Projectile Toast

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"I'm gonna make toast!!"
Haw-haha! Here's the problem: too many toasters! You know what they say: all toasters toast toast!"
—Mario, Hotel Mario

On TV, toast always jumps up out of the toaster. This serves a variety of purposes, from allowing a character to catch the toast while running by as they're Late for School, to letting the toaster be modified into a weapon.

Very, very rarely Truth in Television.

Examples of Projectile Toast include:


Anime/Manga

Film

Literature

  • In the Red Dwarf book Better Than Life Talkie Toaster kills a mutant like this, by launching red-hot ashtrays at it.
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog book "In Robotnik's Laboratory", Sonic himself gets turned into a toaster. You heard me. Then Tails and a monkey friend turn Sonic the Toaster into the world's first Waffle Gun. Tails goes totally Action Hero on a rampage into Robotnik's laboratory, at one point disintegrating a heavy door with waffles.

Live Action TV

  • I Love Lucy is perhaps the oldest TV show this is seen on, and it became somewhat of a Running Gag. On one memorable occasion, Lucy was angry that Ricky was paying more attention to his newspaper than to her, so she loaded up the toaster, and aimed it at him. Ricky caught the toast out of the air without even looking up from the paper.
  • True to the spirit of the trope if not the letter, the MythBusters once built three different devices that threw toast on the floor to test the "always-butter-side-down" myth.
    • They could've just built a table twice as high as a normal one, like Beakman's World did.
  • Averted in the new Battlestar Galactica; the Pop-Tart-esque pastries the characters are preparing don't fly from their toaster, just pop a bit and settle back. But they do draw the attention of the Centurions (also "toasters") who are hunting the characters, so...
  • Family Ties. "If that had been a Pop-Tart, we'd both be dead now."
  • The Avengers episode "Return Of The Cybernauts" concluded with a tag where Steed's attempt at repairing Emma's toaster succeeds all too well.
  • The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had one scene where Phil's inability to fix appliances is brought up, including a line of something like "Just like dad 'fixed' the toaster?" just on cue for toast to launch from the offscreen kitchen into the living room where the conversation is being held. Ashley then says to "set the toaster on dark so she can meet it at school."
  • A physical challenge from |Double Dare involves launching toast out of a springloaded toaster across the stage to one's partner.
  • A Projectile Toaster was worked into Morecambe and Wise's classic making-breakfast-to-the-tune-of-'The Stripper' routine.
  • Toyed with in a variation in one episode of Angel. A bizarre device that Fred has been tinkering with is theorized by several other characters to be some kind of projectile launcher (it actually does throw axes) or maybe it just makes toast.
  • This is how the Teletubbies get their Tubby Toast.
  • On Pixelface, Romford's attempt to 'upgrade' the kettle somehow results in the toaster launching Projectile Toast at Alexia.

New Media

Newspaper Comics

  • There is a Garfield comic where Odie is launching slices of toast into the air, while Garfield is shooting them out of the air with a bow and toilet plungers. Jon is obviously not happy about this, after he gets hit in the face with one.
    • This is also played with in other Garfield strips - Jon attempts to fix the toaster and instead ends up making it launch toast at such speeds that it ricochets across the house, knocking Odie into walls, among other things.
    • Another comic where Garfield expects the toaster to launch its contents: he uses a roller brush to paint the ceiling with jam, then uses a plunger to pull the slices down after they hit and stick.
    • Inverted in one strip, where Jon turns the toaster upside-down to keep Garfield from stealing his toast (by jumping over the toaster as the toast pops up). The toaster then launches upward, knocking Garfield in the head.

Video Games

  • The Glider games include toasters which juggle slices of Projectile Toast that must be dodged.
  • Ubi-Soft's game-you-never-heard-of Tonic Trouble featured a mad scientist's "Laboratory" that had one section where you ride a floating platform over vast pools of lava while insane robot toasters fired flaming hot slices of toast at the player. I wish I was kidding.
  • Ya know what they say: all toastas toast TOAST!
    • Technically, they toast bread. If it's already toast, you don't need to toast it again. (Sort of like a hot-water heater.)
    • The YouTube Poop "Link + Dinner = Disaster" has Link toasting spaghetti to kill George Volcano.
  • In MDK 2, Doctor Hawkins's primary weapon is an atomic toaster that fires irradiated slices of toast...and baguette rockets, and pumpernickel grenades...
  • Catching the toast that pops out of a toaster composes one of the many, many microgames in the Wario Ware series.

Web Comics

  • In Schlock Mercenary, Munitions Commander Kevyn Andreyasn used a simple toaster as a trial-run for a damaged 'fabber' plant, and ended up with a cross between a toaster and a Bouncing Betty. Schlock, being Schlock, begged it off him so he could take it down to the firing range.

Schlock: See? You get a lot more stopping power out of whole wheat.
Grunt: It's my turn now.

Web Original

  • One of the SCP Foundation's many, many attempts to neutralize SCP-682 was to expose it to SCP-426, the toaster that makes people think they are toasters too. Like most of the attempts to neutralize 682, it ended badly. 682 went berserk, ate a huge stockpile of bread, and went on a rampage in the facility launching toast at personnel with deadly effect. Curiosly, the D-personnel who were fed the toast produced by 682 claimed the toast was delicious and that it was the best toast they ever ate.

Western Animation

  • Wallace and Gromit seem to have specifically modified their toaster to launch the toast with incredible precision.
  • Launching toast at Invader Zim's face is one of the least annoying things GIR does upon getting his mind sucked into their house's master control system.
  • Snoopy proves himself Virtuoso Master of the Projectile Toast during the cooking scene from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
  • Darkwing Duck deliberately rigged his toaster for this purpose, as part of his breakfast/training routine. His entire breakfast is launched at him this way, in fact. Including... the milk.
  • Twist: Powdered Toast Man actually shot butter packets instead. (After all, he was meant to promote powdered toast.)
  • The Kids Next Door have, among their improvised weapons arsenal, numbers of gatling gun-like weapons that end in toasters. They seem to launch energy, though.
  • In Venture Brothers, Chuck, a "member" of the Revenge Society is just a plain toaster that shoots toast. Revenge (Phantom Limb) uses Chuck's expertise to disarm traps (... it shoots toast that sets off the traps).
  • On Dexter's Laboratory, Dexter once slowed time to one-sixtieth its usual rate. As a result, the toast was suspended high out of his reach in midair.
  • In the Mega Man cartoon, one of Roll's attachments for her Utility Arm was this. She used it to defeat Cutman.
  • The Toaster in end of The Brave Little Toaster is able to shoot the toast for the Master.
  • In one episode of Johnny Test, Johnny accidentally brings a parody of Crash Bandicoot into the real world. While tearing up Johnny's house (literally and metaphorically), he picks up a toaster and shoots toast at the kids and Dukey, which is heralded by Johnny shouting "FLAMING TOAST!".
  • Tex Avery gives it a twist on "The House Of Tomorrow". Instead of the toast, you pop up!
  • Jimmy Two-Shoes, where toast was apparently a lifeguard in the Beach Episode.

Other

  • The After Dark screensaver had the famous Flying Toasters.
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