I love paninis, but I hate the way they cut up the inside of my mouth.
Panninis seem like short hand for toasted sandwich with fancier bread, only the name is shorter and sounds snazzier.
I like them quite a bit and find they’re really easy to make either in the waffle iron (you can turn the plates around for a flat surface for sandwiches), or just weighted on an indoor grill pan to get the grill marks. All you have to do is put the sandwich on, put some foil on top and put a heavy pan or something on top of that. You may need to balance it with your hand, but it works well.
Wouldn’t that get starch all over the bread?
I like them OK, they’re like grown-up grilled cheese sammiches, like Wile E said. I don;t go out of my way to eat one, but I enjoy them when I eat them.
Try the 60’s. I remember my mother making ham and cheese sandwiches in one of those beginning in 1965, but I dont think it had a teflon coating.
It was by far my favorite lunch!
Being a product of the 60s myself, I don’t remember much prior to 1973. 
Wow. It’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about those things. I had no idea they were suddenly popular again.
Some of my relatives had a grilled cheese maker, and I thought they were incredibly clever to think of putting stuff other than cheese inside them.
Also, none of you guys have talked about what made paninis special: the filling was entirely inside the bread. (Except maybe WarmNPrickly, who compares them to hot pockets.) That’s a significant difference, as it’s now more like a pastry.
Weren’t they pictures of footballers that you had to collect?