1929 Universal Sweetheart Electric Toaster

America’s Love Affair with Toast and the Electric Toaster — A multinational consumer goods company, Unilever, conducted a national survey in 2011 and confirmed that Americans have a love affair with toasted bread. The survey data showed that Americans consumed more that 200 million slices of toast every week! That’s a lot of toast, and the vast majority of these delicious toasted bread slices are cooked using the electric toaster.

The Universal Sweetheart Electric Toaster (Model E9410) shown below is a unique piece of American history and is on display at the Cheshire Historical Society. This electric toaster was built in 1929 and was manufactured by the Landers, Frary & Clark Company in New Britian, Connecticut.  This toaster was sold using their “Universal” trademark as the “Universal” brand was a household name throughout kitchens all across the United States during the early 1900s.

The “Universal” brand claimed that six out of ten American households owned at least one “Universal” product such as kitchen meat grinders, coffee grinders, electric coffee percolators, and electric toasters. The Sweetheart electric toaster was not the first electric toaster as the electric toaster was invented 1893. However, the Sweetheart electric toaster was the first commercially successful toaster that was specifically marketed to American women as the toaster had a feminine appeal with its heart shape body and ornamental pendant decorative handles. Like many early electric toasters, the Sweetheart toaster only cooked one side of a bread slice at a time — except — the Sweetheart toaster also had an innovated “push button” which automatically flipped the bread to toast the opposite side.

However, the success of the Sweetheart toaster was short lived as “pop-up” electric toasters were entering the American kitchen market during the 1930s. Today, finding an original Sweetheart toaster is now a rarity among antique collectors. The manufacturer of the Sweetheart toaster, Landers, Frary & Clark Company, continued making a wide variety of kitchen appliances until 1965 when the business was sold to General Electric.