A long-running joke inside the Destiny 2 community is how Jotunn, the Exotic Fusion Rifle from the Black Armory days, is essentially a toaster. It has a boxy shape, firing it gives you a similar clanky metal sound, and the targets of the fiery Jotunn ball you eject — well, they become toast. For this reason, many players were excited when Bungie announced it would create a toaster if fans donated enough money ($777,777.77) during its GCX fundraising drive last year. Many likely assumed it would be a Jotunn toaster, so they eagerly donated, and Bungie ended up raising over $800,000 as a result.
Warp yourself to the present day, however, and that Destiny 2 toaster has since been unveiled — and summarily slapped down by many. It is not a Jotunn toaster, outside of it having a Rasmussen hand decal on the side of it. It’s just a toaster. It admittedly does something pretty cool by toasting the Destiny 2 tricorn image onto the side of your bread, and it does come with a sandwich case. But it’s not what many fans had envisioned, and they are not being shy about telling the studio how let down they are.
Some are, of course, miffed by the fact that the toaster really doesn’t look like Jotunn at all. It has the appearance of something you’d find in your typical kitchen. Take the decal away, and it would probably blend right in. “If it doesn’t look like Jotunn, what’s even the point? Sad,” wrote one player on Reddit.
Others are taking issue with the price. Bungie is selling this new toaster inside its store for $84.99, which — if you’ve ever purchased a toaster before — is quite a bit for that little appliance. As mentioned, this one does do something novel with the tricorn burn-in, but is that an $85 trick?
Criticism of the price only heated up when one person pointed out that this exact toaster could be purchased from a Chinese wholesaler for very little, making it seem as though Bungie is placing a huge markup on the product. According to the studio, 10 percent of profits from the sale of the toaster will go to charity, so there is some good happening here. As another player noted, however, that means Bungie is keeping 90 percent of the profit on an $85 toaster that, on a per-unit basis, it could’ve potentially secured for much, much less than that.
Bungie hasn’t been totally quiet with regard to the discontent. In a Reddit thread for the studio’s latest “This Week at Bungie” update, community manager dmg04 laid bare the realities of making a Jotunn toaster. “We saw a bunch of pretty cool concept from players, but the realities of production/manufacturing would have made it nearly impossible to execute,” he wrote, adding later, “In any case, excited that we got this out. Toaster is fun, emblem is sick, and we’re helping to raise more money for kids in need.”
Some players have thrown out some ideas for how Bungie can bridge the gap between Jotunn and the toaster it’s now trying to sell, including making the in-game weapon look even more like a normal toaster. It remains to be seen whether or not Bungie will take any of these pitches into consideration.
