According to
this 2009 article, the year of the Internet Toaster was 1990:
It is also the year the first machine to be remotely controlled over the Internet appeared at Dan Lynch's Interop conference. It was the "Internet Toaster," created by the great John Romkey, who was kind enough to share a piece of toast with me. It was an exciting time.
Not to be confused, by the way, with the Internet Toaster of 1996, which was at $500 PC with no hard drive that you connected to a TV set as your monitor; all software was accessed from the Internet. As you might guess, no one ever bought one, though Canadian Utilities locally did try a hybrid approach of having each staff computer run Microsoft Office and other software off the network hard drives rather than the staff computer's local hard drive.
Walmart's approach to self-serve "cash registers" seemed to me to be the most
labour-wasting of any of the retailers I have seen. A dedicated person with no other assigned duties. They had gradually scaled back the self-serve hours until it was only "rush hour" in the late afternoon. Compare that to Home Depot where the centre of the self-serves is always staffed by a person who can also provide you with a standard cash register experience from that centre position, as well as managing the self-serves, including the ability to scan an item for any of the self-serves from that central position.