The Brave Little Toaster


The Brave Little Toaster is a 1987 American animated musical fantasy film directed by Jerry Rees. It is based on the 1980 novella of the same name by Thomas M. Disch. The film stars Deanna Oliver, Timothy E. Day, Jon Lovitz, Tim Stack, and Thurl Ravenscroft, with Wayne Kaatz, Colette Savage, Phil Hartman, Joe Ranft, and Jim Jackman in supporting roles. It is set in a world where domestic appliances and other consumer electronics come to life, pretending to be lifeless in the presence of humans. The story focuses on five anthropomorphic household appliances—a toaster, gooseneck lamp, electric blanket, tube radio and upright vacuum cleaner—who go on a quest to search for their owner.
The film was produced by Hyperion Pictures and The Kushner-Locke Company. Many CalArts graduates, including the original members of Pixar, were involved in its production. The rights to the book were acquired by Walt Disney Studios in 1982. John Lasseter, then employed at Disney, wanted to make a computer-animated film based on it, but it was turned down. While the film received a limited theatrical release, The Brave Little Toaster received positive reviews and was popular on home video. It was followed by two sequels, The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue in 1997 and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars in 1998.

Plot

The film takes place in a world where anthropomorphic electronics pretend to be lifeless when humans are around. In a small wooden cabin, five midcentury electric appliances – Toaster, Radio, a desk lamp named "Lampy", an electric blanket named "Blanky" and a vacuum cleaner named "Kirby" – await the return of a young boy named Rob who used to vacation at the cabin with his family, but has not come by in some years. One day, upon seeing that the cabin is about to be sold, the appliances decide to venture out and find Rob themselves. They turn Kirby into a makeshift vehicle by attaching a rolling office chair, a power strip, and a car battery to him, and set out towards the city.
Along their journey, the appliances have numerous harrowing adventures. When their battery runs low, the group stops for the night in a forest, with Blanky serving as a tent. During the night, a hurricane blows Blanky up into the trees, and Lampy uses himself as a lightning rod to recharge the battery. After recovering Blanky, the appliances try to cross a waterfall, but everyone except Kirby falls into the murky water below. Kirby dives in and rescues the others; but with the chair, power strip, and battery lost, the group resorts to pulling the disabled Kirby through a swamp. They are almost swallowed up by a giant bog of quicksand, but are saved by Elmo St. Peters, who takes them to his appliance parts store. There, St. Peters prepares to extract and sell Radio's vacuum tubes, but the other appliances frighten St. Peters by pretending to be a ghost, causing him to knock himself unconscious. The appliances subsequently escape from the store.
Meanwhile, Rob, now a young adult, goes out to the cottage with his girlfriend Chris to retrieve the appliances to take with him to college. The group arrives at Rob's apartment, but his family's newer appliances, resentful that Rob favors the older appliances, demonstrate how much more technologically advanced they are and throw the group out of the apartment and into a dumpster, hoping that this will get Rob to take them to college instead. Rob and Chris return home empty-handed; but an old television set in the apartment, a friend of the five appliances who formerly resided in the cottage with them, plays fictional advertisements for the junkyard the appliances have been taken to, convincing Rob and Chris to go there and find them.
At the junkyard, the appliances despair, believing Rob no longer wants them. They are picked up by a large scowling electromagnet, and are about to be destroyed by a crusher, but after seeing Rob arrive at the junkyard, they regain hope and attempt to rejoin him. The magnet, who does not tolerate any escaping junk, thwarts their escape and forces them onto the conveyor belt leading to the crusher. Rob spots all the appliances except Toaster on the conveyor belt and attempts to rescue them, but the magnet picks them all up and drops them back on the belt. Toaster jumps into the crusher's gears, stopping it just before it flattens Rob and the others, but is badly mangled in the process. Back at the apartment, Rob repairs Toaster while dismissing Chris's suggestion to buy a new toaster instead, and he and Chris depart for college with all five appliances in tow.

Voice cast

  • Deanna Oliver as Toaster, a pop-up two-slice toaster who is the leader of the group of minor electrical appliances. Toaster is courageous, intelligent, kind, thoughtful and warmhearted, and is the one who devises the idea of going on a journey to locate the appliances' master Rob.
  • Timothy E. Day as Blanky, an electric blanket with an innocent demeanor. Child-like and insecure, Blanky is the youngest appliance who is deeply distressed over Rob's absence and wants nothing more than to be reunited with him. Toaster and Blanky share a warm, older sibling-younger sibling relationship.
  • * Day also voices Young Rob in several flashbacks.
  • Timothy Stack as Lampy, an easily impressed yet slightly irascible tensor gooseneck desktop lamp. While he can be ironically dim-witted at times despite being "bright" due to his light, he is shown to be clever and resourceful when things get dire.
  • * Stack also voices a customer at the spare parts shop named "Zeke".
  • Jon Lovitz as Radio, a wisecracking vacuum-tube-based dial A.M. radio alarm clock with a personality that parodies loud and pretentious announcers.
  • * Jerry Rees as Radio's singing voice.
  • Thurl Ravenscroft as Kirby, a deep-voiced, individualistic upright vacuum cleaner who dons a cynical, cantankerous attitude towards the other appliances, though deep inside he cares about them greatly.
  • Wayne Kaatz as "Master" Rob McGroarty, the original human owner of the five appliances. After appearing as a child in flashbacks, Rob as a young adult is leaving for college. While in the book, Rob plans to sell the cabin along with the appliances, in the film, Rob still has sentimentality towards appliances and takes them to college in the end.
  • Colette Savage as Chris, Rob's tomboyish, sarcastic, supportive girlfriend.
  • Phil Hartman as Air Conditioner, a Jack Nicholson-inspired, sardonic, and bitter air conditioner who resides in the cabin with the rest of the group.
  • * Hartman also voices the Hanging Lamp, a Peter Lorre-inspired pendant light in the spare parts shop.
  • Joe Ranft as Elmo St. Peters, the owner of a spare appliance parts shop where he disassembles appliances and sells the parts.
  • * Ranft also voices the evil clown in Toaster's nightmare.
  • Beth Anderson as the Mae West-inspired reel-to-reel tape recorder in "It's a B-Movie" and the wooded wagon in "Worthless".
  • Janice Liebhart as the fan in "It's a B-Movie", the phone in "Cutting Edge" and the pink convertible in "Worthless".
  • Judy Toll as Mishmash, a Joan Rivers-inspired hybrid device consisting of a can opener, a gooseneck desktop lamp and an electric shaver.
  • Darryl Phinnessee as various characters in "It's a B-Movie" and "Cutting Edge" and the hearse in "Worthless".
  • Jonathan Benair as TV, a black and white television set who has moved to Rob's apartment and is an old member of the group.
  • Jim Jackman as Plugsy, a pear-shaped night table lamp stand who is the leader of the modern appliances that reside in Rob's apartment. While they are benevolent in the novel, in the film, they are initially jealous and antagonistic towards the group.
  • Mindy Stern as Rob's mother, an unseen character.
  • * Toll and Stern also voice the Two-Faced Sewing Machine, one of the modern appliances that reside in Rob's apartment.
  • Randy Bennett as Computer, one of the modern appliances that reside in Rob's apartment.
  • Randall William Cook as Entertainment Complex, a stereophonic entertainment complex system, one of the modern appliances that reside in Rob's apartment.
  • Susie Allanson as the toaster oven in Rob's apartment.

    Production

Conception and financing

The film rights to The Brave Little Toaster, the original novella by Thomas M. Disch, were purchased by the Walt Disney Studios in 1982, two years after its appearance in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. After animators John Lasseter and Glen Keane had finished a short 2D/3D test film based on the book Where the Wild Things Are, Lasseter and producer Thomas L. Wilhite decided they wanted to produce a whole feature with the same technique.
The story they chose was The Brave Little Toaster, and this became the first CGI film Lasseter ever pitched, but in their enthusiasm, they ran into issues pitching the idea to two high-level Disney executives, animation administrator Ed Hansen, and Disney president Ron W. Miller. Ron Miller asked about the cost after the pitch and when Lasseter replied that it would cost no more than a traditionally animated film, Miller rejected the pitch, saying that the only reason to use computers would be if it was "faster or cheaper".
A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter received a phone call from Hansen and was instructed to come down to his office, where Lasseter was informed that he was dismissed. Originally set to commence at the Disney studios with a budget of $18 million, development was then transferred to the new Hyperion Pictures, which had been created by former Disney employees Tom Wilhite and Willard Carroll, who took the production along with them after Wilhite successfully requested the project from then-president Ron Miller. As a result, the film was financed as an independent production by Disney, with the aid of electronics company TDK Corporation and video distributor CBS/Fox Video.
The budget was reduced by $12.06 million to $5.94 million as production began, approximately a third of the budget offered when in-house. Despite providing funds to get it off the ground, Disney was not involved with production of the film. Rees later commented that there were external forces at work that had the right to say this was a cheap film that could be shipped overseas, which the staff objected to and therefore were willing to make sacrifices to improve the quality of the film despite its limited budget.