Frakkin toasters (really)

As every Battlestar Galactica fanboy and -girl knows, the human warriors on the show dismissively refer to the enemies remorselessly hunting them down, the Cylon robots, as "toasters" -- at least when they're feeling cocky. So, to mark the recent Comic-Con 2008, a convention for comic-book and speculative-fiction aficionados held in San Diego last month, NBC Universal commissioned a limited number of Battlestar Galactica -- toasters. They cost $60, and shipping started July 29. (Hey, as this guy points out, not everyone can afford the $8,590 official Cylon centurian replica.)

In addition to bearing the BSG logo and insignia, the toaster toasts the image of a Cylon on one side of each piece of bread, browning the other side normally.

When Meredith Woerner, of the sci-fi site iO9, got hers last week she promptly arranged a toast-off with her trusty Sunbeam. Given the judge's predilections, the outcome was never in doubt, but some commenters thought the figure on the toast looked less like a Cylon than like those images of Jesus the devout sometimes espy on various foodstuffs (which they then hawk on eBay).

You probably won't see Cylon toast on eBay, but sci-fi bloggers predict the toasters themselves will soon be hitting that site, bid up by BSG geeks and kitsch-seeking fellow travelers.