Blanky from The Brave Little Toaster hears a car approaching outside and thinks the Master has finally come home. He imagines the Master coming through the door and jumping towards him in slow motion, while Blanky flies through the air towards him. They just keep calling “Blanky!” and “Master!” to each other.

Then it cuts back to the present. It was just another car.

I can’t fully recall what I thought about it as a child, but I remember only good things about it. I found the clip with that scene again years later, and since then I’ve occasionally shown it to people to show them how absurd the scene is.

On 20 September 2026, I wanted to refresh my memory and watch it again from beginning to end, but this time with my wife and daughter.

Early in the film, the Air Conditioner loses his temper and eventually blows himself apart. I remember thinking how differently a scene like this might be received if the film was made in 2026. At that point, I thought he was dead, but don’t worry, he does get repaired later. 

As Toaster and the other appliances travel to find their Master, they arrive at a lake, and everything turns into musical chaos, with singing fish, frogs and a worm trying not to get eaten. I was watching my daughter’s reaction to it, and she looked at me like, “What’s going on here?”

Later there is a song called “Worthless.” Old cars are piled on top of each other in a junkyard. One by one, they sing about where they’ve been and what they used to do before being sent to the crusher.

I found an interview with director and co-writer Jerry Rees. He said the junkyard gave them a way to deal with mortality that made sense in this world, because old cars really do eventually get crushed.

One thing he remembered was seeing an old television abandoned in an alley and thinking about how many years it had spent in someone’s home before ending up there.

The film was based on a story by Thomas M. Disch. He once said that appliances become part of our everyday lives. A toaster, he joked, might even be the first positive relationship you have in the morning.

While watching the film, I also kept thinking about Toy Story. Later they end up in a strange shop full of broken things where parts are taken from them. That immediately reminded me of the broken toys in Toy Story.

What I didn’t know while watching was that Joe Ranft, who co-wrote The Brave Little Toaster and worked on the film, went on to join Pixar and became story supervisor on Toy Story.

My daughter said some parts were scary. I remember thinking, really? You watch K-pop Demon Hunters and you’re fine, but this scares you?

She is nearly five, around the age I was when I first saw The Brave Little Toaster. I can’t remember if I found any of it scary at that age. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. It made me wonder if she would remember any of it years from now.

I thought the payoff would be much bigger than this. But there wasn’t.

I don’t really know why that one scene with Blanky stayed with me for so long.