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I find using wood toaster tongs to be quite sufficient.

Mine are nothing so fancy as this image I could find online, but you get the idea.

A pair of popsicle sticks secured together at one end would be fine.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81HzpTQ93XL.jpg

Sure. In China we would use chopsticks. But my point was not that there is no viable workaround, more that the mechanical issue should be solved.

Perhaps it is playing too much Shenzhen I/O, but I feel like a basic IC and sensors could solve this by detecting the width/height of toast pieces and continuing to release until the toast was substantially ejected from the toaster.

I think most toasters pop up using a coiled spring. Replacing it with a linear actuator seems like the way to do this. Perhaps some high end toasters already use an actuator with a laser to detect if the toast is 'up' enough. Fancy stuff

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