The Brave Little Toaster is a 1980 novella by American writer Thomas M. Disch intended for children or, as put by the author, a "bedtime story for small appliances".

The story centers on a group of five household appliances—a tensor lamp stand, an electric blanket, an AM radio alarm clock, a vacuum cleaner and a toaster—on their quest to find their original owner referred to as the Master.

The story opens with a description of five members of a family of minor home appliances left in the cottage, listed from oldest to youngest.

As the oldest, the vacuum cleaner is steady and dependable, the plastic AM radio alarm clock, the yellow electric blanket (cheerful), the tensor lamp stand (somewhat neurotic whether it, as an incentive from a savings bank, was better than a store-bought equivalent) and the Sunbeam toaster (bright).

And if you are in any doubt about the voltage of the current where you are living, ask a major appliance.Their transportation needs are solved by fitting an old metal office chair with casters from the bed upstairs and rigging it with an old automotive battery from the Volkswagen Beetle to power the hoover, who will tow the other appliances.

The appliances consult a map and discovering how close they are now to the city where their master lives, excitedly hatch a plan to follow the river until they find a bridge to cross it and then, as the toaster explains, "when it's very late and there's no traffic, we can make a dash for it!"

The Dump itself is likened to a graveyard for defective and obsolescent appliances, a horrible vision of rusted junk and broken parts.

The pirate, upon seeing his corrupted reflection, concludes the ghost is "the kind that understand exactly who we are and knows all the wrong things we've done and intends to punish us for them" and flees in terror.

While deciding what to do next, the five appliances spend the night in the apartment, where the Singer sewing machine repairs the rips in the blanket and the toaster tells the tale of their long journey.

It is the toaster's final plan to help the group of five, and the first to call is "an elderly, impoverished ballerina" from Center Street who trades five black-and-white kittens for the five appliances.

The five appliances "lived and worked, happy and fulfilled, serving their dear mistress and enjoying each other's companionship, to the end of their days".

[6] John Lasseter learned about the novella from a friend and convinced Tom Wilhite to purchase the film rights in the early 1980s for Disney.

[13] The Disney Newsreel, an internal newsletter, highlighted the work of Lasseter and Glen Keane in June 1983, describing the process of animating scenes from Where the Wild Things Are as a test for the future Brave Little Toaster film.