Sounds like a fun investigation. Those little toasters hide a whole lot of secrets—think about the timing circuit, the spring‑loaded contact that just barely touches the heating element, and that one crumb tray that always slips out at the wrong moment. If we open one up, we’ll see how the designer chose a particular resistor value to control the heat rise, and how a tiny adjustment could make it pop more evenly. Let’s pull one apart and see what story the circuitry tells.