(Film) The Brave Little Toaster

This was one of my favourite movies as a kid. Just recently, I decided to rewatch it for nostalgia purposes, and wow! Talk about unsuitable for children! Those four appliances are forced to confront all the worst fears of mankind.

I must confess that, even today, I love the movie, but it frightens me more now than it ever did in the past. I must have been one hardcore kid.

The first bit I don't remember being so scary is when the air conditioner gets upset and kills himself ON SCREEN! And I don't remember the reactions of his housemates being so upsetting, either.

Toaster: “I didn't think he'd take it so hard” Yeah, that's what you say when you accidentally hurt your friend's feelings, not when you cause your housemate of over a decade to commit suicide!

Kirby: “Yeah, well, he was a jerk anyway.” Too soon, man, too soon.

And even though what put him over the edge was the aggravation of being constantly stuck in the wall, the appliances don't even do him the courtesy of taking his body out of there! They're so apathetic, in fact, that they don't even bother to move away from the scene, and the filmmakers were dedicated enough to keep the continuity accurate, so as the appliances casually change the topic, the charred corpse of the AC continues to sit in the background.

Also, you notice things as an adult you wouldn't as a kid.

Like, during the first song, when they're talking about The Master, it sounds like they're singing about God, or at least, some kind of cult leader.

Lampy: “Master is a man, with a plan I can understand!”

Radio: “Master is a man who lays his hand across the land!”

All while you, the audience, know that Master is only a small child, with little influence or understanding of the world.

Soon after this song, we're treated to a scene where Toaster meets a flower. The flower sees it's reflection on... his? surface and falls in love. Toaster tries to explain that it's only a reflection, and that he isn't really a flower. The message doesn't come across, and Toaster has to leave. Before leaving, he turns and looks back at the scene through a bush. The flower is bent over and withered, it's petals falling off.

To fall in love with an illusion, and to whither away through the disillusionment. To be the accidental caster of the illusion, and to be forced to cause such destruction. It happens more often than you think.

Lampy and Kirby's sacrifices, both of which they did knowing they would likely die, and in Kirby's case, which was done out of loyalty, and not because it was very likely that he could do anything helpful through it, were both very terrifying.

The Toaster has a nightmare, too, where a murderous clown tries to kill him with a fire hose filled with forks. Didn't do much for me, but it seemed to unnecessarily cater to one of the most common irrational fears.

And the B-Movie song? Screw those environmentalists, don't they know recycling is evil? Also, innocent hobbies and small businesses. That's what this song taught me. An engineer who uses discarded mechanical parts and either sells them as they're requested, or crafts them into something else, unknowingly becomes a necromancer, a creator of mutants, and a peddler of stolen organs, using sentient mechanical creatures that he keeps imprisoned in his store.

These prisoners sing the song that actually did manage to frighten me as a child. The only scene in the entire movie, in fact, that managed this, and became my strongest impression of the film, and which, for some reason, became and remains my favourite scene in the film, even though the final song is the most intricate. I can't help but feel that there's some relation between this and the reason One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is my favourite book.

These mutants teach our heroes that concepts such as individuality and reality are mere illusions, and that all thoughts and emotions are simple chemical and physical reactions of the body, and that there are people in this world who will twist this fact and will twist you until you have no sense of reality.

It also contains the second reference to suicide. The appliances want to know how to get out. The mutants reply that “You just tell St. Pete, that ya got cold feet!”

They escape by pretending to be a ghost, slinging blanky over Kirby, and Lampy shining his light from beneath, which causes the engineer to faint. I think this is pretty cheap. I mean, Blanky didn't even manage to cover Kirby or Lampy, and Blanky doesn't exactly look like a ghost, no offence. I think what the engineer thought he saw was a sentient lamp, vacuum and blanket. Seems kind of annoying that all any of the mutants ever had to do was move around a little, or even just bust out while he wasn't in the store. Because they do bust straight through the wall. And in front of a conscious costumer, so it's not like the presence of a human seeing them as appliances freezes them or anything.

Actually, this scene causes a lot of questions regarding the limitations of the appliances. They seem really limited, but they kind of break all the rules here.

Also, the engineer had a sentient refrigerator. There was a refrigerator back at the cottage, too, but it wasn't sentient...

...And around this time, they just kind of ditch the concept of needing a battery to move around...

The third musical segment teaches us that upgrading our technology is evil. It deals with the human fear of being surpassed by the newer generation, of becoming unnecessary, and of having your presence become unwanted as the younger folks don't want to think about you, the creature of the past, and how your state of decrepitude is their future. So they push you away...

...And it just makes everything so ironic, now that time has passed, and those futuristic appliances are now outdated, and that by now the newer generation will have done the same to them.

Finally we reach the final song, taking place at the dump, where the newer generation has sent it's predecessors to die among their own. The scene is a giant magnet, dragging worn out vehicles to be crushed into cubes.

It starts with the cars complaining about the pain of decrepitude, of how they just don't have it in them to move on, like humans at the end of their lifespans. The crusher sings "Worthless!" "You're worthless!" to them as they're turned into small cubes, like how we're rendered weak and incapable before our end. Nothing ceremonial. Nothing proud. No finale. We become worthless, then we go. And eventually, we all turn into identical pieces of matter.

One of them explains "And there's nothing you can do." Another one says "Excuse me while I panic!" It's true. It strikes fear in our hearts. We fight it, but we can only prolong the inevitable.

They stop complaining about the pain of age, and start talking about their pasts. There's the privileged one, the unlucky underdog that did better than he thought he would, the traumatized one that can accept his death because he's tired of living, the one that was loved, then left, and who moves to death voluntarily (third suicide reference), there's the one that loved to party, the one that loved sincerely and without consequence.

But all of them are turned into the same bits of matter, and the chorus sings out their worthlessness.

Then they turn to the still-functioning appliances and utter their final piece of wisdom.

"You're worthless".

It doesn't matter if you're in the prime of your life, basking in success, because in the end, it's going to happen to you, too, and that means you're as worthless as the ones who're going out as we speak.

We all end our lives, singing our pasts, which fall on deaf ears because nobody wants to think about it. Your only company the people who are moving with you.

Then the Master saves them. He's a young man now who knows better than to risk his life for old appliances, but by an underlying love and intuition, he finds himself in the right place and the right time, and without thinking about it, he fights for the lives of the appliances with everything he's got before he realizes the foolishness of his actions.

In the end, the whole movie just makes you think, was it worth it? Even if they've reached their goal, how can they live in peace after what they've seen?

Wow... Wow...

So that's that. Would I recommend the movie? Well... maybe, but I don't know who to. It doesn't really have a target audience.

For a little additional commentary, it turns out The Brave Little Toaster is based on a book. In the book, though, the newer appliances are nice and find the old appliances lodging with an elderly couple, where they live happily ever after. AUGH! That's terrible! That syrupy sweetness sticks in my craw! I don't care if it was the original, it's a reverse rip-off, I say!

There's two sequels to the film. I haven't seen them, but I'm willing to bet they suck. I know The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars features an... evil hearing aid that wants to conquer the earth? That's stupid. The powerlessness of the appliances is one of the major themes of The Brave Little Toaster! I watched a song from that movie, too, about balloons that were left to float when they were accidentally let go by children.

I've got two problems with it. One is that I was expecting to be filled with fear and guilt, learning of the terrifying consequences of an innocent childhood mistake, but instead they're all flying around, giggling and talking about how it's so awesome to be balloons. What's up with this kiddy shit? The Brave Little Toaster is supposed to be dark!

My other complaint is that balloons aren't electronics! Simple inanimate objects are not allowed to have souls! There's a reason Blanky had to be an ELECTRIC blanket!

Also, according to TVTropes, this film comprises a Five Man Band:
The Hero: Toaster
The Lancer: Lampy
The Big Guy: Kirby
The Smart Guy: Radio
The Chick: Blanky

While there are five of them, and Toaster, Kirby and Blanky's positions in this formula are obvious (even with Blanky being male, and Toaster maybe female), I'm inclined to disagree with Lampy and Radio. I know that Lampy wasn't the brightest bulb (haha), but he was the one who thought of all the ideas for transporting the gang across the countryside at the beginning, he was the one who thought of using himself as a lightning rod to use lightning to revive a dead battery, he was the one who thought up the plan to save Radio from the engineer, he wanted to get a better understanding of Toaster's changing relationship with Blanky, and at the end, he expresses an interest in going to college with Master, so that he can learn new things. He may have been goofy, but he was kind of the “idea guy”. Radio was the most argumentative, but I don't know if that's enough to be The Lancer. Being The Lancer requires having opposing thoughts and feelings to The Hero's, not just being generally argumentative.