Toasters

I've seen variants of this circulated on the web for years. It's still a great classic. No matter who you love or hate, you'll see enough truth in this to keep you laughing.

If IBM made toasters... They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Xerox made toasters... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made toasters... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Oracle made toasters... They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Sun made toasters... The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters... They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Tandem made toasters... You could make toast 24 hours a day, and if a piece got burned the toaster would automatically toast you a new one.

If Cray made toasters... They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If SGI made toasters... It would make the bread look like it was toasted. It could also transform rye to wheat and add whatever kind of spread you could imagine, and it would slyly imply credit for making the loaf of bread in the first place.

If Sony made toasters... The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

And, of course: If Microsoft made toasters... Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway.

Toaster '95 would weigh 15,000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them.

Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

To which I might add:

If Apple made toasters, they would come in six clashing colors, look cute, and they wouldn't be called toasters, they'd be called iToasts. Bread for iToasts would not fit in any other toaster. Users would not insert bread directly into the iToast, but rather feed it through a special system, called Apple Butter, which would catch on fire with older macToasts. iToast owners would exchange raw bread slices with each other through Apple Butter. Users would rarely waste valuable display time in actually toasting bread, for the same reason you would not use a Beanie Baby to pull a wheelbarrow: wheelbarrows are pushed. Besides, who has ever seen a cute wheelbarrow?