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This piece of Design Fiction is imagined to exist in a world where products are developed to the point where they almost have lives themselves. When thinking in terms of Spime, "Brad the Toaster" is a product that plays into the idea of discontinuing the process where products of today's consumer culture are built, and then soon become obsolete due to new technologies arising. Brad and his fellow Sprimes might be the answer to all environmental sustainability problems. Sprimes would be sent out into the world, their every move being trached. Every interaction that they have with people will be tracked, and stored in a database, ready to be accessed by developers. If these developers can study these interactions, what does work with a product, and what doesn't, then their Brad 2.0's can be the best possible product, without having to create a series of upgraded products, only to be obsolete when a new need is discovered. Vanhemert, Kyle. "A Toaster That Begs You to Use It: Welcome to the Bizarro Smart Home." Wired. March 14, 2014 http://www.wired.com/design/2014/03/addicted-products/

Thanks, this intersects with a number of rich topics within realm of New Media and, as you note, spimes in particular! There's also a funny variant here of anthropomorphized machines and notions of sentience. The video for Brad the Toaster is another compelling example of a diegetic prototype

One example of how objects are slowly turning into spimes, is the addition of RFID into products that consumers use on a daily basis. Baltimore is one of a few cities that have begun distributing trashcans to businesses and individual house holds that contain the id chips. It is the hope that they will be able to collect information that will assess the usage of the cans by the customer, as well as other factors that are useful for creating a positive trash-collecting experience both for the company and the customer. Mark Reutter, Mark. "Inside City Hall: Are you ready for "smart" garbage cans?" Baltimore Brew, November 21, 2013