimal, tiny bit of advance for the thing. There will indeed be more.
Lady Katey

I love food-art, but this is a waste of not only counter space, but bread. Unless you like the taste of charcoal in the morning.

Plus it appears in the drawing that the ‘Invader’ is raised, which would actually deboss the toast, rather than toasting it more than the non-’Invader’ area.

Oh, these crazy student designers. Think of all the brilliant but ‘not quite there’ ideas that are being slowly destroyed by rubber cement in portolios in basements around the world, from the art school students of the ‘pre digital’ era.

(Disclaimer: I have a BFA in Graphic Design. I stuck to typography mostly and avoided product design, but I did design and mock up ‘honey in an ez-squeeze tube’ concept packaging. No one liked it, though practical it looked too much like a toiletry.)
- Anonymous
  
  Regarding honey in a dispenser: it’s sold over here in Europe.
  http://www.langnese-honig.de/ (sorry, web-site is German only, but you can see the packaging)
- Anonymous
  
  I understand and tend to agree with your debossing observation.
  I think your “honey in a tube” sounds fantastic. My honey at the moment is is a plastic bottle shaped like a bear – which is not particularly useful and kind of leaks. Function fail, IMHO
alan_nishioka

with all due respect to the designer, wouldn’t a waffle iron be better?
querent

I think it’s cool. Lets show a little deference for the obvious over abundance of geek-cred here, shall we?
Anonymous

But can it run linux?