Brave Little Toaster

This is a special little nostalgic movie for me. Just for those of you who are not in the know, this is a movie released in 1987. Although it isn’t from Disney it was played on the Disney channel quite often and distributed on VHS by them. It also has several folks that later went to Pixar such as John Lasseter and Joe Ranft working on it. It also has two DTV sequels from the '90's called Goes to Mars and To the Rescue. As of this writing they were both available on Netflix and I don't recommend either one. I remember watching this movie, however, a lot when I was little. I also remember taking my toys to reenact scenes from the movie. My mom even bought me an old toaster from a garage sale and painted a face on it to add to the collection. I thought to myself: “would a movie like this hold up?” I mean what a five-year-old loves and what is good to an adult are often times two wildly different things. It was because of that I decided that this movie was worth reviewing.

It opens up with rather ominous music playing in an abandoned cabin in the early morning. An alarm radio goes off. Someone from off screen yells to keep it down and shines a light. Then this person reveals himself: he is a living lamp (named Lampy). Dun dun dun. And the radio is alive too. Dun dun dun. That’s right. All the appliances in the cabin are alive. We are later introduced to Blanky the electric blanket, Kirby the vacuum, the nameless air conditioner, and, of course, the titular toaster.

When they wonder what they are going to do that day, Kirby says they are going to do what they do every day: Try to take over the world Do chores. To make it more fun Radio plays “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard. As they are happily working, Blanky stops abruptly and stares off into space. He quietly whispers “A car”. That is the cue for the other guys get a bunch of chairs stacked up so Blanky can climb into the attic and look out the window. As Toaster asks if it is “The Master”, Blanky gets sucked into a fantasy where The Master and his parents were coming home. Blanky snaps back to reality when the car just drives on past the cabin.

I wonder why my appliances don't come to life when I am gone and clean. I must own some real lemons

The Master is the bespectacled little boy that owned them. Or at least he owned Blanky, Lampy, and Radio. I am not sure why Toaster and Kirby think the kid is going to be dying to see them again. Oh well. Blanky and Kirby start arguing about whether or not The Master will ever come back, the previously mentioned air conditioner turns on, laughing manically. He essentially calls the other guys idiots for thinking The Master will ever return. When Toaster and Kirby tell him that he is just jealous because he is stuck in the wall and The Master never played with him, he has a heart attack and dies.

After that charming episode, they hear another car. Only this time it is really close. Excited that it might just be their Master, they get into place. To their horror, they realize that this car belongs to a Realtor that is hammering in a “For Sale” sign. As the others cry, Toaster gets on a soapbox (literally) and says that he is going out to find The Master and they should join him. (Just as a side note I am going to be referring to Toaster with male pronouns. I understand that this is a controversial topic for many as Toaster was treated as a male in the movie, but has a woman’s voice and was referred to as female in an interview with the director. If you are in the “Toaster is a girl” camp, you have been warned.) Slowly, one by one, he convinces the others to join him.

After about half a dozen hare-brained plans from Lampy on how they should get around, they settle on riding an office chair with Kirby pulling and a car battery for power. They head out into the great unknown. The next morning, they come to another clearing, only this one is filled with animals! And they are doing weird stuff like singing, synchronized swimming, and making funny faces at Toaster. I would cry “big lipped alligator moment” but I feel that is a bit cliché. Toaster runs away from all of this madness only to stumble upon a flower. The flower falls in love with its own reflection (narcissist!)  When Toaster tells it that it is only a reflection, it withers and dies. When that second big-lipped alligator moment was over, he saves Blanky from being kidnapped by mice and suddenly decides it was time to leave.

Shouldn't the fridge be alive too? 

They enter into a dark forest, with ominous music playing. That can’t be a good sign. Fortunately, Blanky makes himself into a tent to protect the other guys as they rest. After they all go to sleep, Toaster has a nightmare about The Master being taken away in smoke, a demonic clown firefighter, giant forks coming for him, all ending with him falling into a bathtub. Upon awakening, he sees a thunderstorm a-brewin’. Blanky gets carried away in the wind, and the battery they had attached to their chair has gone dead meaning they are trapped. Lampy makes a heroic sacrifice by using himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery. I don’t think that would work in real life, but what the hay. Don’t worry about Blanky. Once the storm cleared, they saved him from a tree.

The guys get to a waterfall which leads to Kirby having a panic attack. Once he got snapped back to normal, the come up with a plan to cross the waterfall by tying their cords together and throwing Toaster to the other side. Toaster has a panic attack himself and accidentally drops the cord and they all (except for Kirby) fall to their doom. Kirby plunges down the waterfall to save his friends (who surprisingly all float despite the fact they are made out of metal). The river ends at a swamp, where they all fall into quicksand, only to be saved by an appliance repair man named Elmo who happened to be driving through the swamp with his big wheel truck for some unexplained reason.

Elmo takes them to his store filled with all sorts of horrors such as loose motors and cords out for sale. When Elmo leaves they are greeted by all the appliances that live in the store, and they learn the horrible truth: Elmo is a psychotic madman who takes appliances apart. Of course to us he is just doing his job, to them he is Hannibal Lector. After watching Elmo brutally murder a blender for its motor, they come up with a plan to save themselves by pretending to be a monster. After scaring the bejeezus out of Elmo they take off in the baby buggy they stole from him.

Now we finally get to see The Master in real life. His name is Rob and he isn't a little kid anymore. In fact he is heading off for college. He is telling his mom that he and his girlfriend (Chris) are heading out for the cabin to pick up the old appliances to take to his dorm. When they leave the apartment, all of Rob’s stuff comes to life and are in a panic. How dare Rob bring some old junk to his dorm instead of them!

We cut back to Toaster and company and they have finally made it to the big city. With the help of a phone book and a friendly traffic light, they make it to Rob’s apartment. There they are greeted by Rob’s appliances who look like they are plotting something that isn’t exactly wholesome. They also reconnect with Rabbit Ears, the old TV that used to live in the cabin with them. The new guys break into a song about how they are on the cutting edge of technology circa 1980's. After that horribly dated bit, our heroes get kicked out the window and into a dumpster.

Now we just need to find the Pizza Planet truck and the character voiced by John Ratzenberger. 

Back at the cabin, Rob is trying to show Chris about how much fun he had as a kid, but she doesn’t believe him. The place is a dump (remember all the wacky hijinks that happened before the guys set off). Rob also realizes that most of the appliances are gone. He does notice the broken air conditioner. Rob fixes him because he apparently has the skills of a repairman. When Rob leaves, Air Conditioner comes to life and cries tears of joy. He was finally used by The Master. Rob is sad however as he had his heart set on bringing his old stuff from the cabin to college.

Toaster and the rest of the gang are at the dump watching old cars accepted their fate by being smashed into cubes. Back at Rob’s apartment, Rob and Chris are decided on where to go shopping for a vacuum and stuff. Rabbit Ears is desperately trying to get their attention by running faux commercials with the dump’s address on them. After what seemed like forever, he finally gets their attention. So Rob and Chris head out to what they think is an appliance store but is actually the dump. For some reason the super magnet at the dump is hellbent on destroying our heroes by picking them up and putting them on the conveyor belt as much as he (she, it?) can. When Rob notices his old stuff on the conveyor belt he picks them up and all is well.

Well not really. He grabbed up Lampy, Radio, Kirby, and Blanky (Toaster jumped off before Rob could get to him). The evil magnet came back sucking up everything including Rob. He gets put on the conveyor belt and covered by junk so he couldn’t move. He is headed for the smasher and there is only one thing Toaster could do: sacrifice himself by plunging into the gears to stop the conveyor belt. The smasher stops inches above Rob who can only sigh. Somehow off screen Chris must of pulled the junk off of him and he must of realized his toaster was mashed into the machine’s gears because they are back at the apartment. Rob fixes up Toaster as good as new, and loads everyone into his car and heads off for college.

The Pros:

• Fully fleshed out 3-dimensional characters (or at least the main characters)
• An amazing soundtrack and score
• It was a “quest” movie, and I am a sucker for “quest” movies.

The Cons:

• The animation can get pretty sloppy at times. Since the budget was only around $2 million I will let this one slide.
• There is a huge plot hole: It was established they need a battery to move, but they lose it during the waterfall incident and never had any problems since.

Overall I give it ***** out of *****.