Kiddie Critic: The Brave Little Toaster

Preface: Let's just say that I’ve never had fond memories of the 1987 Disney film, The Brave Little Toaster. It may be the worst Disney movie ever made, so I will save you from wasting an hour and a half of your life and fill you in on the horror that you have so long forgotten. My roommate (Let’s call her Brett) could tell you that this movie had me on an emotional rollercoaster and I complained about it so much that it inspired me to start this blog, just so that I could share its horror with anyone else who will listen. I was about to name this blog, The Brave Little Blogger, but it’s bad enough that this movie inspired my first ever blog post.

The Long Story Short: Let’s run through the character list. The toaster doesn’t have a name. Neither does the radio, but that doesn’t stop it from being a compulsive liar and calling everyone else mean nicknames, such as, slots, chrome dome, and dimwit. The vacuum is depressed and unattached. The blanket has the inability to grow up since it experiences abandonment and is bullied for being so cuddly. The lamp is unintelligent and told so every day. The air-conditioner had problems with jealousy and anger. Every appliance demonstrates suicidal tendencies and you witness the heartless murder of many appliances and cars. The sheer amount of negative thoughts and bullying that are apparent in this film are unacceptable for children. I don’t know what Disney was trying to accomplish, but they practically reused the concept when creating Toy Story 3, so maybe they were attempting a “do over.”

The Nitty Gritty: The original UK trailer (which you can check out on my Brave Little Toaster YouTube playlist) describes the movie as ‘adventurous’ and full of ‘laughter’. It does use the word ‘scary’ once, but they down play it with cute characters laughing in a meadow. It seems like a simple concept, a toaster, electric blanket, vacuum, lamp, and radio go on an adventure to find their ‘master’ who has left them behind. It was already off to a bad start when it opens in the dark and gloomy woods and focuses in on a neglected cabin on the hill. It seems like the cabin has been abandoned when the camera pans inside to reveal a battered toaster on the counter and a dusty vacuum under the stairs. The scene follows the withered handrail up the staircase to a sunlit bedroom where the red radio sits on the nightstand next to a picture of the young little master.

The loud mouth, or rather, speaker-ed, radio wakes up the lamp, Lampy, ensuing in a fight that awakes all of the appliances in the house. It takes only five minutes into the movie to witness the first mentally scarring scene. As Lampy and the radio fight around the house Blanky, the electric blanket, slides down the handrail and lands on top of them and the fight continues. Kirby, the vacuum, rolls over to the wrestling match with intent to end it and sucks up the edge of the blanket leaving them stuck all tangled together before the toaster steps in to shut off the vacuum and release them.

The appliances are eager to hear the day’s plan, but Kirby, who may be clinically depressed, tells them they will do chores like they have ‘for the last 2000 days.’ The toaster tries to turn it into a fun game and the radio turns it into a song sequence. The dancing characters vacuum, dust, sweep, and wash the windows. The whole group freezes when Blanky think he hears a car approaching. Meanwhile, Blanky begins to fantasize that the master returning to them at last, but the car simply drives past. Blanky cries and cradles their only photo of the master, but Kirby quickly grows sick of his bawling and wrestles him for the photo, breaking it in the process.

In my personal opinion, the most mentally scarring scene takes place. I do not have any childhood memories of this movie ask this scene. The window air-conditioning unit begins to blow on the little appliances and belittles them with cruel ‘compliments’. He teases them for believing that the master will ever come back. He tries to crush their optimism while they argue with mean words like ‘shut up’ and ‘dimwits’. The young appliances pull the last straw when they reveal that the air-conditioner is just jealous because the master never played with him. The air-conditioner is filled with jealousy and rage, then overheats to the point of explosion.

The appliances are not phased at all by the air-conditioners death, but are distracted by the sound of a car approaching. They brush it off thinking it will just drive by and not worth getting their hopes up for, but are surprised to hear it stop out front. They go to investigate and see a real estate agent placing a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard. The radio plays a death march type of taps sending the blanket into tears.

This is where the toaster comes up with the genius idea of going to look for the Master. Kirby calls them insane, but the radio tries to inspire them with the tale of a dog who found his owners after being left behind on a fishing trip. Kirby suggests they just wait for someone to buy the cabin and then live with the new master, but by now the radio has convinced Lampy and Blanky that he is a mountaineer and the trip would be easy. They all beg Kirby to go with them and prepare to travel.

In a surprisingly funny and entertaining scene, they try to figure out how they will travel across the land and end up deciding that Lampy, Blanky, the radio, and the toaster with ride a rolling desk chair while Kirby pulls them. They run into their first problem when they start their journey and can’t make it out of the front door because Kirby’s cord is too short. They find a car battery in the basement and hook Kirby to it and begin their adventure. Cue the first song sequence, “The City of Light”.

The appliances decide to stop for the night when they reach a thick underbrush. In the morning they continue their journey out of the thistles, when they come along a pond full of wildlife. It seems as if they are all going to break out into a show stopping combined musical number and all become best friends, but the animals are fascinated by their reflections in the chrome toaster, which freaks him out. The toaster runs into the woods to escape them and meets a flower who is equally fascinated by its reflection and then withers and dies in a beam of sunlight.

He returns to the pond in time to rescue Blanky as mice try to pull him into their hole. The appliances set off on their journey again, travelling into the deep dark woods as night approaches. Kirby hints that the battery is running low, so they stop for the night. Lampy suggests they stay in a hollow tree, which he then illuminates to, comically, reveal a scary jack o'lantern-like shaped entrance. All jokes aside, the appliances try to figure out what to use as shelter, which leads to yet another argument, this time between the radio and Kirby. Meanwhile, as they fight, Blanky makes a tent by stretching himself over a low tree limb. As the appliances lie down to sleep, the toaster curls up against Blanky, and Lampy questions him on why he is suddenly nicer to Blanky. This ‘life lesson’ scene is followed up with another horrifying one.

Now, this is about to get weird, so if you would rather just watch this part, it starts at 40 minutes in The Brave Little Toaster video that you can find in the playlist on my YouTube channel. We enter the toaster’s dream where the master is making toast. When the toaster pops, he enjoys one piece, but the other starts to burn, filling the kitchen with smoke. Then, the smoke forms a hand and grabs the master, dragging him out of the kitchen as flames rise in front of the toaster. (Not that weird, right? Well, hold on to that.) A huge clown dressed as a firefighter appears among the flames, holding a fire hose in one hand and a fork in the other. He whisper ‘run’ through gritted teeth and the toaster takes off running, just as fast as a toaster can run, with a smoking piece of toaster in his slot. The clown turns on his hose, unleashing a wave of forks after the toaster. The toaster dodges each one before he switches to a new night terror. Next, he is hanging by a shower rod above a bathtub full of water. Still smoking, he loses his grip and falls, ending in his electrocution. He is ‘shocked’ awake in the tent to a thunder storm outside. Blanky is blown away in the wind, swirling away into the darkness. Lampy tries to locate him with light, but the battery has gone completely dead as the storm closes in around them. Lampy fearlessly jumps on to the metal desk chair, plugs himself into the dead battery and waits for the fateful lightning strike that breaks his bulb and charges the battery. He falls limp and burned from the chair as the scene closes.

The next scene opens with the toaster and radio on the desk chair being pulled by Kirby as the toaster calls for Blanky. Lampy then pops up coughing and battered to help, but the toaster insists he rests. They hear Blanky calling from a tree far above. With no question, Kirby throws his cord over the limb and plugs himself in, then sucks up his cord as it pulls him up the tree. Blanky then drops over Kirby’s eyes as they fall to the ground.

The appliances continue on their way, when they reach the edge of a waterfall. Kirby goes insane and begins to sucks up his own cord, so the toaster jumps in and turns him off. The toaster pushes him in circles until he awakes, but he becomes combative, throwing insults at each of them. They need to get to another cliff across the waterfall, so they tie their cords together and Kirby lowers them over the edge of the cliff, so that they can swing to the other side. The toaster clings to the other cliff to pull the other appliances up, but is unable to do so because his fear of heights causes him to fall and disconnect the cords, leaving Kirby alone on the cliff, as they fall to what seems like impending doom. Kirby then launches himself off the cliff in a desperate attempt to save his friends. He reaches each of them in the water and they cling to him as they float downstream.

The toaster then falls into a deep depression for get his friends lost more than they were before. They have to pull Kirby by their cords because the chair and battery were lost in the water. Kirby stumbles over a pebble and falls off the path they were walking on and into a pond of quicksand. Each of the appliances, as their cords were tied to him, are pulled under with him. The radio plays one last drowning tune, but a man hears the radio and pulls all of the appliances out of the quicksand. Then, he chucks them in the back of his monster truck and takes them to his parts shop in town. He leaves the appliances in the back room of the store when a customer enters. They are ‘welcomed’ by the fellow appliances in the back room with intimidating smiles. The customer requests a blender motor and the shop owner returns to the back room to graphically rip the motor out of the blender he had just used, leaving motor oil dripping from his worktable, like blood. After the owner leaves, Lampy asks the store appliances how they can escape and they are serenaded by the mismatched and zombie-like appliances.

They are then interrupted by the customer who returns to ask for a radio tube. The owner storms the back room looking for the radio and finds him hiding behind the other appliances. Before the man can rip the radio apart, the other appliances put on a ghastly appearance causing the man to panic and run into a shelf and pass out. All of the appliances conduct a jailbreak and escape the store and our little friends continue their journey under a beautiful starry night sky with the city lights in front of them.

The scene then changes to the little master, who is not so little anymore, as he is packing for college. He tells his mother he is going out to the old cabin to get the radio and lamp to use in his dorm. The appliances from his home express their jealousy that the master is taking old stuff to his dorm and not them.

Meanwhile, our crew (as I will now call them) travels through the city and find the masters apartment as he is on his way to the cabin. The apartment’s appliances appear to welcome our crew as they told to story of their journey. They meet up with a rabbit antenna TV that used to live at the cabin with them. He was just about to tell them that the master was on his way to get them, when the apartment’s lamp switches him to Spanish. The appliances surround the crew to sing to them about how they are new and on the cutting edge, unlike the ragged bunch. The crew is then thrown out the window and land in a dumpster below. In not but a second, a garbage truck comes to take them away.

In the meantime, the master cannot find any of his appliances at the cabin, fixes the air-conditioning, and drives towards the city passing the garbage truck that leaves our crew at the dump. When he returns, his mother insists that he take the new apartment appliances, but he says he will go buy some cheap ones. Over-hearing this, the rabbit eared TV plays fake advertisements for the dump until the master notices and decides to go see if it has appliances that he could use.

In the dump our crew has to evade the magnetic crane that lifts so many of the old cars to their death in the crushing machine as they sing about their former lives. The master wanders the dump as the appliances run from the crane and they desperately try to get his attention. The crane has finally gotten them on the conveyer belt to the crusher when the master find Blanky, Lampy, Kirby, and the radio and pulls them from the belt. The toaster escapes without the crane noticing because the crane is now focused on the master. It hovers over him and takes him and the other appliances back to the conveyor belt. The master get caught under some junk and cannot free himself as he approaches the crushing machine. In a last attempt to save the master and his friends, the toaster jumps in the gears of the machine narrowly saving the master.

In the end, the rabbit ear TV, radio, Blanky, Lampy, and Kirby are reunited in the master’s home as he tinkers away at his desk. He reveals that he has fixed the toaster and he packs them all to go to college with him. Disney tried to wrap up this horrifying tale with a pretty image of future adventures with the master, but that obviously didn't stop them from making two more Brave Little Toaster films.

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