i have a suggestion. i came up with this idea when i was playing doom 3. i had my personal status on ("playing") but i had put the settings to show the messenger popups even when busy. and of course i was shown that sum1 had logged in or sum, wich totaly ruined the way i was gonna freak out cause of all the scary monsters.
so i thought: why not have the ability to make a personal status where u dont just change status, u'll also change your settings. that way i can have 1 status called "playing" where i allow messenger popups and 1 status where i dont allow them. that way my doom 3 experience wont be ruined
of course this can be used to tons of other things than doom 3

I think there's a work around...same result virtually...
You can either use the current Playing status or make your own or not...and then do this;
Main Messenger Window > Preferences > Plus! > Preferences > Privacy Protection > Boss Protection > (choose a protection setting from 3 available) > Set a system wide shortcut > and set the status while hiding to your playing status...Click OK.
Now whenever you use that shortcut your status on MSN will automatically be set to playing and no toasts (popups as you called them) will be shown until you double click on the new icon on the taskbar). Or if you still want toasts to be shown, simply set your status to your playing status...
Hope this helps you

thx alot man! this will solve the prob for now tho it would b easier with a function that is actually made for it.

btw i had no idea they were called toasts, thats pretty funny