Why did the inventor give him scissors hands in the first place?

for cutting salad

I know! WTH, saw this movie and wasn't impressed at all, waaaay overrated. imo.

It's not that he gave him scissors for hands, exactly. That's just sort of how he came, so to speak. There's a flashback in the film of the Inventor making cookies with this crazy machine and at the end of it, we see a machine shaped like a man with scissors for hands, chopping lettuce. That's basically Edward's skeleton. The Inventor used that to build Edward but he just didn't have the hands ready at the time.

I think he wanted Edward to help him chop salad. Remember he sees the robot that is chopping food and that gives him the idea to create Edward.

On an unrelated note how exactly did Edward have that flashback? He hadn't been created yet?

"I really wish Gia and Claire had became Tanner" - Honeybeefine

Someone else on this thread said something similar but the thing is, I don't think (originally) Edward was supposed to be as complex as he was. Because even the first drawing of him had those scissors hands attached to his wrists so it wasn't like it they were unintentional. I'm actually not even sure if they were ever meant to be temporary because I think initially, the Inventor was thinking: "Wouldn't it be nice to have a machine here that was actually alive?" (hence the cookie heart metaphor). And that was probably as far as the idea went, at that point.

But as Edward got closer and closer to being finished, I'm thinking the Inventor ended up changing his mind and decided to make him more like a regular person and eventually, have regular hands. Which he did make for him, except it was of course, too late.