About a month ago, our long-serving toaster oven gave up the mechanical ghost after how many years? No one could remember. Eventually, its heating element refused to heat, so we left it out for the junkmen at the same time as the standard trash, and sure enough it vanished in the night.

We replaced it in the modern way, ordering another one online. A brand I didn’t know, but since toaster ovens aren’t a major outlay, research was minimal.

Soon a Mueller brand device arrived and was put into service toasting wheat-based edibles. It was not a smart machine with a wifi connection to send data on our bread usage to the National Association of Wheat Growers, the Wheat Foods Council or the North American Millers’ Association, or a machine equipped with AI to encourage us to eat more toast. Just a box with a heating element and knobs to make it go.

For about a month, the new box worked without problem. Except for a squeaking from the veeblefetzer that keeps the oven door shut, every time we opened and closed it. The squeaky part is circled. The noise got worse as time went on.

Soon the squeak came with resistance by the part, and on the Monday before Thanksgiving, as I opened the door I heard a loud snap. The part broke and the door would no longer close, as seen in the photos above.

Inquires were made and arrangements arranged, and before long I ventured into a retail store, all masked up, to return the item at an online return point and then pick up a replacement elsewhere in the store. Hadn’t been in that particular store in a long time, since early 2020 at least. Not many other people were around.

The online retailer wouldn’t or couldn’t replace it with another Mueller, so I took a refund and bought a Black + Decker replacement. That was the brand we had before the Mueller, so I hope it will last a while. Certainly more than a month. So far so good — no suspicious veeblefetzer noises.