The Brave Little Toaster became a traditional 2-D feature in 1987. (But don’t feel too bad for John– he runs Walt Disney Animation now.) That pitch went so poorly that Lasseter was fired ten minutes later. Tom Willhite liked the idea, too, and got us the rights to the story so we could pitch it to the animation studio along with our test clip. I’ve always loved animating inanimate objects, and this story had a lot of that. Years later, he recalled:Ī friend of mine had told me about a 40-page novella called “The Brave Little Toaster,” by Thomas Disch. In the early 80’s a Disney junior animator named John Lasseter had the crazy idea of making a computer-generated feature. These similarities may be more than a coincidence. In both movies, the objects obsess over becoming lost, broken, or unwanted. Both movies center on the objects’ struggle to be reunited with their owners. It’s about inanimate objects that talk and move when people aren’t around, and their fierce love for a little boy. In some ways, Toaster was a dry run for Toy Story. A John Lasseter sketch, from back when he wanted to make a computer-animated Brave Little Toaster.

Brave little toaster voices