The toaster is a perfect robot. I mean perfect. A more modern example is my smart pressure cooker that does just about everything in closed-loop control. It's fantastic.
Automation is not only a very old practice, it's actually stagnating relative to the amount of magic miracle appliances that appeared in the first half of the 1900s.
You have a faulty model, that's not a knock on the toaster as a robot.
Why do I have to put the bread in the toaster? A toaster should load itself.
And half the time I can't get the toast out without using a knife. Why doesn't the bread come up to a level where I can pull it out without burning myself?
Why can't it ever toast the right amount? It's always too much or too little. It should be able to determine everything it needs to about the bread to toast at the correct level, no trial and error and no wasted slices.
In fact, I disagree with your statement so much that I'd ask the question, why are toasters so shitty?
Probably a lot of the answer is cost cutting.