The appliances learn that Wittgenstein's tube will blow and lead to his apparent death unless they find a replacement quickly.

Radio has that kind of tube, which possibly means he is a computer, too. The miserable supercomputer reveals that he lives on one rare tube, named the 'WFC 11-12-55'. When the appliances find Wittgenstein, they discover him abandoned, all alone and run-down and broken in the basement. Meanwhile, in a dual plot of the film, Mack, Rob's lab assistant, plots to sell the injured animals Rob had been tending to a place called 'Tartaras Laboratories', the same place that old-skinned Sebastian (-an old monkey, that Rob's tending for-) with his hand when he was just a baby. The appliances, along with the rat Ratso who found Wittgenstein, then seek to help Rob by finding Wittgenstein to reverse the effects of his virus, hence recovering the master's thesis. While working on a thesis, the computer crashes, thanks to many terrible computer viruses infecting Wittgenstein, an old TLW-728 supercomputer. Rob McGroarty, the owner of the appliances and whom they refer to as 'the Master', is working in a laboratory where he tends to injured animals.

The brave little toaster