Toasted Selfies: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Thinkstock Photo, Thinkstock
You're bored with your breakfast options — sick of the same old, same old. Cereal? Been there. Eggs? Done that. Pancakes? Waffles? Yeah, yeah, we'll wake you when they're over.
A company called the Vermont Novelty Toast Corporation, which has been manufacturing toasters that pop out toast with images and logos on it since 2010, is now moving beyond pictures of Edger Allen Poe and peace signs and offering customers a chance to purchase a toaster that browns toasted selfies right onto their bread. (Images are singed onto one side only; the other side is just toast.)
How does it work? You upload an image of your face, preferably a JPEG, select your toaster color, fork over $75 (shipping within the U.S. is free) and then sit tight while the company's "toast engineers" — using computer technology, a plasma cutter, sheet metal and modern ingenuity — work their magic to "create fun breakfast memories." In about 10 days, you'll receive the customized selfie toaster, with a full-color decal of your own mug on the side, in the mail.
Then get ready to nibble your nose and chomp your chin, because it's Toasted Selfie time!
The toasted-in images are pretty impressive, but the company's website urges caution: "We are good but remember fine detail is darn near impossible to achieve with heat and toast." The company then offers its own idiosyncratic guarantee: "If we squint and can't see your face we will cancel your order and refund the full purchase price. No hard feelings."
Galen Dively, the company founder, has said he got the idea for Toasted Selfies while tinkering around, trying to make a piece of customized toast for his son. "It came out great," Dively told ABC News. "He loved it! And then he ate it."
Dively advises using a bread that is "not very airy" — white, perhaps — and something with a fine grain, to really let the details pop.
He also says it's better with butter. But you probably already knew that.