Tear Jerker / The Brave Little Toaster

Alas the day and woe is me! I tremble in such misery. As never flower knew before. If you must go, let me implore. One parting boon, one final gift: Be merciful as you are swift. And pluck me from my native ground Pluck me and take me where you’re bound.I cannot live without you here: Then let your bosom be my bier.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• After a car, which the appliances believed to be the return of their beloved Master, drives by the cottage, a crushed Blanky shuffles upstairs and caresses his photo before bursting into tears. The ensuing fight between him and Kirby over the photo has some passing dialogue indicating that this isn't the first time it's happened.
  Kirby: He's not coming back, anyway!
• The appliances (sans Kirby) moping when they learn when their cottage is being sold. Radio, true to his character, half-jokingly plays Taps, earning an icy glare from the Toaster, but once Blanky and Lampy start crying, it becomes apparent just how sad they all are about this.
• Blanky takes the possibility that the appliances might never again see their Master, Rob, the hardest of any of his companions.
  Blanky: I don't want a new master! I want our Master!
• A Narcissus falls in love with its reflection in the Toaster. After the Toaster rejects it, the flower wilts from heartbreak. Toaster even looks sadly over her shoulder as she walks back to her friends, accompanied by a particularly tragic orchestra swell in David Newman's score.
  • Notice that the flower is the same color as Blanky (and, rather than being a Narcissus, could be a stylized blanket flower). When she sees the flower wilt from rejection, it's symbolic of what metaphorically happens to Blanky when anyone dismisses his feelings. Toaster realizes this, beginning her Character Development to treat Blanky nicer.
• Lampy's highly convincing Disney Death by lightning. The camera lingers on his smoking, very dead-looking body for several moments until a fade to black occurs.
• Despite its catchy melody, "Worthless," as the title indicates, is easily the saddest song in the movie, with each car telling its respective story of how they eventually came to be just that.
  I can't take this kind of pressure
  I must confess one more dusty road would be just a road too long.
  • The convertible's verse sound like an accurate description of depression.
  I just can't, I just can't, I just can't seem to get started!
  Don't have a heart to live in the fast lane, all that is past and gone!
  • Which also sounds like a car with a dead battery.
  • The sports car lists all the places that he's been. He just never had a place he could call his own.
  • The old race car reflects on his run in the Indianapolis 500:
    I must confess, I'm impressed how I did it
    I wonder how close that I came?
  • The hearse provides another example.
    I took a man to a graveyard
    I beg your pardon it's quite hard enough just living with the stuff I have learned!
    • In the German Dub the hearses part is even sadder. He speaks about how he drove the dead and mourners to the cemetery, claiming that he did not mind it all that much, as he saw death as a natural part of life. This stoicism only breaks down, when he witnesses the crushing of his fellow cars and later ends up on the conveyor himself.
    • The wedding limo, upon whom he lands on the conveyor, has a depressing theory. Given the two get crushed together, it's not uncommon to connect the two together, suggesting that the groom committed suicide shortly after he got home from the ceremony (the limo shows no sign of a crash), and the hearse took the groom to his grave.
    • The limo's verse gets worse in one of two ways, depending on where you place the commas. The original lyrics are:
      He kept forgetting his loneliness letting his thoughts turn to home and we turned.

  • If you put the comma after 'forgetting', that means the man was too depressed to get married and turned around on his own. If you put the comma after 'loneliness', though, that meant the guy was looking forward to not being lonely, but never to the ceremony.

  • The pickup truck sings this bit...
    I worked on a reservation
    Who would believe they would love me and leave on a bus back to old Santa Fe?
    
  • And then he just drives on to the conveyor belt, which shocks even the magnet, and continues singing, right before he is crushed and his muffler lands on top of Toaster and Blanky...
    Once in an Indian nation,
    I took the kids on the skids where the Hopi
    Was happy 'til I heard 'em say...
    
  • The junkyard car chorus joins him for the final line...
    "You're worthless".

  • Consider the fact that he seemed to still be in good working condition, and yet he ended up in the junkyard anyway. Let it sink in—despite nothing being mechanically wrong with him, he was thrown away simply because no one wanted him.
    • Even sadder when you realize that each car is meant to represent different kinds of people traditionally deemed "worthless" by society: an overworked blue-collar worker, a washed-up Valley Girl, an injured athlete, etc.
    • Taking into account the entry above, the pickup's words become even sadder if you consider them being sung from the perspective of an elderly man of the Hopi nation: he's singing about the children of his heritage who, rather than staying in the reservation and taking an interest in preserving their dying culture, instead catch a bus to Santa Fe, the city, leaving him behind to die alone with their heritage.
    • It appears that said bus was also deemed "worthless", considering that the pickup is first seen on top of a bus.
  • Karen Lee Schmidt's illustration of the appliances lying in a pile of scrap metal◊ is almost as powerful as the song itself.
• Before the above musical number, the appliances lament in the junkyard on how "wonderful" Rob's new appliances are. Even RADIO sounds despondent for the first time here, compared to his usual comedic Large Ham demeanor.
  Blanky: I'm glad the Master has such good appliances.
  Radio: (near tears) Yeah, couldn't get any more modern.
  Lampy: (crying) They're—they're wonderful!
• The air conditioner resents the Master for abandoning him and the rest of the objects, but the last straw is Toaster and Kirby's remark that "the Master never played with [him] 'cause [he's] stuck in a wall," which result in him literally raging himself to death. One of his last lines before self-destructing is even "I can't help it if the kid was too short to reach my dials!" Thankfully, the now-adult Master repairs him, then takes a minute to switch him on to bask in his cooling, when he comes to the cabin for the last time. The Air Conditioner even sheds Tears of Joy as he watches him leave.
• Toaster's desperate calls for Blanky when Blanky is blown away in the thunderstorm.
• While not as heart-wrenching, Rob is clearly sad that his family is giving up their beloved cottage. He's looking forward to having a nice romantic afternoon as he shares this personal nostalgia with his girlfriend, so one can imagine his heartbreak when his last memory of this place is seeing it a mess, thinking that someone broke in and stole his favorite appliances. And while Chris doesn't exactly give him much empathy at first, she still puts her arm around him to comfort him when they leave.
• The appliances in Elmo's shop act scary, but it's heavily implied that they've gone insane from seeing each other be tortured and taken apart, so much so that they've lost all hope of escaping.
• While "It's a B-Movie" is mostly scary, there's one part that's really depressing. Our heroes are sitting on a chair, looking out the window as the sun sets and darkness falls over them. The instrumental becomes really haunting as well.
  There goes the sun
  Here comes the night
  Somebody turn on the light
  Somebody tell me that fate has been kind...
  • And then Elmo's appliances respond by wrapping their wires around the chair and pulling the heroes away from the window.
  YOU CAN'T GO OUT, YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR MIND!
• Kirby’s heart-wrenching tirade he gives to his companions at the waterfall, even after they revived him after he had a panic attack.
• Blanky looking for someone to snuggle with, being shooed away by everyone, even Toaster, who mutters, "Come on. I'm not The Master!" Blanky, completely dejected, finds a quiet spot, sighs, and curls himself to sleep. Ironically, the security blanket needs security.
• While they lose a lot of sympathy because of their actions, the "cutting-edge" appliances get the short of end of the stick when one thinks about their situation. Their beloved "Master" is preparing to go to college but instead of taking any of them with him, the Master prefers some "pieces of junk" from the cottage he hasn't visited in years. Keep in mind that unlike with Toaster and the others who probably only saw the Master when he visited as a child, the newer appliances were probably there as he grew up.
  • When Rob comes back and is saddened by the missing Toaster and friends, his mother suggests taking Plugsy amongst the appliances to take with him. The lamp looks excited at the idea only to look heartbroken when Rob rejects it out of hand meaning his, and the other appliances, actions were for nothing. Adding to it is Rob's specific line when rejecting Plugsy. Rob tells his mom that he's not gonna take "her" stuff. Meaning not only was Plugsy rejected as a future college lamp for Rob, but Rob has no attachment to him at all and considers it to be something for & belonging to his mom.
  • As hilarious as it is for them to toast how "cutting-edge" and "advanced" they are, keep in mind that by the time this movie came out, most of them were already being phased out for being outdated or would be replaced with more advanced technology. Toaster and the rest are safe due to their Boring, but Practical designs, but the Offscreen Karma the Cutting-Edges will face can leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
  • However, as a YouTube comment has pointed out, there is some nuance on the Laser-Guided Karma for the "Cutting Edges". Out of all of them, only the entertainment appliances (Computer, Stereo , TV, Entertainment Complex, Colored Lights) and the Phone are truly considered "obsolete" nowadays. The maintenance appliances (Sewing Machine, Canister Vaccuum), Kitchen Appliances (Electric Mixer, Food Processor, Toaster Oven) and even the Table Lamp are still used today, just like the Toaster & her friends.
• When Rob is stuck on the conveyor belt, Lampy, Kirby, Radio and Blanky stay there with him, with Blanky going so far as to hug Rob's leg. Unlike Rob, the appliances aren't trapped under anything - they could escape. However, after feeling so dejected by the world, it becomes apparent that they would rather die with the one person whom they know would still appreciate them than go on without him.