My friend Stacey first introduced me to the Toas-Tite a few months ago, and the impulse to buy one of my own has been lingering in my brain ever since. This week, I succumbed.

The Toas-Tite is a little clam-shaped sandwich maker with a long handle. You put in a piece of buttered bread, add your filling, put a second piece of bread on top, and close them in the Toas-Tite iron. Peel off the excess bread, put it over the stove (or the campfire!), and minutes later you have a UFO-shaped sandwich that simply does not leak, just as they claim. Introduced in 1949, it’s a space-age gadget for space-age sandwiches.