Leela falls in love with "the Prince of Space", while Three Shorts play in-between the action, where the Futurama universe are re-imagined as three separate toy franchises:
- Wind-up Toys: Fry discovers he is slowly dying due to his clockwork key winding down when he was frozen, and they all travel to a Guru atop a mountain to seek help.
- Talking Cars: Mysterious texts are being sent to the car inhabitants of New New York, rumoured to kill people not long after reading the message.
- Rubber Ducks/Wobble Eggs: One half of the Planet Express crew chart the ocean to catalog it more thoroughly, and on the way discover what land is, and meet the Wobbly Eggs, and both Fry and Leela fall in love, despite being two different races.
Tropes in this episode:
- Beware the Nice Ones: Round Wheels Zoidberg is revealed to be the culprit for the killings, because he couldn't stand being left behind any longer.
- Bridal Carry: See image above. Leela is carried like this by the Prince of Space.
- Butt-Monkey: Zoidberg, as per usual. The Talking Cars segment ends with him unwittingly reducing himself to a hood that then gets run over by the amalgamated car parts of the rest of the Planet Express Crew, while in the Rubber Duck/Wobble Egg segment, he casually gets killed and eaten by the other characters.
- Call-Back: The King of Space was first mentioned in a throwaway line in "Overclockwise", and first properly shows up here.
- Didn't Think This Through: In the Round Wheels section, Zoidberg takes pieces of each crew member and attaches them to himself so that he will never be alone again. When he replaces his own hood with Hermes', his face is now detached from the car, leaving him alone and separated from the rest.
- The Dog Bites Back: The Round Wheels version of Zoidberg got sick of always being ostracized by the crew, so he started killing them and modifying himself with their scraps.
- Eye Scream: The rubber ducks segment begins with a warning not to put actual ducks in your kids' tub, lest they peck out his eyes (complete with a graphic of an eyeless child).
- Foul Waterfowl: The rubber ducks segment actually warns that real ducks are very dangerous to kids, especially since they go for the eyes.
- Framing Device: Compared to similar episodes of the show, the episode is basically a non-canon Three Shorts format with the Prince of Space story serving less as a way to link the shorts together and more like a regular episode that is being interrupted by Merchandise-Driven toy commercials.
- Gainax Ending: The episode ends with Leela revealing she was under a love spell, then the Planet Express ship turns into Bender and the crew crash into the Earth and explode, implying not even the Framing Device of this episode was canon.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Wind-up Bender sacrifices himself to save Fry.
- Human Popsicle: Fry in the Windos universe was frozen like the original, but not entirely. He is winding down, the local equivalent of dying of old age, because he was very slowly using his life up due to not being totally frozen.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Fry fights for Leela to be able to marry the Prince of Space, even if it means giving her up.
- Love Potion: Leela reveals at the end of the episode that she wasn't really in love with the Prince of Space, she was under a spell (a "science spell", not a magic spell).
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: In the last segment, Fry, a rubber duck, and Leela, an egg toy, fall in love. Both of their races disapprove of this, leading to a deadly war.
- Not Quite Dead: The Round Wheels version of the crew actually do not die after getting destroyed by Zoidberg, as they could still speak through their dismantled parts.
- Number of the Beast: The cursed phone number in the Round Wheels segment is 666-666-6666.
- Off with His Head!: The King of Space declares this to Fry if the former wins.
- Parody Commercial: Each toy segment is introduced as an extended commercial for the toy in question, despite going off-the-rails into existential drama.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title is a play on The Prince and the Pauper, alluding to the Love Triangle with a prince in the "canon" story and the toy-themed "anthology" stories.
- Running Gag:
- Bender has an obsession with performing loop-de-loops in every segment.
- Every segment starts with a dog chasing a cat.
- Shout-Out:
- The Round Wheels segment is a parody of the Hot Wheels franchise, while the story about a cursed phone call is inspired by The Ring.
- The egg toys are a parody of the Weebles toys.
- Sudden Downer Ending: The Round Wheels segment ends with the car cobbled from the Planet Express crew crashing into a wall and exploding. Subverted when Amy says she bought the warranty and they get fixed right away.
- Three Shorts: This episode acts as the "anthology of interest" episode, though unusual among these types of episodes is that it actually has a decently long B-plot, instead of it being a framing device for the shorts. Instead, the shorts are stylised as ad breaks, with Ad Bumpers before each one, and the shorts all focus on turning the Planet Express crew into toys and writing stories to fit that.
- Too Dumb to Live: The characters in the Round Wheels segment keep answering their phones, even after a news report warns viewers of a cursed phone call that will brainwash and kill them.
- Unseen No More: The King of Space appears after being previously mentioned by Leela in the Comedy Central run episode "Overclockwise".
- Your Days Are Numbered: In the Windos universe, it’s revealed that because Fry wasn’t entirely frozen, he’s winding himself down prematurely. Bender eventually helps him to wind him up again at cost of himself.
