Toy Story 3/Headscratchers

Be sure to see Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2.

Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny- The Spanish version of "You've Got a Friend in Me."

• The line is rendered as "Hay un amigo en mi." One problem- the literal translation of that line back into English is "There is a friend in me."
  • It's because of the peculiar syllable structure of spoken English--and written, to an extent. On average, English words and phrases tend to have fewer syllables than their Spanish (or French, for that matter) counterparts; take a look at any product that has multi-lingual packaging and you'll see what I mean. Since the Spanish words had to fit into an existing tune that was written with English lyrics in mind, they had to do some creative translating; notice that the words "amigo en" get a little bit run together for this reason. The more literal translation, "Tu tienes un amigo en mi," has ten syllables, compared to seven for the alternative translation and only six for the original English; if they'd used the more literal version, the words would have been jumbled together and next-to-impossible to understand. (Keep in mind that, for the joke to really work, the non-Spanish speaker has to recognize that it's the same song, just in a different language. Hence the need to keep the rhythm as close to the original as possible, and to keep "en mi/in me" intelligible.) So, short answer: English is a weird language, and any Parental Bonus is most likely coincidental.
    • The Spanish dub of Toy Story 2 solved this by changing the lyrics to "Yo soy tu amigo fiel"; "I am your loyal friend". It wasn't a literal translation but it made a lot more sense in general.
  • To be fair, the line is only dirty if you want it to be, as "Hay un amigo en mi" means the same as "Existe un amigo en mi", not literally having someone inside you.
    • Also less-dirty-but-arguably-even-funnier if you go by either of two more literal approaches to that statement.
    • It clearly reflects how Buzz has grown through the series. At the begining he was all buisness and duty and didn't truely understand friendship well, but throughout the series we find out that he has the potential to be a good friend. Like how theres a hero in that coward. The first time it was about Woody who always lived about this but now its about Buzz who learned the importance of friendship. As long as were reading too far into how things change slightly when translated.

Even though it jerked at this troper's eyes and was supreme Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, this Troper is still slightly perturbed that Andy just gave away Woody at the end of the film. Sure Bonnie is cute and all, but does that really constitute giving away one of the last remaining shreds of his Disappeared Dad 's memory? Woody wasn't just a toy, he was a family heirloom.

• Now that he's All Grown Up! he doesn't need his childhood hero anymore, meaning that he doesn't need to cling to the physical manifestation of his dad's memory. He acknowledges that giving him away is difficult and that he hasn't forgotten all the love that Woody brought him, but he knows there's another kid out there who would love Woody just as much and would want to emulate him the same way that he did when he was little since he didn't have his dad around. In retrospect, it really reminds this Troper of this line from the Journey episode from Glee when all the kids are explaining what their lives were like before they had Mr. Shuester as a teacher.

Finn: I didn't have a father. Someone I could look up to. Model myself after. Someone who could show me what it really meant to be a man.

• • Also, we don't know that Woody was his father's, it might've just been his favourite.
    • John Lasseter says "we always thought that Woody was kind of a hand-me-down from Andy's father".
  • Another point on the dad front- we're never told why his dad isn't around. On the one hand, he could have died (in which case the whole growing up thing would still apply), on the other he could have more or less abandoned the family, which Andy probably wouldn't have fully understood until his teen years, meaning Woody may have lost his status as beloved symbol of his father's love and instead be just a very good toy (still sad to give him up, but not for the same reasons). A third option is that his dad is still around... we just don't see him. If the parents are divorced with Mom having custody, since each movie occurs within a fairly short time period, and much of each is spent with the toys away from the house, it's not beyond the impossible to think that Andy sees him on weekends, in which case the Disappeared Dad angle is moot.
  • Jerked at your eyes, nothing. Andy's decision mirrored a decision this editor once made, and even weeks after viewing it starts tears and sniffles every time the film even comes to mind. To answer the immediate follow-up question: Yes, it is happening right now. It was absolutely the right decision.
  • This Troper agrees. The whole "Andy gives Woody (and the other toys) to Bonnie" is absolute applesauce. It's like "Here random little girl I just conveniently met and don't even know, how would you like my toys including one that I especially love and care for an clearly have very fond memories of? You do? Ok, bye!" Seriously, What. The. HECK!? I mean, it's one thing to sell/give/donate a toy that you've lost interested in or you've physically out-grown to some random kid...But a cherished childhood heirloom like Woody? It would've make a LOT more sense to see a "X years later" ending and have Andy give Woody to his (Andy's, not Woody's) son as a sort of heartwarming "pass the torch" type of scene (IE: "Son, this is Woody. My father gave him to me when I was younger and he's a very special part of my memory. I want you to have him, so that he may bring you the same joy he brought me.") I got two words for the whole ending of |Toy Story 3-Cop. Out.
    • Harry Knowles from Aint it Cool had the same thought, but the fact is you’re a bunch of morons that are missing the point. Toys' main purpose in life is to be played with, that is their highest point of "living". Just having them be display as memoirs collecting dust would be terrible. The villain of the second movie was a Toy Collector after all.
  • Are you all collectively forgetting that Andy actually KNOWS Bonnie? Their mothers seem to be (kind of) close, like occasional friends. It seemed like a perfect ending to me, the toys always seemed to regard having a single owner higher than being at the daycare.
    • Plus, Andy knowing Bonnie('s mother), he knows that the toys will never be dumped, when Bonnie grows to old for them, her mother will take them to the daycare.
    • Indeed. This entire thread was sparked by Did Not Do the Research and Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch. He KNEW Bonnie. Not a cop-out in the slightest.
  • My nephew and I actually came up with an alternate(and hilarious) scenario in which he decided to keep Woody, pushing Bonnie to the ground and yelling "He's MINE, ya little brat!" before running off. It ended with him getting tazed in the street by a police officer.
    • Okay, much as I loved the ending proper, this must be realized somewhere.
    • And it was :) by the aptly named "How It Should Have Ended"
• I got the feeling that Andy felt that Bonnie and he had something in common. We see a lot of Andy playing very imaginative and lengthy games with his toys, like Bonnie, and aside from the birthday party in the first movie and his sister (who he doesn't seem incredibly close with), we don't really see him interact with a lot of other kids, and (speaking personally) don't really get a sense that he has many playmates. I get the feeling that Andy was quite possibly a bit of a shy, awkward child like Bonnie who spent more time living in his head and playing in his room growing up and felt a bit of a bond with her based on this. In a sense, this could be read as a 'passing the torch' moment like the troper above mentions -- but who said it has to be passed to a family member?
• While he doesn't appear to know Bonnie he does know her mother. He thinks he's following his mothers advice to give them to the child of her good friend. They were just being held for sentemental value and most of them were going in the attic anyways. He can come back to visit them so he basically still owns them as far as it matters at this point and her mother could give them back to him when Bonnie outgrows them.

Just one quick question. In Toy Story 3, Buzz glows in the dark which prompts Woody to call out "Everyone, go to Buzz!" while they're in the dark garbage truck. Couldn't only the new Buzz with utility belt do this from Toy Story 2? How did Buzz magically get glowy powers? Or maybe I'm missing something...

• • Buzz always glows in the dark. We first see this in Toy Story in dark scenes: The corridors behind the arcade games at Pizza Planet, Sid's backpack, the TV commercial, ect...
    • If there's any point when he doesn't, most real life glow-in-the-dark toys need to be exposed to light and/or heat for a while to 'charge', if my experiences are correct.
  • It should also be noted that the Real Life Buzz Lightyear toys also glow in the dark.
  • Not all the real life ones do. I have the original and it doesn't so I figured I'd ask.
    • Dunno, where you got yours from? I'm from Holland and got the large original Buzz as a kid, mine did(/does still) glow in the dark.
    • Sometimes glow-in-the-dark stuff fades and doesn't glow anymore over time, depending on how it's stored and so on. Also yours may have been some (not to be mean, but) lower-end/cheaper model that was just articulated or whatnot? Does it have the multiple sounds?

What was wrong with the "malfunctioning toy recall" plot that got rejected for the third movie? I would honestly like the official word on why it was rejected. The new script (where the toys are abandoned at a day care center after the kid heads to college) sounds like a rehash of the first two movies, quite honestly - just the same old "how the toys deal with abandonment" plot. At least the toy recall script brought something new to the table, mainly what the toys feel when they're malfunctioning and have to be recalled, doomed to be destroyed through no fault of their own.

• I'm guessing the toy recall plot ended too sadly. I can't really see it ending happily, Buzz is broken and they're being recalled. Not much to do with a toy on recall except destroy it.
• I heard the recall plot was written by Disney (not Pixar) as a DTV cheapquel.
• And besides, the look on Jessie's face will be epic.
• Based on the newly released Toy Story 3 trailer, the "Malfunctioning Buzz" idea isn't completely scrapped. After trying to escape from the daycare center, Buzz's reset button is pushed and he starts speaking Spanish.
• The toys ending up at a daycare was the original ending of the original story idea. It'd be like toy heaven, loved by children forever and never outgrown.
  • Except, you know, the Caterpillar Room.
• That was planned during the Disney/Pixar schism, and when they reunited, both agreed not to pursue any projects began during that period.
• It was made only by Disney and while it could have bean good a couple years ago its bean 10 years since the last one came out at this point it kind of has to be an ending plot. Another thing is I can't see the end of that ine being neither cheesy nor depressing maby they would have pulled it off. The three stories cover slightly different things. 1 You can't always be number one/just because your life isn't what you expected doesn't mean your not awsome. 2. Just becaue your relationships will not always last and if they do last they will change doesn't mean you should avoid them. 3. Sometimes its important to move on/just because you're not literarely together does not mean you have to forget the good times you had together/if a relationship doesn't work out don't become a complete monster.

Why would a Buzz Lightyear even have a reset button? He's just an action figure.

• Look at him, he's got more gadgets than a Swiss army knife! It makes sense they'd have a reset button in case anything malfunctioned.
  • Yeah, but when's the last time you've ever seen a reset button on an action figure before? Reset buttons are usually found on robotics or video games or high end electronic devices, and certainly not the kind of circuitry Buzz is suited with.
• I saw a Buzz Lightyear in K-Mart yesterday that could record and play back short phrases. They don't mention that the Buzz in the movie has that function, but if he did, I imagine that's what the reset switch would be for.
  • I'm pretty sure that the Buzz in the movie had some pre-recorded phrases. After all, wasn't there a scene in the first or second movie where he got hit a few times and it repeated his catch phrase, "Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!"
    • Yeah, in the first one when Buzz and Woody are fighting under the Pizza Planet car.
• The reset button may have many purposes, one of which is to set the figure for Spanish mode.
• Uh, yes... plenty of action figures have reset buttons, if they have things like voice boxes and other electronic features. I've seen them on older toys than Buzz would be.

So, is adult Andy just a huge moron? He has Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye, ¾ of Woody's Roundup. The full set was worth tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars (more than a luggage guy makes in a year). I realize the set would lose value without Stinky Pete, and undoubtedly writing his name on their feet probably lost a few thousand bucks of value, but still, the set minus one with minor damage (nothing a restorer couldn't fix anyway) still has to be worth a great deal money. Why would he pass up something like that and just toss them to some daycare center? Furthermore, Woody is a family toy, passed down from generations for what seems to be about thirty years. Seems kinda mean of Andy just to toss it. I understand him donating the more generic toys, but why get rid of the valuable toys?

• Probably an Aesop implying that toys are meant to be played with and enjoyed rather than kept in display cases to show off, or something like that.
  • That had better have been sarcasm, because that was the entire point of Toy Story 2, and you seem to have missed it.
• Maybe he didn't even have any idea of how valuable they were, or even that they were from the same line of toys? I haven't seen any of this stuff about the third movie, but I'm pretty sure at the end of the second movie he doesn't know ("Calamity Jane", anyone? May have been a Black Bart play story, but nothing told him what they were beyond a cowgirl and a horse).
• As for Woody, you find out that Andy was going to take him to college with him. And he was just placing the other toys in storage. The only reason Woody didn't end up with him, is because he is saving the other toys from being accidentally placed in the garbage.
• Jossed. The plot is not Andy deliberately sending them off to Daycare; it's them accidentally getting there somehow. Proven here where's it's clearly "One mistake leads to another and they end up at daycare", not "Andy decides to send them off to Daycare".
  • Definitely. Andy had meant to put the toys in the Attic, and they assumed they would be taken out again later, presumably when Andy had children of his own. Unfortunately, he put them in a trash bag, not a "For Attic" box, and...
  • It was something owned by his implied dead father to a lot of people thats something you never sell unless you where desperate.
• Maybe Andy didn't realise how valuable they were - after all Woody's Round Up is certainly an old show from what I remember in Toy Story 2 so perhaps he's never heard of it? Not realising how valuable some toys can be is common enough - this troper once seen an old Thomas The Tank Engine sell in a collector's shop for £750. I had every single one made in that specific time frame which would be worth almost £5000 and my mum gave them away.
• There's more to life than money. Maybe Andy's simply the kind of nice guy who values making a sweet, shy little girl happy over selling a childhood heirloom (which he's obviously still attached to) for a few bucks?

OK, this is going to be hard to explain but let me try. Human characters, especially in CGI, are extremely difficult to do and if they start to look too realistic it becomes extremely creepy (* cough The Polar Express). We all know this as the Uncanny Valley. So, to solve this problem, PIXAR caricatures their human characters in movies like Up and The Incredibles, so as not to make them too creepily realistic. HOWEVER, in Toy Story 3 we are shown an adult version of Andy that is perhaps the most naturalistic, non-caricatured human PIXAR has ever created. And yet for some reason the Uncanny Valley seems to have no effect whatsoever (although Your Mileage May Vary)on us after seeing human Andy. I guess what bugs me is that it doesn't bug me. Even though by all standards of the Uncanny Valley we should, why are we not disturbed by adult non-caricatured Andy?

• Perhaps Pixar have finally conquered the Uncanny Valley?
• That much is a given, but how?
  • Well, either all the tears shed during WALL-E and Up were collected and fed to a magical computer that rendered the older Andy, or, Pixar have finally figured out how to give their creations a soul.
• Andy is still caricatured, just to a much more subdued degree. Look at his face: his eyes are too big, there's something about his nose that's off-it's not much, but it's just enough.
• Or subconsciously we all feel like we "know" Andy due to the last decade or so watching these things as kids, so it don't really bother us, his looks.
• Personally, this troper believes the stepping stone was Ratatouille, which featured humans more detailed than The Incredibles but still caricatured. However, between Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Toy Story 3, there are common cartoonish features like large noses and eyes, rounded heads and body types, etc.
• Well its not like The Uncanny Valley is this all unavoidable thing when it comes to CGI. Every time you see a drawing of a character that doesn't creep you the fuck out the creator has avoided the uncanny valley; it just takes skill and knowledge to avoid. Two things Pixar has A LOT of. Along with wonderful modeling, I think one of the big things with Pixar managing to stay out of the valley though is the fact they don't use motion capture. This is often considered to be the real reason why movies like Polar Express sunk so deep into the valley. You have characters that are close to being human (but not quite) moving around exactly the way a human does. This gives the feeling of a moving corpse that some animation studios refuse to acknowledge.

Wait... I thought Buzz Lightyear was made in Taiwan. So why is he reset into Spanish? Sure it's Rule of Funny, but it just doesn't make any sense.

• Perhaps the voicebox part is made somewhere else?
• Perhaps this is a model made specifically for North America. The two most spoken languages in North America are English and Spanish so maybe his reset messed up and defaulted Buzz to his second language.
• But he speaks (and acts) like someone from Spain, not Latin America.
  • His translation was done in Spain, maybe?
  • Yeah, he definetly has the spanish dialect and accent. I'm thinking the writers thought a spanish sterotype would be more humorous and recognizable to the movie's young audience than a latin-american one (Even though that would make more sense).
• I think that it wasn't just pressing the reset button, but a specific sequence to change the language to Spanish.
  • Holding it for five seconds, which wasn't stated in the trailer.

In the Toy Story 3 novelization (yes, I read it, so sue me), by adaptation author Jasmine Jones, there's one bit that just bugs me. In the scene where the toys first arrive at Sunnyside, the three alien toys see a crane toy that circles them. They say "The Claw!". I know for a fact this happens in the movie. But then the narration/description comes: "The crane reminded the Aliens of the claw arcade game at Pizza Planet, where Andy had won them." Excuse me? Those three aliens were originally in the Pizza Planet truck that Andy's toys commandeered to chase Al to the airport. Mr. Potato Head rescued them, and they came home to Andy's house. Andy didn't win them.

• The Claw works in mysterious ways.
  • Besides that, Andy didn't win any. Sid won the alien in the first movie, and like you say these three came from the truck. Maybe those three came from the same machine at some point, but that's still a pretty bad slip-up on her part.
• Being fair, an Epileptic Tree could be made that the LGM we see in this movie aren't the same that were appeared in the second movie.... But somehow, the Potatoheads adopted them and... well.. Mr. Potatohead saved their lives and... Ok, I got nothing...
  • Ah, well you see, those aren't the same aliens. Every few weeks, one of them got chewed up by the dog, stuck in the toilet, stuck under the radiator, etc, so periodically, the Potatoheads "rescued" another one as a replacement for the one who was lost to them.
• They're probably kinda dimwitted, and don't really remember who won them, or how they got to Andy's.

How exactly did Lotso stay smelling like strawberries when he was rolling around in the dump?

• I can't speak for toys laying around in garbage but some scented things manage to stay scented for a ridiculously long amount of time. I've heard stories of people's vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls still smelling the same even after years and years of being at the bottom of a drawer or, in one case, buried in a backyard.
• Or alternatively, the same reason Buzz and Woody's voice boxes are still working after over ten years: magic.
• My guess is that, just like the other toys provided spare parts and batteries to broken-down toys, Lotso's been provided with regular doses of extra-strength strawberry scent.
• This troper thinks it possibly implies that Lotso is still good at heart, despite his Complete Monster showcasing. Even though he became a ruthless tyrant, he's still a cuddly teddy bear that just needs to be loved. After all, Darth Vader was mostly machine, but still had a shred of good in him and thus was good at heart.
• He was smelled by a dump worker who is accustomed to the smell from working there all day. The strawberries probably stood out.
• The garbage worker could have just been losing himself in nostalgia for a moment; he might have just remembered how his own Lotso Bear had smelt of strawberries and associated it with the bear in front of him. There could also have been a faint scent underneath that he picked up on as well.

This is a bit of Fridge Logic from the third movie. It's mentioned briefly above, but I'm going to expand on it. At the end of the movie, Andy tells Bonnie Jessie's real name, and talks about her caring for critters and stuff. At first, I assumed that Andy got that info from the internet. But that just created all sorts of questions about how much Andy found out about Woody's Roundup. Surely he did at some point, right? In the beginning he tells his mom that no one wants to buy his old toys. Does he know that Woody is valuable? Was he lying to his mom to keep her from selling his toys? This is an entire fascinating subplot that I wish had been explored.

• Rule of Drama?
• It seems like a pretty safe bet that he was exaggerating to get his mom off his back, since we're shown that he didn't really think his beloved toys were "junk." However, selling them was a reasonable suggestion and he wanted to shoot it down without sounding embarrassingly sentimental.
• A lot of people have a more personal attachment to belongings, especially childhood toys. Since Woody was his favorite (and since they essentially 'grew up' together), I'm assuming he found out their origin at one point yet simply just wasn't interested in selling them. I mean, think about it from his perspective: would it have been that easy for him to just up and auction them off when he could barely fathom not taking at least one to college?
• It could just be possible that he looked up information about the toys' history (Woody's Round-up) without specifically looking up the value of the toys. Odds are, he may have watched a few clips on the show on Youtube and learned the character names that way, while never going on eBay to look up the worth of the specific models that he owned. Perhaps he even learned that toys from the series were valuable, but thought that HIS toys weren't worth much, either because they were in played-with condition or because Andy assumed they were cheaper models.
• Andy's clearly not a toy collector, and clearly values his toys for the sentimental value and fun memories than their monetary value. Even if he does know how valuable they are, he possibly doesn't care. Also, remember that they aren't a complete set without Stinky Pete, which would reduce their value.
  • This. Also note that people who do develop an attatchment to their childhood playthings, when they get to that point where they don't need them anymore they may not want to sell them for monetary gain, but give them to someone who would appreciate and enjoy them, like I intend to do with my old Pokemon cards, if I ever find 'em.
• Jessie might have introduced herself to Andy via string.

Speaking of Toy Story 3 Fridge Logic, whose Instant Message accounts were those dinosaur toys using? Surely they didn't create their own? I know I'd be pretty shocked if I got an email thanking me for opening up an account as Velocistar77. I'd think I got hacked. I guess you could chalk this up to Rule of Funny, but it still bugged me.

• I assume they probably created their OWN email accounts.
• Now THAT is a powerful case of Fridge Horror. It really makes you wonder about what all these animate toys are able to get up to while you're not looking, particularly in today's high-tech society...
  • Plus, wouldn't Bonnie eventually find out about it? I mean, she's little and probably wouldn't understand computers very well, but when she gets older and uses it more, wouldn't she see? And if she was IMed while on... she'd be talking to a toy.
    • The toy would have to learn to use the computer in such a way where its not obvious.
• Any one of the new friends you chat with online could actually be a toy! Toys could be editing this wiki right now!
  • The computer is alive too and doesn't deliver toy messages when a human is on.
    • Oh God.
• That would be an interesting fanfic where a human communicates with a toy. Or a toy purposefully poses as a human.
• It's entirely possible that the accounts are human owned. I mean, they both belong to kids with dinosaur toys. It's not unreasonable to think that the kids came up with names based on one of their toys.
  • Why would Bonnie need an IM account?
    • Perhaps she has an older sibling who never made an appearance?
• You already don't know who you're talking to on the internet unless you actually know them. Its actually cool how toys get more power to communicate with people in this high tech world. I think they made their own everything and Trixy will learn to make it so her account isn't visable as Bonnie gets older. Trixy had to have actually known Velocistar.

This just occurred to me. Wouldn't the fact that Daisy only replaced Lotso actually mean that she loved him most? It seems like a case of differing perspective between toys and humans. Neither can understand the motivations of the other. While yes, the idea of toys being abandoned like they were never very important has much more meaning to them than the humans, toys also don't seem to understand that, because humans don't know that they are sentient and don't know that they're alive, they don't tend to think of toys as individuals. Daisy loved Lotso more than Chuckles or Big Baby, which is why she replaced him. She was never abandoning Lotso himself, it's more that she loved Lotso and didn't want to have to "go on without him." Because she would have thought Lotso was Lost Forever, she got another one so that she could CONTINUE to play with a Lotso-Huggin' Bear that she loved. Replacement is obviously a very traumatic experience for a toy, but it's also something that they don't understand that, in the case of Lotso, it was mainly done out of love, unaware of the ramifications for Lotso himself.

• I had a theory that she realized he was missing and was sad about it, then her mother secretly bought her a replacement Lotso bear, secretly deposed of his freshly opened packaging and said she found him hidden under the car seat and explained that she couldn’t find Big Baby or Chuckles and promised she would continue looking for them (which she didn't).
• I like the above interpretation, and I think that the implication was there that Lotso was replaced because he was loved the most, but I wish it was made more explicit. I wanted to sympathize with Daisy like I sympathized with Emily in Toy Story 2, but instead we were only given her story from the toys' perspective: that she abandoned and replaced Lotso. With Emily it was made very clear that she was simply growing older, and while she still shows affection for Jessie, Jessie just didn't have a place in her life any more. There was no such excuse for why Daisy and/or her parents didn't go back to the park to look for the toys, if she cared enough that her parents had to get her another one. I wish there was some kind of confirmation as to whether Daisy ever came back to look for them, or whether Lotso was just replaced immediately. I think the notion that the toys and the humans had completely different perspectives on the situation is a fascinating case of Fridge Brilliance, and I would have liked to see it examined more in the film.
  • When I was three years old, I had an Ernie doll that I loved more than anything. He went with me EVERYWHERE. One day, we went to a playground at a park, and I brought Ernie with me. I set him down to play on the jungle gym--and then he got left behind when we went to leave. I realized what happened when we were about 5 minutes away and burst into tears, and my parents immediately made a U-turn and went back to the park, but by the time I got there, he was gone. We do see that Lotso and the other toys were there for much longer than my doll was, but Daisy was also fast asleep when they left (which was how her toys were forgotten in the first place). She couldn't immediately alert her parents to what happened like I did. It's quite possible that they didn't even realize they were gone until the next day--and if they were quite a ways from their house, it's also possible that Lotso and the gang were long gone by the time they remembered where the toys had been left and tried to go back.
  • I'm sorry, but all I can think of is an Ernie doll wandering the streets, trying to get back to its lost owner...I'm not sure if it's Tear Jerker material or Nightmare Fuel.
    • Especially if he's become bitter and resentful about his owner abandoning him, becoming more twisted over time ... oh great, so much for sleeping tonight.
• Don't forget, Lotso and co. left the park almost immediately. No matter how quickly they realized that the toys were missing, they wouldn't have found them. Basically, the Brave Little Toaster conundrum strikes again. The toys' own sentience is what prevented Daisy from ever finding them.
  • They left after waiting a few days. Remember, they were at a rest stop who knows how far away from Daisy's house, not a park.
    • They did indeed wait, but I don't remember it being specified as 'days'; just that they waited a fairly long time and no one returned for them before they set off home
• Lotso at this point had simply become so destroyed by what had happened in his life, that any replacement would have made him feel unwanted. He just wasn't thinking logically after his experience.
• Also consider the oft-used line "I don't WANT a new X, I want (name of X)!" (Is there a trope for that?) Lotso probably figured that if Daisy really loved him, the difference between him and the new bear would've bothered her. Combined with the theory that the parents made the switch without her knowing, this adds a bit more depth to the idea of being replaced.
• I think the other toys do understand that replacing a lost toy does not equal not loving the original. Woody showed no sympathy for Lotso during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, as if he didn't buy his tragic kids-don't-really-love-toys act but knew Lotso was actually just bitter about losing the spotlight ("If you couldn't have her, no one could!").
• Imagine it this way, in another genre. When Adam returns to see Frankenstein, instead of seeing him trying to get on with his life and have the possibility that it only looked like he had been abandoned, Frankenstein had another Monster and was playing baseball with it and calling it "son". You'd get something approaching a Franken-Lotso, wouldn't you? You wouldn't have Adam thinking "Oh, Victor decided to replace me after he disowned me and couldn't find me again! It must have been a mistake, and he really did love me!"
  • Except that we don't know what Daisy did when she got home, nor what happened between her losing Lotso and getting a new Lotso. The tropers above mention quite a few ideas: that Daisy needed a Lotso one way or the other, or that her parents secretly replaced it without her knowing. Lotso just assumed the worst, and his emotional reaction pretty much took over.
• Think of it another way - supposing it occurred to Lotso to give Daisy the benefit of the doubt, get him and Big Baby and Chuckles into Daisy's house and let her 'find' them under the bed, or in a cupboard, or anywhere where toys usually go when they're 'lost', and test her reaction, and thus find out how much she really loved him?

In Toy Story 3, in the scene at the dump with the magnet, we see Slinky gets pulled up and is unable to detach himself. How does he get down (and stay down) when they reach the other side of the grinder? Even if another one of the toys pulled him down, he would still need to be weighed down by someone or something.

• Because the plot demanded it.
  • Also, the trash river was way lower down at that point, after the grinding. The magnet probably wasn't powerful enough. That, or it ended past the grinder(slightly past where Woody saw the still attached metal bits).
• A wizard let him down.
• Maybe the other toys grabbed hold of him, and their combined weight was able to pull him down?
  • Then it would just pull him back up, they are not holding onto him in the incinerator. Plus, how would they make it over to Slinky, they were all spaced around and depending on what they were held onto, if they let go, they fall, so there is no way over to him.
  • Besides, those are some pretty powerful magnets. I don't think it was for anything else other than drama. How satisfying would it be if Slinky never got to prove himself in the incinerator scene?

How exactly did Pixar convince Mattel to let them use Ken? True, it would have given them a bajillion dollars from the Product Placement, and Barbie comes off very well in this film. And Ken isn't an outright villain. But he's still a bad guy for most of the film.

• "Hey, we want to use Ken in the highly-anticipated finale of the best-loved computer-animated movie series ever, is that okay?" "How fast can we say 'yes'?"
• Meh, he gets a Love Redeems Heel Face Turn. Besides, since Evil Is Cool, wouldn't an Evil!Ken theoretically sell even more Ken dolls?
• Even Mattel's been treating Ken like a joke. In canon, Barbie and Ken officially broke up in 2004 and they started giving Barbie a a different love interest in every movie. The most notable Ken doll of the past few years was Sugar Daddy Ken...
• Mattel lost millions when they didn't lend Barbie to be used as a character in the first film, precisely because they didn't agree with the personality she was going to have (the script called for an active, fighting, "Sarah Connor-like" Barbie doll). When the opportunity to reverse that error came with the second movie, they probably said something like "Of course! Use Barbie however you want! And in the next you can have Ken too!"
  • It wasn't because of the fighting. Barbie had already been an officer in the army, marines, air-force, navy, police force, and RCMP by that point; that's probably where they got the idea in the first place. Mattel objected to giving Barbie one definitive personality; because the whole appeal of Barbie’s is that she's what you want her to be.

Pixar altered the look for young Andy in Toy Story 3 to remove Uncanny Valley from the character. Okay, sure. But did they really have to make him look that different? Especially when young Andy was barely there anyway.

• I read an article that said they had to rebuild the models from scratch for the new movie because they'd lost the files they needed for the old ones. It's possible that while it was easy to create newer, updated models of the simpler toys, they couldn't make the human characters look exactly the same. (Now, don't ask me how they had the original files for the first two films, but couldn't use those to get the character models somehow--I don't know enough about how computer animation works.
  • It was likely less "we lost the files" and more "technology has advanced so much in 10 years that the old models are just useless in a new movie". I mean, really... assuming they re-used the same CGI models from the first movie for the second, they would just be far too ancient (relatively speaking, of course). Higher-res imaging alone would probably require a higher Polygon count in the models, not to mention greater detail in just the clothes, accessories, and textures/mapping. It really would be easier just to make new models from scratch than try to update the old files.
    • I can attest to this. Given how old the original models and textures were, and how far Pixar has come over time, it's significantly easier to just re-create the models in newer technology. This also makes them much more streamlined, as trying to update the originals would probably involve a lot of junk being converted and erased. As somebody who's attempted to clean-up models that have simply been 'resed up' before, I can say that it's just plain easier to redo the thing from scratch sometimes than the try and deal with the mess you wind up making by trying to 'cheat' by just cranking the polygon count of earlier files.
  • According to the DVD behind-the-scenes stuff, the newer models also have more controls for more subtle nuances and expressions. Buzz's eyebrows went from three controls to 40+, just in time for "Spanish Buzz's" premiere.
• In the art book they mention that they conciously tried to minimize humans because they never looked right, but after years of progress they decided to take the leap. Also, in the art book they show a small study on how people age and Andy's aging looks consistent.
  • And it helps that 2010 technology makes the characters look really, really good. Kinda like comparing the 1966 Enterprise, the 1979 Enterprise, and the 2009 Enterprise.
• Okay, here's why they built the models from scratch. The old files were so ancient that they could open them, but not edit them because of error files.

In |Toy Story 3, why don't any of the toys try to tell Andy that they're sentient? He strikes me as the type who wouldn't freak out too badly if Woody explained politely that they didn't want to be thrown away or left alone.

• Well, would that mean Andy would still play with them? If anything, Andy would treat them as people, but that's not what a toy is. A toy is meant to be played with. And, personally, if they revealed they were sentient to Andy, that really would've killed the series for me along with the emotion of the ending of 3.
• I think one of Andy's main traits is how he cares very much for his toys anyway. In a way, he already understands them very well. For example, he states that "Woody is the toy that will never give up on you". Along with the above troper, Andy loving them is enough.

Am I the only person who thought that Stinky Pete and Lotso Huggin' Bear were essentially the same person? Er, toy? When Lotso monologue, I felt like I was listening to Stinky Pete.

• Almost but not really. While it's true that both toys are children hating, anti-playtimers, Lotso is much much much more sinister than Stinky Pete ever was. While the Prospector was really never played with before and could not fathom what it meant to be played with, Lotso actually had an owner and knew what it meant to be played with. That's why his Hannibal Lecture was so much more effective to Woody than the Prospector's ever was. Also, while Stinky Pete just wanted Woody to be able to preserve himself, Lotso actively left Andy's toys to die, even after Buzz and Woody nearly killed themselves to save him. Lotso is a million times worse than the Prospector ever was.
• The Prospector was also more focused in his goals. There was something specific he wanted (lasting forever in a toy museum after years of being ignored on a shelf in a toy store), and he just didn't care who he had to manipulate or force to cooperate in order to get what he wanted. Lotso is a textbook case of Love Makes You Evil -- he had his heart broken (for lack of a better analogy), and now he'll do his best to cause pain and make others suffer. Unlike the Prospector, Lotso has no specific goal in mind other than control and nothing material to gain from what he does other than twisted psychological satisfaction. (In the wildest of Toy Story's popular existential/religious metaphors, I would say Lotso's analogous to Satan.)
• Lotso is the evil counterpart to Jessie. If she had turned dark and cynical after being abandoned by Emily, you'd get Lotso.
  • So, with Lotso being Satan and all, would that make Jessie... Jesus?
    • I'd say he's more of Woody's Evil Counterpart than Jessie's.
      • No, I think he fits Jessie far more. Woody was no longer played with, but Andy still had enough love and respect for him to keep him around, even through college. So Woody had no reason to side with Lotso's belief that toys are "nothing more then trash". Jessie's story on the other hand, perfectly paralelled Lotso's. When she was lost there was no attempt to try and find her, and both were replaced. The only difference was that Lotso was abandoned in much more unpleasant conditions (adding to his anger) and Jessie was replaced with adolescence rather then anything tangible.
        • It's a bit of both; he's Woody's parallel in that he's (initially at least) utterly devoted to his owner, to the point of jealousy. The circumstances that Lotso gets into -- accidentally being left behind by an owner and moving Heaven, Hell and Earth to get back to him / her, being threatened by a new toy which replaces the old one in the owner's affections -- is almost exactly the plot of the first Toy Story; except Lotso gets back too late and discovers that he's been replaced, where Woody gets back just in time.
• Ehhh... I'd say Lotso's more of a combination of Nietzsche Wannabe and Hollywood Atheist topped off with a spoonful of Complete Monster than Satan. When he says, "Where's your kid NOW, sheriff?!", the word "kid" can easily be substituted with "God".

Lotso: "We're all just trash!! We were meant to be thrown away!!"

• Both of them are evil because they are synical and they sound really simular and have sad backstories. Stinkey Pete thinks it will end too soon and he'll get destroyed in the process proberably from a combination of listening to Al and Jessie. Lotso believes that no kid ever loved a toy. Pete wants nothing of Woody he doesn't want for himself. Lotso sends other toys to the Caterpiller room so he doesn't have to go there. Pete wants to be famous and to live forever his goal matches his belief system. Lotso wants...to be played with by kids...dispite the fact that he thinks its all a lie. Pete only hurts Woody when Woody gets in his way and even then its because Woody can be fixed. Lotso hurts all the new toys his henchmen state they son't think the new toys will last a weak. There is a repair shop in the Butterfly room. I believe Pete has a genuine friendship with Jesse.

The only thing that bugged me about 3 (a very minor nitpick at best)- why was Sid not a total basketcase? I mean, he was reduced to a quivering little blob at the very sight of his sister's rag doll after Woody was done with him. When I heard Sid would be making a cameo, I figured it would be in a psych ward or something.

• That's what I was expecting too. However, he's probably had lots and lots of therapy over last decade.
• Retroactive Weirdness Censor?
• Because he developed a Mr. Crocker complex. He's able to momentarily restrain his thoughts about toys coming alive by yelling DEMONIC LIVING TOYS off screen.
• That's what I wondered - I decided that he either went through a ton of therapy, or he repressed the memories. He probably went to tell his parents the toys attacked him, and after the constant "Stop telling lies"/"You must have had a nightmare"/"That's not possible" he decided he must have made it up in his mind.
• Alternatively, the experience did screw him up, and Sid had to go away for a while. The reason he's a garbage man is because, with all the medication he's been taking since he (from everyone else's perspective) went bibbledy, that's the only job he can hold down. In a more realistic setting, Sid would probably have turned to drugs after such a traumatizing experience. (It kind of makes you wonder what would have become of him had he never snapped...)
• Goodness me, surely ten years is enough time to get over seeing toys come alive? He does have a life outside of toys, after all. What interests me more is what happened to his toys after the first film, now that Sid's grown up like Andy.
  • Don't be a ridiculous. It's actually pretty unrealistic for him to have gotten over the realization of toys - inanimate objects - possessing sentience.
  • Don't be a ridiculous what? I meant, the fright of seeing toys come alive would mean at most that he'd become toy-phobic, for the same reason that being shocked by an unexpected and unpleasant experience with a spider would make someone arachnophobic. Seriously, his cameo suggests little more than he's a garbage man who likes music. After that, fan speculation or Word of God. But if you want to be realistic, even if he was still scared witless by toys, it doesn't follow that he must end up as a "total basketcase" or land in a psychiatric ward, for the same reason arachnophobes don't become "total basketcases" or land in psychiatric wards.
    • There's kind of a big difference between seeing a spider and seeing toys come to life. TOYS CAN'T COME TO LIFE!
    • Although, Sid winding up a garbageman averts a more ominous Fridge Horror outcome. How about, after the events of the 1st movie, Sid apologizes to his toys, makes peace with their sentience... and then allies with them for his gain. They're the perfect spies, able to both gather information and commit sabotage, yet they can hide in plain sight or even, as Sid demonstrated, be 'modified' for specific tasks. They could infiltrate banks and businesses, get safe combinations and computer passwords, you name it. With an army of sentient toys at my command, I'd rule the world. Maybe that's the reason the toys maintain the charade.
      • In the same movie, Woody mentions that they would have to break "rules" in order to be able to psychologically scar Sid for the rest of his life. They were never mentioned again, however, as far as I know.
    • It's not that unrealistic at all. Okay, yes, 'toys coming to life' isn't something you'd really forget, but on the other hand, it was presumably a one-time thing, he was only a kid when it happened and people can actually be fairly psychologically resilient. At the very least, people are very good at denial and retroactively rewriting their memories (it's why you might have a completely different recollection of the same event to someone else) -- presumably, Sid plenty of time listening to people telling him that it couldn't possibly have happened, it was probably just his imagination playing tricks on or something, and if it never happened again then he'd eventually just come to believe it. That's not to say it wouldn't have given him some issues -- he probably spent plenty of time afterwards flinching away from toys and may have had to speak to a therapist or a counsellor or something (although let's face it, it's not hard to imagine Sid as being a kid who'd need some kind of therapy at some point, so it could have even helped him in the long run), but equally it's not necessarily the case that this one incident in his childhood would reduce him to a complete psychological wreck.

Why exactly does the Daycare even have a Buzz Lightyear instruction manual? Are we to assume that a Brand New in package Lightyear was actually donated before? Because, in that sense, why would none of the other daycare toys draw attention to this, even Chatter Telephone. They could have at least said something like "Remember the last time a Lightyear arrived at Sunnyside?".

• I think the implication is that there was a Buzz at Sunnyside, but he didn't survive.
• Then in that sense why haven't any of the other toys made reference to this. Besides Lotso, it seems like they didn't even know his name. And what about Chatter Phone? He's obviously been there longer than anyone, why didn't he draw attention to this?
  • Buzz was an extremely popular toy for a while. It's possible one of the older children had a Buzz in their possession. They may have brought (and subsequently lost) the instruction manual. Lotso's management system being complex and highly organized, their gang could have scavenged the manual for potential use later. The manual could also have arrived tucked in with a box of other donated toys- how many times do people carelessly toss manuals for things out along with other 'junk', especially if the original toy or item is lost?
• I assumed that one of the Bookworm's duties was to collect manuals for Lotso. Compare the large number of books the Bookworm possesses to the probability of an instruction manual being donated with old, unwanted toys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Complete Monster, and Moral Event Horizon aside, I'm still really really angry about this. WHY DIDN'T LOTSO JUST PUSH THAT BUTTON?! I mean geez, Woody and Buzz almost die trying to save his pathetic existence and this is how he repays them? What is he still mad about? What motives do you have to do this?!

• No motive outside of sheer spite.
• Lotso not pushing the button really bothered this troper too. Call me a sap but I was really hoping Lotso would make a Heel Face Turn in the end. And for some reason, even after crossing the Moral Event Horizon, I still felt sorry for him. But in a "you threw away your chance at redemption" sort of way.
• Motive: These toys took away all his control at Sunnyside; when he had them at his mercy, he regained his control over them at least and took the perfect opportunity for revenge. Why this works better for the story than a Heel Face Turn: A) He's a villain. Not only is he a Complete Monster but Woody's Foil; he turned his back on his owner out of jealousy when he lost the spotlight instead of learning to share it. Thus, he shows no mercy in the same situation where Woody did. I would have been disappointed if he made an instant Heel Face Turn just because the heroes showed him kindness. In fact, the only Pixar Big Bad so far to Heel Face Turn has been Anton Ego in Ratatouille, so Lotso taking the ingrates' route and getting his karmic retribution is more in line with Pixar tradition. B) ^[1] Clearly, not pushing the button evoked more Emotional Torque from the audience than pushing the button would have. Perfectly-set-up-but-averted-at-the-last-minute Heel Face Turns seem to do that.
• After giving it more thought I now agree. Lotso leaving the other toys for dead despite them saving him really did make sense. His bitter, frozen heart was just beyond repair.
• Also, he is a bear.
• Oh yes, that too. And also maybe by the time he reached that button he suddenly remembered that it was because of Woody that he was at the dump in the first place.
• Also, don't forget that Lotso is a bitter and twisted nihilist who shows active hostility to any toy who still shows affection for their former owners. Destroying Woody and his friends is a destruction of the mentality that Lotso hates. Remember, he says "Where's your boy now?" before abandoning them - he's trying to prove that his mentality is right, and they will suffer for being wrong.
  • That was my thought, as well. To save the toys, he would have had to admit to himself that they were worth saving, which would have contradicted his whole "we're all just trash" worldview and possibly kicked him into a mental breakdown.
• Redemption is not for everyone.
  • This Troper must respectfully disagree on the grounds that, Pixar having pulled the exact same plot "twist" in the previous movie, Lotso's betrayal just seemed like more of the same. Unlike Stinky Pete, Lotso at least knew what it was like to be loved and played with, so he could conceivably understand why Woody and the others were so desperate to get back to their owner; Pete, having never left his box, would have no such understanding. Making Lotso a Complete Monster just felt like a bad move.
    • Maybe, but that doesn't really address the above point -- sometimes people just can't and won't be redeemed. Lotso is just too consumed by bitterness to change. In fact, his experiences would naturally lead to him being worse than the Prospector. Stinky Pete, as you say, never experienced being loved by a child and so had no idea what he was denying the others of; it's entirely possible that after being 'adopted' by Bonnie the Artist, he might have discovered for himself what it was like to experience this and changed his ways. Lotso, on the other hand, had had this, then had it ripped from him and denied to him, and then had years to let that wound fester. It's not surprising that he would easily allow bitterness to consume him.
  • To be fair, what it felt like to me was that Lotso must have thought, "If Andy doesn't care about you anymore, do you have any reason to live?" At the same time, what happened in his past must have struck him or something at that point-in a nutshell, "I had to suffer a tragic past, and now you're gonna suffer it too". Still a horror, though. But what I want to know is why Woody, Buzz or someone else didn't try to get to the ladder and press the button instead?
    • When I first saw Lotso going for the ladder I already knew it wasn't gonna save them so I was wondering why they didn't push it.I then realized that since they helped him up they didn't go up themselves, and by the time they realized Lotso wasn't going to push the botton they were too far away from the ladder and couldn't reach it.
• Word of God is that the writers had to turn Lotso's evil Up to Eleven because some kids from early test screenings were still sympathetic towards him as The Woobie.

Realized there will be a huge case of it just bugs me in real life. After the movie, no one will want to buy a Lotso bear doll, because they will all know he's the villain. This may affect his meet and greet at Disney World because all the kids will think he'll hug them and then throw them into a incinerator.

• Then again, the fact that they sell a literal "Lots-O-Huggin' Bear" toy can be viewed as part of a downright brilliant marketing scheme. This Troper didn't see any of the full trailers, but nothing he saw spoiled the fact that Lotso is a Complete Monster. Some things even made it seem like he was a good guy. Having the bear as a toy would actually be brilliant, as anyone who got the toy before seeing the movie would be instantly able to relate it to the movie itself in the rather drastic twist that Lotso IS a Complete Monster. Though the fact that they're going to have someone in a Lotso suit AT DISNEYWORLD is just plain and simple IDIOCY.
• This troper guessed that Lotso would be the villain based on the trailer, but was still completely taken with the doll of him. After seeing the movie, I sort of want him more. Seeing the kids hugging him in the movie and in the fake 80s ad - with him smiling over their shoulders - made me want to hug one of my own. And now we know he gets really attached to his owners!
• That's nothing too new for Disney World. I don't know if they still have him or not, but Claude Frollo has been a meet and greet character. Yes kiddies, get an autograph from the guy who tried to burn a family alive in their house, and sang a lovely song about how he wants to rape and murder the female lead! Though in all fairness, I highly doubt Frollo has given any hugs.
  • This troper can attest that they had Frollo wandering the park as late as 2004. I have a picture with him, and think I can explain why he's a viable park character. I hadn't seen the movie in years (Hunchback was never one of my favourites growing up, though it is now; too cerebral for a four-year-old, do you think?) but the villains have been my favourite since a Disney on Ice show where they got there own feature turned out to be cool rather than terrifying as I expected, and my dad had been comparing every Disney Villain to Frollo for years; to him, Frollo was the be-all and end-all of Disney evil (he often says that Frollo is not his favourite villain, but he is definitely the most evil). When I pointed out to him that Frollo was among the group of characters at a Villain-themed meet-and-greet, he basically dragged me over to take a picture. The line for him was short, but there is obviously a group of people (my dad and myself included) who think it is ridiculously cool to have you picture taken with the meanest sonovabitch to ever come out of a Disney movie.
  • Likewise, Jaffar from the Aladdin series was at Disneyland during the late 1990s/early 2000s. He was pretty popular with the kids, too.
    • Jaffar at least had style. And a cool goatee.
• TV shows make dolls and figures of their villains as well as their heroes all the time. What makes this one any different?
• True story my niece wanted a lotso doll before the movie, and my sister said lets watch the movie first, after the movie she was ummm..., long story short Lotso isn't coming home with them, that and on a sidenote the whole incinerator scene scared her.
• Well, if the Lotso meet and greet thing fails, they could always replace him with one of Bonnie's friendly toys; Mr. Pricklepants or Dolly would be ideal (as in, easy to make a costume for).
• The Mr. Pricklepants idea is BRILLIANT...Who WOULDN'T want to get their picture taken with a lovably stodgy method-acting hedgehog? Or how about Barbie and Ken? They seem to be getting the Ensemble Darkhorse treatment as of late...
• The character is evil, but the Real Life toy is beyond adorable. Potentially, if one hadn't seen the film, they could instantly fall in love with the bright pink strawberry scented plush.
• There's something on the Main Page for this movie along the lines of "kids would buy Lotso bears so they can love him and treat him well so he DOESN'T become a Complete Monster.
  • It helps that many of the phrases the toy says are remarkably depressing, sounding like if he isn't constantly hugged and reassured that he's loved, he'll spiral down into despair and snap.
  • Alternately: people who were so taken in by his tragic backstory that they'll buy one and treat him well in the thoughts that "You acted like a Complete Monster who crossed the Moral Event Horizon, but there's still some good in you and all you wanted was to be loved, so I'll give that to you."
  • I want to meet him! I wonder if he smells like strawberries. I also bought the doll, and LOVE it! Yum, the scent! Also, in regards to the above troper, I also love Frollo and wish I could hug him! Villians deserve love too.
• Also keep in mind, abiding by the outtakes, most Pixar villains are suggested to be a case of Mean Character, Nice Actor (perhaps how they got away with all those action figures and talking room guards of fellow Complete Monster Hopper, who turned out to be a rather sensitive soul offstage).
• This troper bought his girlfriend a Lotso bear as a cheer up gift after she had her wisdom teeth out. He had also briefly forgotten his role in the movie. Needless to say, she was a little offended.

Where the %#$# is Bo Peep? I know that her and Wheezy's absence is meant to highlight the film's themes, but considering how important she was to Woody in the previous installments, cutting her out and giving her nothing more than a mere (and very brief) mention seemed unusually cynical on Pixar's part.

• Think about the plot of the film. First of all, she was Molly's lamp, and Molly was a baby in the first films. She is not anymore, and so its more than understandable that Mrs. Davis would give away her last child's baby things. Second of all, Bo is a porcelain figure. There is no way she would be donated to the day care, and most of the actions that the toys do in the movie (breaking out, being locked up, the incinerator stuff) would break her in two seconds. She could either be put on a bus or die. Which do you think Pixar would choose?
  • Andy's mom was probably well aware that Andy played with Bo Peep, especially considering she'd recorded Andy with several toys including Bo Peep during a movie night. Bo Peep could've easily been written as being stuffed in the attic for a while at least until the end, no less than any of her other appearances. It's not as though it'd be completely out of character for Andy's mom to take an old lamp in the attic for safekeeping, considering Andy's kept all his other toys.
• It's implied that Bo Peep, Wheezy and Etch-A-Sketch (and possibly even RC) were sold at garage sales. You can probably fanwank that Andy's mother put Bo Peep in a box with all of Molly's baby toys and put them in the attic, or she sold it to another kid in the neighborhood. Either way, it's doubtful that Bo Peep would have survived the events of the third film if she was still around.
• Bo Peep is gone because Pixar loves breaking our hearts, and there are few more heartbreaking ways to start a movie than by revealing the hero has lost his true love.
• What makes you think Andy would possibly want to keep his baby sister's Little Bo Peep lamp with him forever after he passed the age of like, six?
  • What makes you think he wouldn't? In his imagination, she's Woody's Love interest. And is not like Jessie is much of a common toy for boys either.
• I read a fanfiction once that had The Frederickson's being given all of Molly's old stuff when they thought they were going to have a baby, and then Bo putting put in the attic after their miscarriage. Granted, it was only a fanfiction, but seeings how an Easter Egg gives Andy a post card from aforementioned Frederickson's, it's something to think about...
• Bo was porceline, she would've broken during any part of their adventures. I'd rather believe she was given away than smashed in a teenage boys room.
• She is a porcelain ornament. It's highly possible that in a household wth two children she broke.

If Bo was sold in a yard sale, why wouldn't Woody have gone to save her, like he did with Wheezy in the second movie? (And at least Pixar didn't actually show what happened to Bo. This troper would have bawled her eyes out.)

• As we were shown in 1 and 2, Andy used to take Woody to some places, including Pizza Planet and cowboy camp. It's entirely possible he wasn't able to save her because he wasn't at home (which would make it even MORE of a Tear Jerker, as he would feel guilty of "not being there for her" :'( )
• Even if he was around to make a rescue attempt, not all rescues succeed, sadly.
• As far as the real reason, a major part of the plot is Woody going off with Andy to college. It's hard enough for him leaving his "family' of toys- it would be harder with a "girlfriend" in the mix. I think Pixar probably just thought that would throw off the story.
• Wheezy was a special situation, in that it was Andy's mom who put him in the garage sale; Andy didn't want to sell him, and didn't even know Wheezy was in the room. After the rescue, so long as they kept Wheezy from mom's eyes, no one would be the wiser (or that would have been Woody's thinking at the time - was it Andy's mom who eventually does get his voice box replaced by the end of the movie? If so, that leads to another batch of questions). Of course, Andy probably threw out Bo, Etch, and others himself, which means it would have been basically impossible to save them and then hide them from Andy forever.
  • It was Mr. Shark who found an extra squeaker for Wheezy.
• Bo Peep is probably too heavy for Woody to just pick up and run back into the house with. Also, as the years went by, the toys spent a lot more time in that chest. They couldn't keep track of what was going on as easily, and might not have known until it was too late.

Why do some of the toys such as the monkey and Bullseye only communicate with noises of their respective animal (or Big Baby who only speaks in baby noises) while other toys like Slinky Dog and Hamm talk with human voices?

• Perhaps if a toy has the ability to make sounds as part of its function, it's stuck with that voice forever? It's possible the monkey and Big Baby have voice boxes that make those sounds. I don't think Bullseye has a pullstring, but he's probably stuck that way because he's based on a TV show character who never talked. Slinky dogs and piggy banks are different because they don't make noises and aren't based on specific characters.
  • I'm pretty sure Stinky Pete was a talking toy, but his "real" voice was nothing like his character's.
    • But it was still the same person's voice, just a different tone.
• Disproved with Chatter Phone from the third movie. He has a voice, even though the toy doesn't have one.
• That's not what I said. Only toys that already have voices are stuck with them. Silent toys can have whatever voices they want.
• Big hole in that reasoning: Woody can say things that aren't in his voicebox. Buzz can also say things that aren't in his voice chip, though it does change to Spanish Tim Allen if he is reset to another language.
• The person is saying that the toy's voice and primary language are based on the recordings on their voice box and not that their vocabulary can only consist of the recordings. The monkey can only speak like a monkey because its voice box determines that it is only able to speak like a monkey.
• If we compile a list of facts, then maybe we can figure out the answer!
  • Hamm, Slinky, Rex, Trixie, Lenny the Binoculars, the Aliens, Wheezy, Janie, the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Big Baby, Twitch, Chunk, Stretch, Sparks, the Bookworm, Mr. Pricklepants, Buttercup, Dolly, the Peas, and [the thing with three animals that pop up when you hit their respective buttons] all seem at least somewhat capable of speech.
  • Bullseye, RC, Etch, Mike, the Troikas, Troll, Bo's Sheep, the Barrel Monkeys, all of Sid's toys, the Cymbal Monkey, Totoro, and real animals seem incapable of speech.
• Perhaps anything with a character has that character's voice (with all its freedoms and limitations, compare Buzz and Woody with their voice boxes, and Barbie without one, to Big Baby), anything with a voice box and no mouth or character can speak only using their voice box (see Mr. Spell And Say), anything with a mouth and no character or voice box can speak freely (Wheezy, Slink, Rex, Peep), and anything with no mouth, no character, and no voice box is limited to what sounds they can physically produce (RC, that squeaky doughnut-pyramid toy).

Although the ending is happy (or bittersweet, depending on your view), it's hard to reconcile the fact that the toys at Sunnyside are still accomplices to some very bad deeds. Let's set aside the fact that most (if not all) of the numerous toys in the Caterpillar Room were accomplices to Lotso's regime (even though they outnumbered him and his cronies), and could have taken over/subdued them by force, but simply kept their mouths shut and went along with things. Lotso's posse (including Twitch, Stretch, etc.) get away with their actions at the end of the film just because their leader has gone. What's to stop them from taking over Sunnyside while Barbie and Ken run it? After all, they were ready to throw Woody, Buzz and the others into the trash as soon as they caught them. There's no reason to believe that they would suddenly change their ways just because their leader was gone.

• This Troper believes that they started to change their ways when Lotso went on his rant on how all toys are trash. You could see Twitch and Sparks being taken aback by it.
• Also, they would be far from the first innocents to be persuaded to do horrible things by a charismatic dictator bribing them with delegated power. It’s pretty clear that the only reason a lot of them obeyed is fear that if they personally didn't obey, the others who did would turn on them. By keeping everyone suspicious of everyone else, and keeping a perfect watch, the majority could be kept loyal out of fear. With the dictator gone, no doubt many of the soldier-types (the trucks) will feel free to Heel Face Turn. The Heel Face Turn of The Brute baby doll certainly helps.
• Not to mention that some of those other toys may have been brainwashed/reset like Buzz was.
• Particularly jarring is the scene where they're gambling inside the vending machine and dismissing the new toys as 'land fill', 'toddler fodder', and 'disposable'. Stretch even laughs about it. Hardly evidence of good guys acting out of fear of Lotso.
  • Perhaps they had become desensitised to it over time, but Lotso's hate-filled speech and snap towards Big Baby made them realise the error of their ways in terms of the way they thought of new toys?

Andy's family moved to a new neighborhood at the end of the first movie. They left Sid behind at the end of the first movie. How the HECK can he have a cameo as a garbage man in the third?

• Same town, right? The garbageman probably goes to lots of neighborhoods.
• The Tri-County Dump serves a large area just like the Tri-County International Airport.
• Sid is well past twenty now. By chance he moved to the same town Andy did after he moved out of his parents' house.

Why did everyone refuse to believe Woody's claims that Andy didn't intend to put them in the trash? Potato Head implies Woody's lying just because he gets to go to college, but convincing them they were meant for the attic wouldn't affect him one way or the other. The fact that Woody doesn't just abandon them immediately to go wait in the "COLLEGE" box, but rather joins them on their way to Sunnyside, proves he's telling the truth and only trying to help them.

• This troper was bothered by this too at first. However, you can argue that the three most disbelieving, Jessie, Mr. Potato Head and Buzz had their own reasons. Jessie still has painful memories from her experience with Emily and would not easily be willing to give Andy the benefit of the doubt. Potato Head has always been the most pessimistic and cynical of the group. Buzz is likely feeling hurt over Woody being chosen to go to college over him.
• Plus Mrs. Potato-head was extremely offended by the "junk" remark.
• I got the impression, not that they assumed Woody was lying, but that they just assumed he was wrong. They figured he must have been mistaken about believing Andy intended to put them in the attic.
• This troper agrees with the troper who posted this entry. Haven't the toys already learned their lesson about not believing Woody in Toy Story? Apparently not.
  • I took it as showing how they'd changed in the decade, or however long it had been, since Andy stopped playing with them. In the first movie they learned to trust Woody, and in the second movie went to save him, but over time they had probably become bitter due to being neglected, and probably fed up with Woody's attempts to get Andy to play with them, and his inability to move on, when the rest of them knew Andy was done with them.
• I don't think it was about whether or not Woody was right, it was about whether or not it mattered. Why should they go up to the attic when they can be played with by all of the kids at the daycare? Back before they realized it wasn't a good thing.
• It's a very different situation altogether, because this time around nobody is questioning Woody's motives -- seems to me they just think he's in denial. After all, over the years most of the other toys have been given, sold or thrown away, and now, the only one Andy is deliberately choosing to take with him is Woody. It's not such a far a stretch that Woody might just be fooling himself into thinking that Andy couldn't possibly be throwing his friends away.
• They're also feeling pretty insecure by that point. First off, Andy hasn't played with them in years, suggesting that he's not that interested in them. Moments before, he'd referred to them as 'junk' -- for a loyal toy, that has to smart. And then he puts them in a trash bag and they end up on the kerb. Not hard to leap to a particular conclusion there. Yeah, Woody insists that Andy was putting them in the attic and it's a mix-up, but then Woody's always been extra-loyal to Andy, and he was insisting that Andy was going to take care of them and look what happened. In that mindset, they'd be quite likely to assume the worst of Andy. As others have said, it doesn't seem like they thought Woody was lying, though -- just that he was in denial.

Why didn't any of the adults working the Caterpillar Room notice Andy's toys were clearly not age-appropriate? Mr. and Mrs. Potato alone represent a serious choking hazard and most of the other toys were breakable plastic that could harm minors. There was no way Lotso could enforce keeping them in the toddlers' room.

• We only saw two women at the daycare, so theoretically, each group of kids has only one worker watching them. Since the adults never placed Andy's toys in the Caterpillar Room themselves, you could argue they just didn't notice while having to watch that many kids. However, the toys were there for two days, so credibility is still stretched that they wouldn't notice the Potato Heads by then.
• Well, considering that there does only seem to be two adults at the daycare, it's probably fair to assume that the people who run Sunnyside are notoriously incompetent anyway.
• There are at least six adults at Sunnyside: Bonnie's mom (receptionist), the janitor, Butterfly room teacher, Caterpillar room teacher, possibly someone in charge of the security room (or not, considering it's empty at night), and maybe one more that was meeting in the hall.
• EXACTLY! What kind of daycare has adults who just seem to sit back and read a newspaper while all hell breaks loose with the children? Couldn't they at least tell the kids not to destroy the relatively few toys that they have been given? No wonder they keep asking for new donations!
  • Have you ever tried telling a hyperactive toddler to play gently with his or her toys? Not the easiest thing to do.
• Yeah, caregivers never allow kids to run wild and trash the place while they sit in another room and do nothing as long as the building's not burning down.
  • They don't if they don't want to get sued. Like the above troper said, the Potato-Heads are choking hazards and having dead kids would have the place shut down.
• We only see relatively brief glimpses of playtime. It's quite possible that the caretakers did notice the Potato Heads at least and intervened to get them out of there, only for Lotso and his goons to throw them back in as soon as the humans were no longer around. If the adults saw them again, they'd just assume that a kid had managed to find them and bring them back. Alternatively, Willing Suspension of Disbelief might apply here.
• IIRC, the director states pretty explicitly on the commentary that there's no way there would be so little supervision for the kids in real life, but for the sake of the story, they decided to fudge it.
• This is a universe with living toys. What makes you think a living toy would allow itself to be a hazard? Since the toys themselves are taking care to avoid harming the children, daycare regulations are far looser than in reality.

During the escape scene: if Lotso was seen sleeping inside the room, and the doors to the rooms are locked every night, how was he able to stop Woody and his friends at the dumpster? Even if he somehow made it out of the room there's no way he could've gotten there before them.

• Lotso and his friends seem to be able to unlock and lock doors themselves, which is how they were seen walking the halls on the way to their gambling night. Maybe they get the keys from the monkey. And they all ride around on that toy dump truck, so they could have gotten there fairly quickly.
• I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Lotso's gang had somehow got their own set of keys for the entire building.
• They could use the suspended ceiling, just like Woody did. The escapees' movements were double-burdened by avoiding detection by Lotso's gang.

In the third movie, Woody at one point pushes around a wooden chair. How does he do that? He doesn't weigh enough to have sufficient traction to budge that thing.

• Maybe the chair has some "easy-glide pads" attached to the bottom of its legs. Most hardware stores sell them.
  • The chair was actually plastic. The kind that come with the child table sets. Ex: here ^{[dead link]}

How does the daycare surveillance system work? Why isn't there a human guard monitoring the system? Does it record the toys running around every night? What about during the day when they move around at recess? Does the monkey replace the security tapes?

• The security system could be for vandalism monitoring in the evenings. A local school installed a similar system after several graffiti incidents.
  • Does that mean that Lotso and the rest killed the night guard? What Bugs me about those scenes is that apparently no one in the neighborhood noticed the lights at night... or the monkey screeches...
  • A daycare probably wouldn't bother with a full-time night guard; it'd be sufficient to review the tapes the next day after an incident.
  • THAT JUST RAISES FURTHER QUESTIONS! For starters, if they can just review the tapes, then they would easily see the toys and their shenanigans. If the monkey erases the tape each consecutive day, then someone's going to get suspicious. It's easier to just say that the security cameras are used during the day-time, and (supposed to be) switched off at night.
    • Doesn't explain why they are night-vision capable cameras. That's an expensive upgrade for surveillance gear, and one a daycare wouldn't spring for if it didn't have to. WMG: They didn't order night-vision cameras, but Lotso got ahold of the purchase form and modified it so they did. By the time anyone noticed, it would have cost more to send them back and redo the installation.
      • Or they were a donation
  • Maybe toys are like vampires and don't show up on film when they're alive - except to other toys. Would also explain why the toys were able to use the camera to fend off the Prospector at the end of 2 without the problem of, you know, providing photographic evidence that toys are alive.
    • Or they just don't bother to check the tapes; it's a daycare centre, not a bank or anything, so as long as there's no obvious signs of a break-in why would they bother? The cameras are probably just intended as a deterrent anyway.
• Guys, there's an easier explanation here. The daycare people installed a camera system and hired a security guy to watch the cameras. Then they had budget problems so the security guy got laid off. (Obviously he'd be the first to go, because who really needs all that surveillance for an empty daycare center in the middle of the night? They bought way too much security in the first place.) Although the security guy was laid off, all the equipment is still there. So Lotso and his cohorts managed to turn it all on again For the Evulz. As far as the humans are concerned, nobody ever uses the cameras and there are no tapes to check.
  • It's also possible that the building was originally built for other purposes, and later was turned into a daycare. The cameras were left but they don't use them.

When Buzz first meets Woody, fresh out of the box, he is initially wary of him until he discovers that Woody is a sheriff. And Woody is a fellow "human." In Toy Story 3, Buzz's mind is reverted back to its "fresh out of the box" state. Why does Buzz immediately begin listening to the giant pink bear, whose right-hand minions are a mutant insect-man and a rock monster?

• Star Command's a diverse group. All Lotso had to say was that he was high-up in the group to get Buzz to listen.
• The greatest Space Ranger ever, the universe's number one defense against Emperor Zurg, gets tricked that easily? Not to mention what a stickler for protocol Buzz is - Wouldn't he ask for some Star Command ID or something?
  • Given that they have spare parts and manuals for practically everything, Lotso probably has just that. Wouldn't be that surprising if they made Star Command ID Badges.
• Maybe he'd dealt with a Buzz Lightyear before, and knew just what to tell him.
  • Which would explain why they had an instruction manual lying around.
• Here's what really bugged this troper about "Bad Buzz." Rex has obviously been playing the Buzz Lightyear videogame for an incredibly long time, as referenced back in 2. And even if he forgot some of the nuances of the game, he still knew Buzz's world even more then Buzz himself did (as stated by Buzz). So, in that case, why didn't Rex find a way to bring deluded Buzz back to their side? Couldn't he just say he's a double agent working against Zurg and that in fact Lotso is evil?
  • No offense to Rex, but he tends to act pretty childish and/or cowardly. It's simply not in his nature to come up with a plan like that.
  • He might not, but Woody definitely could have.
    • Woody was away for most of the time when all of this was going down.
  • Lotso specifically warned Buzz that the prisoners might try to trick him, and as discussed above, Lotso probably knew just the right tricks to get Buzz to trust him over the talking dinosaur.

Lotso:Remember, they'll say anything to make you doubt yourself.

Does anyone else find it odd that Andy would get rid of Bo but keep the Little Green Men?

• What do you think a boy would rather keep with him as he grows up? Soldier figurines, or his baby sister's Little Bo Peep lamp?
  • The martians, which is what the JBM is about. And he seemed to "play" more with Bo Peep than with the soldiers.
• You seem to forget that most of the Little Green Men are gone. There are only three of them left by the third film. The rest have all been (presumably) thrown out or damaged beyond repair. It might not have been Andy's call to get rid of Bo. The assumption is that she was sold at a garage sale by Andy's mother.
  • I think you're confusing the Little Green Men with the Army Men.
  • There were only three aliens to begin with. They came from the Pizza Planet truck in Toy Story 2.
  • The Little Green Men are cheap squeaky toys, a dime a dozen and impossible to get anything for if you try and sell 'em, plus they're durable and will last a while even if you store them poorly. Bo was porcelain, and as such worth something to sell, and could have easily been broken if stored wrong, thus giving a reason to sell before she broke sitting in the toy chest.
• Bo Peep technically wasn't Andy's. She was Molly's. It's entirely possible that she was sold at a garage sale when the kids were at camp, like almost happened to Wheezie. NO SHE WAS NOT BROKE, SHE IS HAPPY AT HER NEW PLACE. Thank you.

It's been, what, around 10 years since the events of Toy Story 2? Has Buzz ever worked up the courage to ask Jessie out during these years?

• Although he's not in Space Ranger mode, his personality is still of the more stoic, orderly soldier kind. Romance is just awkward for him, as it is for most of us.
• I'm guessing it was a "one step forward, two steps back" sort of thing. We've seen TV shows draw out the UST for ridiculously long periods of time; there could have been something like that going on.
• They are children's toys... Their idea of romance might be just flirting and liking each other "that way."
• What evidence was there that he hadn't "asked her out" (meaning, that they were officially together)? We didn't see them make out or anything before leaving Andy's house, but there's still no extreme awkwardness, no shyness, no occurrences of Cannot Spit It Out between them.
  • What movie were you watching? That last sentence basically describes all of Buzz and Jessie's interaction before he gets reset.
  • Well...on Buzz's side at least. Jessie seems perfectly confident with it. I expect the first replier is right, that Jessie knows he likes her and likes him, but he just isn't the type to know how to make it "official."
  • Which would explain why she was thrilled at discovering Buzz's "Spanish mode".
• They're toys. They live forever. Sure, when it comes to human owners, there's a ticking clock, but otherwise, there's no real urgency to settle down romantically. Heck, even if you argued that the threat of Andy suddenly deciding to donate or throw away a toy may be incentive for Buzz to take action, maybe Buzz looked at the heartbreak Woody felt when Bo left and decided he didn't want to make a commitment.
  • At the beginning, they did seem to act more like exes than a pair with UST.
• Also, in the commentary, Lee Unkritch said he didn't want the audience feel like they've missed much with the main characters.

The whole "daycare is prison" scenario bugs me. Are we really to believe that it's impossible to get out? First off, to escape the daycare, how come more toys didn't just try leaving, like Woody did, during the daytime? The defenses are lowered, all they have to avoid are the children, who are at recess for a good period, and that monkey isn't the one monitoring the security cameras. Daytime would seem like the perfect time for a toy to escape. They could even stage a distraction and then escape once the kids don't notice them. Lotso and his henchmen would be preoccupied with the bigger kid's playtime. Secondly, why haven't any toys tried sneaking into kid's backpacks and leaving? They wouldn't have to go home with them, they could just run away as soon as they got out of the daycare. And for that matter, if the toys hate being abused by those small children, why don't they tell them off? The kids would obviously freak out, drop the toy, and leave them alone and toys have no qualms against doing this (they did it to Sid).

• The older children maybe... the toddlers probably would shrug it and keep playing violently with them.
• Dude, I'm pretty sure that if a toy got up, pushed the kid's hand aside and started scolding them for handling them wrong, they'd freak out. Little kids get frightened easily at things like this, especially if they aren't expecting that to happen.
  • Anyone that has ever seen a toddler interacting with a little kitten disagrees with you.
  • Maybe toys physically can't move when there's people around, unless they seriously concentrate on in and plan it beforehand.
• Woody managed to get out because he got lucky, Bonnie's mom came into the room, allowing him to leave. At all other points, the doors and windows are locked, making it near impossible for toys to leave. As for stowing away, they couldn't leave outside without being seen, and once they got home their parents would just assume the kids took them from Sunnyside and return them, leaving them right back in Lotso's clutches.
  • The OP mentions this, quite correctly; the toys don't have to go all the way to the kids' houses, just make it out the front door. Once they're in the car, they sneak out of the backpack and hide under the seat or something and slip out of the car when the opportunity presents itself. It would be risky, but man, considering the alternative...
• Dude, it's the same reason why most people don't escape from crappy countries. They figured if they keep their head down and not cause any trouble, they won't have anything to fear. Plus, these toys are in a place where they get played with every day (and the ones in the butterfly room are especially well off). They probably see any of Lotso's draconian rules as a necessary evil they're willing to put up with just so they can stay in a semi-comfortable existence. Plus, if they leave, they have no guarantee they won't be destroyed, tossed in the garbage, etc. A lot of people convince themselves it's better to stick with the devil they know then the one they don't.
  • Tl;dr version: it's better to stay in a place run by a mostly benevolent dictator where you get to regularly enjoy your primary function (being played with) then it is to sneak out and face isolation or destruction, the equivalents of Hell for a toy.
• Well, the toys played with by the older kids seem happy enough. It's the toddler-room toys that are most likely to want to escape, but they're also probably bigger and bulkier toys (like Chatter Phone) and wouldn't be able to sneak into a backpack or slink around corners.

Though it's never said where Andy is going to college, even if its somewhere more than a few states away, why does he have to pack up his entire room? Will he not be coming back for winter or summer breaks at all? Dorms all small, who takes most of their whole room to college? I know it had to happen in order to drive the plot, but it did make me wonder.

• Only guess I can think of is that he isn't taking the whole room with him- but his parents want to use the space for something else, and as such want to move the stuff he isn't using into the attic.
• Its mentioned by his sister Molly that it will become hers after Andy leaves, so basically he's storing his stuff in the attic so Molly could have the room.
  • Wasn't that more of a jokey thing though, something she was bugging him about but he kept refusing?
• He wasn't taking his whole room to college -- that's why his mom was so anxious to separate the stuff he was taking, the stuff he was throwing out, and the stuff they would store in the attic.
  • But even so, the question still stands why he needed the whole room cleared out in the first place. Where's he gonna stay during breaks?
    • In Molly's room, obviously. That's what my friend did when she went off to college, she and her sister traded rooms, as the older sister had the bigger room.
      • I can do you one better: This Troper himself is currently on summer break and is sleeping in what was his sister's room; they switched the rooms when he left.
        • Yeah, when my brother's back from Uni he sleeps on a futon in our spare room which we use for storage. It makes more sense for Andy to pack up his room, have his sister or mother move into it since they're going to be there all year round, and have Andy take the only spare room for the few weeks he's home. It's just the fairer thing to do. It'd be pretty sucky for Molly to be stuck in what looks like a tiny room, when there's a perfectly good room that is going to be vacant like 60% of the year.

Other small niggling thing bugging me: Is the Barbie of the third movie really the first Barbie the daycare has ever gotten, and that Ken would ever have met?

• Evidently. Maybe some have come in the past, and Lotso eliminated them to keep Ken loyal? The one from the third movie was from a group that was too proactive and quick with introductions for her to be eliminated without his knowledge, after all- not all toys may have moved that fast.
• It's entirely possible Ken is also relatively new to the daycare (the dream house and the clothes could have come before him) and Lotso only recruited him because he was "smart", and the people in charge of the daycare wouldn't put him with the toddlers. Remember that Andy's gang was still going to be classified before being put within the rooms, so it's also possible that Barbie’s go to an entirely different room altogether.
• Considering most girls who outgrow their Barbies don't donate them (we dismember and/or burn them), she very well could be the first one the daycare received since Ken arrived.
  • Not everyone who outgrows their Barbies suddenly hates them with a passion like that.
  • It's not about hate; it's a "rite of passage."
• Alternatively, maybe there have been other Barbies, but he falls in love with them every time, and once they're gone, he barely remembers.
• Word of God says yes; a Ken who had never encountered a Barbie was the entire concept of his character.
  • Not completely unheard of. This troper had Ken and all of Barbie's sisters growing up, but was never allowed an actual Barbie. My Ken dated Happy to be Me Dolls instead.

This is admittedly a silly little nitpick, but did anyone else think it was weird that, when recounting all the friends they'd lost over the years, Woody mentions Etch? Bo and Weezy make sense, but the Etch-A-Sketch? Why not Lenny (who actually had a name and dialogue) or RC (who shared the big climactic chase scene in Toy Story with Woody and Buzz)?

• Even though he (he? she?) had no technical speaking lines, it was clear that Etch and Woody were friends, given their quick-draw showdown in the first movie. He also proved useful in advancing the plot in Part II, when he was able to make sketches of Al and the map to the toy store.
• Etch-A-Sketch is a very well known toy. Neither Lenny or RC are based on a familiar brand as far as I know. He was probably mentioned just because he was more memorable since people grew up with those toys.
• The way Rex timidly whispers "Bo Peep?" makes it pretty clear that all the other toys probably knew who was at the top of Woody's list of "friends we've lost along the way" in his mind, but couldn't bring himself to say it because it was too painful. Unsurprisingly, Woody probably couldn't bear to list aloud the toys they were closest to (read: the ones we got acquainted with the most as well).

Why does Woody's voice box suddenly have a new, never-before-heard phrase ("I'd like to join your posse, boys, but first I'm gonna sing a little song")? Not only does it ruin the consistency, but there's no reason for it. It's not like he says it again later for plot-related purposes.

• Maybe he regained a phrase from when his Pull string was caught on the tree branch before Bonnie rescued him, the string got pretty stretched out, that’s the best theory I've got.
  • I'll tell you why: we THE AUDIENCE just never heard it before! His voice box was able to say that since the first film. There simply wasn't a moment in either films where we heard him say that.
• Actually, that line came from a deleted scene from the first Toy Story so it's not a completely new phrase. We just haven't heard it in a film before.
• And to be fair, back in the first movie is shown that Woody can make his voice box say whatever he wants to say.
• Also, the first movie also has a voice clip that is never heard again, when Woody and Buzz try to sneak by Sid's dog.

"Yee-hah! Giddy-up, we got to get this wagon train a'movin'!"

• Also Buzz had a voice clip that is only heard in the first film, he says it twice (if you don't count him saying it in the commercial), he says "There's a secret mission in uncharted space! (Let's go!)"

If the monkey's job is to watch all of Sunnyside at night through the video surveillance and then immediately report it to Lotso, why didn't he start the alarms as soon as Buzz escaped from the room in the beginning? Was he not there at the time? Why haven't more toys escaped during this time then? It makes no sense that he just didn’t care or that he told Lotso secretly, his job is to sound the alarms so that all of Lotso's gang knows.

• I think his job is specifically to alert them if they're getting too close to freedom. Buzz only made it to the hall, where there were still plenty of patrols to catch him. Notice that when potato head starts his distraction, the monkey pays closer attention, but doesn't alert to get buzz some help with the escapee.
• Plus, Buzz wasn't at that point trying to make a breakout; he was just trying to find his way to the other room.
• I'm pretty sure he must have sounded the alarm. How else did Big baby just happen to find Buzz and Lotso just happen to show up at the interrogation when Ken and the others obviously weren't expecting him?
  • Wait, wait, wait... That begs another question: ^[2]
• On a related note, why didn't they have check-ins for the monkey? You shouldn't leave the keystone of your security system unguarded. If someone gets to the monkey without the monkey noticing, that's a single gag and some tape or cotton batting and they've got practically free run of the facility. I was wondering all through the security explanation and subsequent escape why the monkey didn't go "clang, clang" with no screech (or something else recognizable as "not the alarm") every few minutes as a sort of "Five o'clock and all's well!" signal. If the monkey goes down, the villain doesn't find out until morning, if ever. The whole point of the security hole was explained as being this, and it should be obvious to anyone who knows what the monkey's job is (to stare at the only security screens all night and make noise if and only if something is amiss). Plot Induced Stupidity? The Default Answer? Or something that resembles a proper in-story answer?
  • Who's to say they didn't? After all, the villain did find out; Lotso and the others caught up to Woody and friends just before they got out. Maybe Monkey missed a check-in and was discovered?
  • Lotso found out about the plan by torturing the telephone.
    • They presumably didn't just think "Hey, let's torture the phone and see if anyone's breaking out" for no reason, though; something no doubt gave them the incentive to do so. Presumably they discover the monkey's incapacitated, discover the break-out, and then torture the phone to get the details of where it's going down.

How did Big Baby get inside the vending machine, hmm? Try to answer that one.

• Actually, Big Baby could fit in there. He could fit through the door, and then had to climb to the top. There's enough room there, and the hole in the top is big enough for him to squeeze through but...
• Also, this Troper is pretty sure that Big Baby's body, like most baby dolls, is filled with nothing but cotton. Sure, his head and limbs are plastic, but his torso should be soft enough to squeeze into the smaller openings of the machine.

We're supposed to believe that Andy didn't get any new toys between 2 and 3?

• He probably did. It’s just that, as newer toys, they lacked sufficient sentimental value for him to keep them out of yard sales.

== How in the heck was Woody able to hold up Lotso when they just saved him from the shredder? With one hand, no less? == He's shown to be extremely heavy. Also, how was he able to pull himself up to that switch so fast if he regularly needs that cane thing to walk? Unless the cane thing was just to look cool or wise.

• That was his reattached arm from 2, with the extra stuffing. And extra stuffing = more muscle.

How did Woody carry around the "DAISY" heart if it was as wide as his body and he had no pockets?

• Uhhh, in his vest maybe?
• Could've been in his holster the whole time.
  • His holster is far too small to hold that thing (unless he's secretly a Time Lord). Maybe he left it in Bonnie's bag initially, then got it back while offscreen after taking out the monkey, and gave it to Hamm or Mrs Potatohead for safekeeping? Though why he'd do that I can't think.
• Maybe he kept it under his hat?

Did anyone find it just a little too coincidental how Buzz was able to be reset back to normal? I mean, after he gets smashed by a television set, suddenly changing back to his old self while retaining all of his old memories was the least thing I was expecting. I mean, isn't the purpose of a reset button to, I don't know, RESET? It just seemed like complete Fridge Logic held together by flimsy Scotch Tape.

• He has Buy 'N Large brand batteries in him. This apparently gives him the same memory-recovering abilities as Wall-E.
• It's possible that the normal state for Buzz Lightyear toys is English mode, and the falling television reverted him back to his default state. Remember that Buzz's "Spanish mode" was not a reset; it was an alternate state that was reached only if the "reset" hole was held down for more than five seconds.
• Two words: Percussive Maintenance.

Buzz shows a little "interest" in Jessie at the end of Toy Story 2. As of the beginning of Toy Story 3, that feeling is STILL UNREQUITED, ten years later!

• He isn't very proactive about it, if you've noticed; he's stuck in the too-nervous-to-say-anything stage. And nothing significant enough happened in that time to give him the confidence to say something- toys' personalities and maturation seem pretty stagnant outside of massive upheaval. She may not have even known for sure until he told her while in Latin Lover mode, at which time, finally knowing that he was really interested, she was able to make the first move.
• I'm fond of two theories. One: they are together, and are really just that awkward. Two: two toys can't be together until their owner plays with them as a couple, which is why Woody and Bo Peep are together and Jessie and Buzz aren't- Andy just never put them together as a couple.
• I like to imagine years of increasingly transparent and frustrated hints on Jessie's part, constantly misinterpreted by Buzz as innocent gestures, with him not wanting to 'take advantage' of her.
  • I thought that it was pretty clearly hinted at the beginning that this was the case, in the build up to Operation: Playtime, since Jessie rather suggestively makes a big deal of them huddling together while Buzz gets all flustered and eventually ruins the moment.
• If anything, they seem to go backwards since the second film: the way they were shown together at the very end watching Wheezy's performance made it look as if they'd hit it off, yet by TS3 they are awkward and a bit distant. I offer two alternate theories:

1. 1. They were together for a while, but something caused it not to work and they decided to be Just Friends - the events of the third film are actually their reconciliation.
   2. It's a Retcon. The third film was never meant to exist, so the creators probably wanted show their vision for the character's futures in order to neatly wrap everything up, but given the extension of the timeline they decided to backtrack and make it seem as if their attraction had gradually developed much later on.

• Alternatively, (as seen higher up on this page), they were together, but then Woody losing Bo freaked one of them/both of them out, and they separated again. For example, Buzz didn't know how to handle the pain, or Jessie didn't want flashbacks to being separated from a friend again. Did that make sense...?
• Let's face it -- shipping aside, it's not as if they were exactly dating at the end of Toy Story 2; Buzz nervously compliments Jessie's hair, Jessie's flattered, Buzz gets impressed when she does the Hot Wheels loop-de-loop and they get a little bit cozy at the Dance Party Ending. That's it. If they have gone backwards in any relationship, it's not that far backwards. There's been plenty of people who've been madly in love with each other but have danced around their feelings and second-guessed themselves for ages, much longer than those two. Some people are just shy and awkward about that kind of thing.

How did one of the Little Green Men get caught in the dumpster lid (forcing Woody to try and save him, and then being pulled down by Lotso). The other toys made it across because Big Baby closed the lid. Did Lotso open it briefly, and pull back one of the Little Green Men as a trap because he knew Woody would save him?

• They are squeaky toys, so it's possible that he stepped on the edge of the lid and his foot went too deep
• The LGM are just that dumb. They can get stuck in a dumpster lid after it was shut and after they just walked across its lid. No, I'm not being serious, of course, and the idea that Lotso grabbed one offscreen seems plausible enough provided the lid didn't slam or make an obvious noise while he was doing so (that way, nobody would notice). Or else there was a deleted scene which explained it?

This troper would like to know how they got that See N Say in there. No WAY that fit through the square hole. Now back to the above troper's bug...

• Perhaps there's a larger opening at the top of the vending machine?
  • Wasn't easy!

And while I'm at it, what kind of vending machine has room in the top of it for six or so toys to fit? And where's the greenish light for the sign at the top?

• Actually, there was a greenish light during that scene, which was intentional, according to the DVD commentary, to make the scene look more sickly and sleazy. It's probably not as bright because the lightbulbs were facing outside.

Why didn't the toys- Andy's or otherwise- just break a window to escape? Sure, it'd be inconvenient for the humans when they returned, but it would have been such an easy out rather than trying to sneak past all of Lotso's guards.

• Lotso's gang would have heard the noise and caught them before they even had time for all them to get through.
• They would be caught in the hallway or on the playground before they reached the wall.
• ...And contrary to what movies would want us to believe, glass is actually rather hard. It's highly probable that toys didn't had the strength to brake it.
• Hamm calls them the "best children-proof" windows in existence. That surely means a lot in terms of strength.
  • Think about it. It's a daycare for small children. Of course it has to be strong, to prevent some loon from trying to break in and potentially harming the children or, indeed, to prevent the children themselves from accidentally breaking it and possibly harming or killing themselves. If it were so thin that a toy could break through it, then it'd be the absolute worst daycare ever.
    • Isn't it already?
      • For the toys, maybe. Seems pretty great for the kids.
  • Actually he says they're the best child proof locks. Not child proof windows. So a kid can't open them, it never says they can't break them.

How was Lotso able to climb up to the top of the dumpster to pull Woody in? The trash already in the dumpster couldn't have reached high enough for him to stand on.

• There were small metal ridges on the sides of the dumpster. This troper didn't see them the first time around, but taking this question into consideration for the second viewing, he could see the ridges as Big Baby walked over to the dumpster to throw Lotso in.

Did it bug anyone else that Barbie was left out of the landfill/incinerator sequence? She had proven to be a surprisingly competent and integral member of the team, and so it struck this Troper as off that she was kept behind.

• True, but she hasn't been around since the first movie. We the audience didn't have as much time to get attached to her. She would have seemed out-of-place.
• Plus, it would be REALLY weird for Andy to find his sister's Barbie along with the rest of the toys...
  • Yeah, the end scene would have been thrown off a little. "This... is not mine!"
• She always could've gone back to Sunnyside to be with Ken instead of Andy's house with the others.
• The only way it would have worked without her being too much out of place would be if she had been with the LGM at the time. But she would still be out of place if found in the "donation" box. "How did * this* got here?"
• She's shown back at Sunnyside with Ken during the credits. Ken pulled her back, remember?

In the third film, how does Andy know Jessie and Bullseye's names? They didn't come with any packaging, and the show they're from is very old, with no indication he's ever seen it (Woody had never heard of it).

• This has been addressed at least twice on this page, and the consensus seems to be that some point between the second and third films Andy probably did some research on his favorite toy, Woody, and found put about Woody's Roundup. It's unknown whether he thus realizes how valuable Woody is, but it's likely that even if he did, he wouldn't chose to sell Woody or any of his toys.
• The answer is probably even simpler than that. Woody can make his voicebox say whatever he wants, so all he has to do is wait until Andy pulls it and say something like "I'd better ride out on my horse, Bullseye to go meet my girlfriend, Jessie" and let Andy put 2 and 2 together.
  • Yeah... I doubt Woody would ever refer to Jessie as his "girlfriend" intentionally. Besides, Andy wouldn't know if they are from the same line(Sure, they look somewhat similar, but a lot of toys do). If anything, it would be more logical for Jessie to have lines like "Hi, I'm Jessie", "Lets go meet Sheriff Woody!" or "Run like the wind, Bullseye"

So, Andy was willing to donate his old toys to Bonnie, but not to his own sister? His sister showed at least some interest in them earlier, but he angrily told her that she could never play with them.

• Since when did Molly ever explicitly express any interest in owning Andy's toys? The only comment she made about them was when she and Mom were suggesting about what to get rid of and she laughed at him for "still keeping these old toys". It's also pretty obvious that, with the donation of Barbie, she isn't that interested in toys anymore.
• Molly had kinda become a little brat, she didn't care about toys anymore. It shows how much Andy cared for the toys that he gave her to Bonnie, who he knew would take great care of them, and love them as he did, as opposed to sticking them in the attic, or giving them to his sister, who he knew would ignore them.
• It's mentioned specifically in the DVD commentary that the easy thing would have been for Molly to have Andy's toys when he's gone, so they deliberately tried to establish straight away that she doesn't want them. She does ask if she can have his stereo, his computer or his video games, but when she sees Woody and the others, she just laughs and asks why he's still keeping those old toys. The callous way she donates Barbie to Sunnyside (while listening to her iPod and reading a teen magazine) just further underlines that she, at least in her own opinion, is much too old for such childish things.

How come Sid became such a relatively normal ( and somewhat cheerful ) grown-up after being terribly traumatized by sentient toys as a child?

• He probably woke up the next morning and convinced himself that he had imagined the whole thing. After twitching at the sight of toys for a few days, waiting for them to come to life and attack him, only for nothing to happen, he likely pushed it out of his mind. Now, as an adult, he likely doesn't even remember it except as a particularly creepy nightmare.
• Disturbed, traumatized people can still be cheerful. Maybe it's a facade.
• He's had ten years to get over it. We also only get a breif glimpse of him. I like to think he's a Dr. Dolittle of toys offscreen.
  • Yeah, or Mr. Crocker
• He blocked it out. With music. Lots and lots of extremely loud music, playing every second he's awake.
• See a similar question above for more details.

So, where are the rest of the army men? There used to be an entire bucket of them, and now there's only about two. Did the others just get lost/destroyed?

• Most likely he sold some, some may still be in his room, lost, and some may have been damaged. Also, there were three left, Sarge and two paratroopers.
• Remember when one got stepped on in the first movie? 15 years of that.

It Just Bugs Me that Lotso's fate wasn't good enough. He (nearly) mercilessly incinerates some of the most beloved characters in history, and is "doomed" to spend his days tied to the grille of a truck (from which he could possibly wriggle himself free)? Feh! Getting torn apart by by the truck's wheels would have been more fitting for that strawberry-scented devil.

• Interestingly enough, you're forgetting that the beloved characters are the good guys. They're not gonna tear him apart because that would make them worse than he was. (Almost to the same level as Sid.)
• Also, this is family-friendly PIXAR we're talking about here. And aside from The Incredibles, there's never been a film where they outright kill a villain.
  • Actually, Muntz died in Up (but he wasn't outright killed).
  • Also, Hopper in A Bug's Life.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death and Family-Unfriendly Violence are two tropes Pixar has employed quite often.
• In the artbook for the movie, one of the film makers stated that shredding or incinerating Lotso would have been too sadistic. They thought being stuck on the truck where he would be forced to do nothing but think about all the things he's done was the best comeuppance.
• You didn't think this all the way through. Lotso is a teddy bear strapped to the grille of a garbage truck. That means he'll be exposed to the elements until his limbs completely rot off. Then he'll be pitched, limbless, into the exact same garbage chute where he tried to kill the others. And he won't be able to move while the grinder draws ever closer...
  • By grille of the truck, I assume it's the front of the truck where the engine is, no? In that case, Lotso will be feeling intense, burning pain on his back as the machines inside the truck heats up and travels for long periods of time. Ever felt a grille after a long ride? It's hot. Imagine if your arm was tied to to the grille as the engine was running. This and what the above troper said about being exposed to the elements. Folks, our heroes had just sentenced Lotso to a Fate Worse Than Death. Now you know why Woody and co didn't go stab happy on Lotso like you wanted them to.
  • To be fair, Woody and the gang didn't know what happened to Lotso -- Woody just dismissed him as not worth bothering. In fact, Lotso wasn't found by the garbage man until the scene immediately after Woody dismissed him.
• In case you didn't get the above. Lotso is being baked. Slowly. Painfully. He can't escape. He can't yell out.
  • Do toys really feel physical pain, though? They don't have nerves. Half of them lose body parts from time to time. The gang feared being incinerated because then they would be destroyed, but it's not like they can feel heat.
    • Toys definitely feel pain--in the first movie, Woody screams in pain after Sid burns a hole in his forehead with a magnifying glass and runs to a bowl of cheerios to put out the fire. You could argue that he's just terrified of being destroyed, but the anguished expression and dramatic reaction certainly look like pain.
    • And if that's the case, and the toys do feel pain, why is it that in the second movie, Woody isn't in screaming agony when HIS FREAKING ARM GETS RIPPED OFF??
    • Maybe they don't feel pain the same way we do? And it was ripped while he was in toy-mode, so he couldn't have really screamed.
    • I always took it that Woody wasn't really feeling pain, but was just scared. Even if I couldn't feel pain, I think I'd be freaking out if I had a hole burning into my forehead or if my arm fell off, especially if that meant that I could die!
• Does anybody find it funny that an earlier person said that Pixar doesn't outright kill it's villains? maybe I'm remembering wrong, but there was this one guy named Hopper who was ripped into pieces and eaten alive... I guess Pixar doesn't kill them off as much as certain other companies... but when they do...

Also about Lotso burning on the front of the Truck, did people just not notice the other toys that were on the front that didn't seem to be burning up? I think that Lotso's fate is going to be just what Pixar said that an earlier troper quoted "Pixar stated that shredding or incinerating Lotso would have been too sadistic. They thought being stuck on the truck where he would be forced to do nothing but think about all the things he's done was the best comeuppance."

• After all those years of pain and abandonment he is picked up from the garbage held and loved. He is then put somewhere where he can always be close to his new owner, too bad Lotso will never experience that scene, ever. He abandoned love two seconds after he was replaced. Add this to the fact that love never stopped being all he had and you have a pretty good punishment.

They couldn't have put Bo in the action scene in the opening sequence? Just to slip Annie Potts in there? I mean, they brought back Erik van Satten and R. Lee Ermey for all of a minute, and Bo Peep's presence would've made sense in that scene.

• The creators probably thought it would have been too cruel to re-establish the audience's connection with the character and then abruptly remove her from the story. Better to put her on the bus straight off.
• Bo was always Andy's sister's lamp, it's never shown that he particularly considered her his. She was only in his room in the first place because he was sharing it with his baby sister. He's not playing with her in the action scene because she's 1) not really his and 2) plugged into the wall.
• It was due to the sequence initially being set in the present day, and it was just the surviving toys fantasizing about an example of the play times they used to have. However Pixar decided to change it to just an example of Andy playing with them in his youth, and by the time they realised "why don't we add Bo Peep?" the film was too late in the development stages to really add her.

Where are the car seats? In Toy Story 3, Bonnie -- all of three years old and pretty small -- jumps into the backseat after her mother is already in the car, shuts the door herself, and her mom drives off. Daisy, too, does not sit in any kind of booster seat, though she appears to be a bit older so it is perhaps more forgivable.

• Three? She seemed more like she was pushing five or six.
• This troper's son not only was able to close the car door himself and buckle himself into his own car seat at the age of three, but insisted upon doing so without help. Bonnie seems sharp enough to handle all of that on her own.
  • Bonnie seems very capable, but her mom pulled away the second that car door closed, which wasn't responsible at all. A good parent would wait until they saw the kid buckled in.
• Lotso is a product of the 80s. The viral commercials place him in that era, and the garbage man at the end says that he had one as a kid, meaning Lots-o'-Huggin' Bears have to have been around for a while now. If we accept that Daisy got hers when they were new (and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise) that means that she was about 6 years old in the early 1980s. Car safety was not really a huge deal at the time.

I can't believe this question hadn't been addressed before but wasn't anyone bothered that Andy decided to bring only Woody to college and not Buzz? I mean, they were both his favorite childhood toys in 1 and 2, so wouldn't it have made more sense for him to bring both of them? Spacing isn't an issue, as Buzz is small, he could have probably fit him in boxes if he really wanted to.

• I think it's more of a 'keep my dad's legacy' sort of thing, if we go with the assumption that Woody used to belong to Andy's father. The other toys mean enough to him for him to put them in the attic, and he was planing to return to them sooner or later, so bringing Woody to college was just a way to remind him of his father. After going through the loss of my father, I've taken steps to collect memorabilia to remember him, so there's a very good chance Andy would do the same
  • This troper is pretty fond of the "Woody was Andy's dad favorite toy and that's why Andy is so attached to it" theory, but given that, how can he give it to Bonnie in the end ? Sure he seems reluctant at first and she is cute and all but... why?
    • Because one of the Aesops of the movie was that while you shouldn't give up on something, nothing lasts forever and there will come a time to move on and one should accept that. It clearly applies from both the toy's and Andy's perspectives and given how Toy Story 2 portrays Collector's items and outright tells us that toys should be played with as opposed to stuck up behind glass cases, it makes sense for Andy to hesitate for a while before realizing that he's now seventeen, going off college and Woody would serve a much better purpose in the hands of a cute hyperactive kid he once was, rather than letting it sit on his desk.
    • The situation forced his hand. He set Bonnie up, telling her that he was giving her all the toys in the box, and then she found Woody in the box as well and obviously wanted him a lot too. Andy would have rather kept Woody, but there was no way that he could have done it in that situation without looking like a jerk. He realized that after getting over the initial shock.
• But I mean, even still, Buzz was Andy's second favorite toy. If he's going to take Woody, who his father had given him, why not take Buzz, who was given to him by his mom? It's obvious that in almost all of Andy's playtime, he paired Woody and Buzz together as a team.
  • Because Woody seems heavily linked to Andy's missing father while his mother is still around. He didn't take Buzz because, again, he's a grown-up seventeen year old going off college who already hesitates to bring a toy that's one of the last memories of his father. Buzz might be his second favourite toy, but as far as nostalgia's value goes, Buzz is no different from other toys.

I can easily suspend my disbelief concerning a story about sentient toys, but the one Wallbanger for me in Toy Story 3 was when they washed all the dirt and grime accumulated during their adventure off with a sprinkling of hosewater. Not only after being covered in kid drool, snot, and vague stickiness (and, in Hamm's case, glitter glue), but after swimming in GARBAGE, and a few drops of water can wash it all off? I used to play with (and leave) toys outside all the time-- if they get that dirty, it's going to take soap and a toothbrush to bring out the shine again. Not to mention the fabric parts, which would likely be stained.

• It's quite likely that the heat from the incinerator melted off most of the sticky residue (i.e. the glue of Hamm, and kids' snot). After all, as discussed above, some of the pain from Woody's repair job in the 2nd movie melted off, so why couldn't the other stuff? However I must agree about the stained material; a little water couldn't get that out!
• There must be some kind of trope for this, that's the only thing that would stop this troper from being bugged about the above IJBM.
• Wasn't it a Hand Wave?
• The magic of Pixar????

In the first film during the 'Strange Things' scene, we see most of the toys asleep all over the room with their eyes closed, just like humans. Then, in 3, Buzz get knocked out by a falling TV and appears as an unconcious human would, with closed eyes and a blank face, and the other toys (or at least Jessie) seem to think he's dead until he comes round.

I know seeing that my toys had changed their facial expression while I wasn't looking would be enough to freak me out, so are we supposed to believe that no human has EVER seen a sleeping or 'dead' toy?

• They probably still subconsciously return to their normal expression when looked at even while unconscious.
  • Even if they're dead?
    • Yup. Considering that their normal expression is their base state, the toy equivalent of rigor mortis probably does the trick- return to original expression as they lose the ability to move on their own instead of stiffening
    • Wow, so you could be playing with a toy that's dead and not even know it. Creepy.
    • We are talking about a show where one's toy is sentient, and the creepiest part is knowing that it could be dead?
      • I don't know, I find the idea of playing with a dead toy much creepier than a living one. Plus, think of it from the toys' perspective: having to share a toybox with a fallen comrade because their owner doesn't know that they're dead...

Shouldn't Woody and Jessie have stuck to the magnet in the trash sorting machine? If they were made in the 50's, surely their voiceboxes would be made of metal?

• Many of the old voiceboxes from that era were really little record players. Pulling the cord operated a spring-driven mechanism which turned a tiny record containing a few choice phrases. There's some metal involved (the spring) but mostly they're plastic or resin. And not all metals are magnetic.
• Can we please ask ourselves the same thing about HOW DID SLINKY GET OFF THE MACHINE, since he was shown to be pulled up himself?
  • I thought this was already discussed - the other toys grabbed onto him and pulled him down.
  • It was discussed - see above.

Despite being the greatest scene in any film ever, the placement of some of Andy's Toys during the incinerator scene irks me.

• Would it not have made perfect sense to have Hamm and Mr. Potato Head hold hands, given that it was implied throughout the films that they are best friends and Hamm and Slinky have practically zero interaction in any of them? I mean, come one, it would have been perfect because then all of the toys would be paired with their best friend(s) and/or lover((s) for some Tropers)!
• It would have made sense in the first two movies, but by the time of 3, they have effectively become a Nakama and they're all best friends with all of the others. It actually made the scene sweeter that everyone just hold hands, regardless of who they were holding.
• This troper also thought that Hamm and Mr. Potato should hold hands, being best friends and all, but then someone else pointed out that it's even better that they both hold Rex's hand, despite always repeatedly bashing him, and now it's as if they're making amends. So while Hamm and Mr. Potato Head are best friends, with Rex, they're a Nakama.
• That bothered this troper to on how they got MULTIPLE CLOSE TO DEATH SCENES IN A G-RATED MOVIE!?! Also, if you look closely at Woody, you could see THE WAX MELT OFF HIS FACE! Sweet Dreams...

This one REALLY bugs me at times, since it calls into question one of my favorite parts in any movie I've seen, and a Crowning Moment of Awesome for sure, but anyway: (Toy Story 3 spoilers) How did the aliens see Andy's toys in the Incinerator when they used the crane to save them? In the big shots that show the toys from far away, such as the shot right as the crane lands in the garbage pile, the toys are essentially invisible. Plus, the shots while they're being pulled up seem to imply that the flame of the Incinerator is between the aliens and the rest of the gang, so in theory it is nigh impossible that they'd be seen. This mainly arises from me not knowing how a big industrial crane would work, but I like to think that the crane's claw includes some kind of camera where the aliens would be able to see things on a screen in the control room.

• In case I'm wrong, someone please clear this up...
• I dunno about you, but I track motion pretty well. The toys were trying to climb up the descending mounds of garbage about to be incinerated, going in the opposite direction from everything else in the place, making them easier to spot if one is deliberately trying to look for specific, moving things. The long time between them trying to climb and the claw actually getting them could be the three aliens trying to get the equipment to work properly.
  • Well, the aliens wouldn't have "looked" for them, since they didn't know the others would end up in the incinerator. But I suppose they could've made it up there, only to notice "Hey, there's some things moving in the incinerator! We can't let something alive fall in!" Then as the crane claw was pulled up higher, they noticed that it was their buddies from Andy's and decided to have a good ol' Crowning Moment of Awesome.
  • Almost everything else in that pile except for the toys had also been pretty much ground into fairly indistinguishable little bits, and the toys were right on top of it; they stood out more than everything else.
  • Despite it being the PSP game, it shows that the toys were colorfull enough to stand out and the machine's base of operations were aglined with the toys.

Near the end of the third movie, Mrs. Potato Head (Potatohead?) locates her missing eye by looking through it. How come she didn't do this, say, right after losing the said eye? Was she hit with Fridge Logic? Now, I do understand that the purpose of this was to make the toys realize that Woody was right (again), but wasn't there any other good way to deliver the plot point?

• Well, note that she happens to see herself when she looks to find it. Maybe she just didn't know where it was because she didn't know what direction it was from herself. Plus, maybe Buster moved it at some point during the movie, since at first it was "somewhere dark... and dusty." With the room's light on, her eye's location was not dark. Plus, she probably didn't get too many chances to look for it with Andy always in his room moving stuff. Or, just the Fridge Logic.
  • Well, Andy was packing stuff up to move, so it could've been that her eye fell down behind something or under something and the vast majority of the things around it were moved or packed by Andy, hence why she could actually see things out of it later in the movie.
• When she sees Andy when scouting the hallway, she's genuinely surprised that she can see through her other eye. I guess it never occurred to her that she find her missing eye by looking through it. It seems like she can only see through that eye if she disconnects or blocks her other eye; something she never did since she lost it.

Lack of resistance at Sunnyside

• For all of the other toys that were horribly mistreated in the Caterpillar Room, why didn't it occur to them to ban together and fight Lotso's Gang? Yes, the Monkey is guarding the monitors, but that still couldn't prevent them from banding together and forming some underground resistance. Also, I know that this would probably be extremely dark for a Toy Story film, but why couldn't it be possible for a toy to smuggle in something like pair of scissors (which they did have at the daycare) during the daytime (when the defenses are lowered) and then knife Lotso and Big Baby in the back when they weren't looking? Sure it wouldn't really kill them, but they might at least end up spilling a lot of stuffing from Lotso and maybe even damaging him beyond repair. The amount of suppressed toys vs the number guarding them is like 5:1, so I don't see why a resistance couldn't be possible (like in A Bugs Life).
  • I dunno, why didn't the Jews do it?
  • Really? For This Troper, it seemed like the Caterpillar and Butterfly Rooms were about equal in size. Furthermore, it seemed like more of the toys in the Butterfly room were action figures, designed for fighting while the Caterpillar room toys were much simpler. Furthermore, don't underestimate the power of tradition. In A Bugs Life it's implied that feeding the grasshoppers went on for years, despite the ants easily outnumbering the grasshoppers 100:1 the whole time. It wasn't until a whole new set of bugs came in that any possibility of resistance was discussed. Lotso's rule may have become so entrenched that no other way of life seemed conceivable.
    • A lot of the toys in the Caterpillar Room seemed to be younger children's toys, perhaps less capable of the reasoning and lack the planning to start a resistance , also it's likely that problem toys were dealt with before they could gain followers (Lotso could have had more cronies than the handful see in the movie, a mole or two wouldn't be too far fetched) also how do you know that the broken toy we see being thrown away wasn't a would-be resistance leader? Also most of the toys shown seem to be more or less followers, so again all one has to do is root out the leader toys (either get them to join you, like Lotso tried to do to Buzz before force-resetting him or kill them off)

Speaking of Sunnyside, how come the workers don't know about toys being unsuitable for the age?

• Sure Lotso has the whole thing under control, but the people working should be able to see certain toys unfit for certain ages (e.g. Potato Head shouldn't be for children who like to swallow stuff).
  • This one really bugged me at first, but you know, the toys weren't there that long. From time to time, the workers might have moments of incompetence where they forget to watch the young kids, and they definitely might not have found the older-kid toys in a couple days. After all, the adults didn't put the toys in there, either, Lotso did it secretly. And the other toys in the room hid from the kids; maybe on the second day of Caterpillar playtime, Andy's toys learned to do the same.
  • Also, this is directly brought up in the commentary. Lee Unkritch basically invoked the MST3K Mantra, but then also offered a story about a similar wild day at a daycare he witnessed. At the very least, this serves as a Lampshade Hanging where one was absent in the real movie.

How on Earth could Daisy's parents have left her three favorite possessions in the world behind at the rest stop? Surely they would've seen her playing with them non-stop and subsequently noticed they weren't in the car when the family left.

• Yeah, it's a little far-fetched that they'd forget all three of them. Maybe Chuckles, as he's kinda small. But also Lotso and Big Baby, who are both relatively huge?
• Importance, unfortunately, does not equal "never forgotten." Otherwise, cell phones, wallets, favorite jackets, and all-important flash drives containing people's lives would never be left in libraries and malls. Their picnic site was a bit of a distance from where Daisy left the toys, and they packed up everything in proximity and left, the toys slipping their mind. It happens.

I noticed this watching the movie on DVD: So, the gang ends up at the dump, and the Little Green Men are seemingly killed by a scoop-truck. As we all know, it is later revealed that they in fact made it out okay, using "the Claw" to save everyone else. But wait. Shouldn't the LGMs have ended up on the conveyor belt with the others? The scoop-truck that seemingly kills them was RIGHT next to the scoop-truck that knocked Woody, Buzz, Slinky, etc. onto the belt.

• They're a lot bouncier and lighter than the other toys. They may have managed to jump up and over the bulldozer's plow in their excitement to get to the Claw.
• "The Claw chooses who will go and who will stay"...The claw was with them that day.

Not so much of a "just bugs me" as a "just has me wondering": Did anyone else find it odd that they didn't show Barbie getting trashed alongside the others in their second day at Sunnyside? Remember, she's in the group when Woody returns to save them (the "We have to get you home before Andy leaves tomorrow!" scene) and recess had just started, so obviously she had to have gotten pummeled by the kids along with everyone else.

• She was in the Butterfly Room with Ken and the Dreamhouse.
  • Not on the second day. She was incarcerated with the others.
    • They also didn't show Hamm, two of the LGM, and Bullseye. We'd already seen an extended abuse scene, so it wasn't necessary to show each toy being abused again; we can infer that Barbie is getting abused along with everyone else.

Woody gets a golf club to try and get Lotso out from under a golf bag. As the golf club starts to be pulled by the ceiling magnet, Buzz holds it and helps him get it down. After they both get Lotso out, the three of them hold onto the golf club and are lifted up. How on Earth did a golf club that was unable to pull Woody and Buzz up together get lifted so easily with Woody, Buzz and Lotso?

• Metals exposed to magnetism will develop their own magnetic field, increasing the mutual attraction. This process takes a little while depending on how strong the first magnetic field is. The golf club hadn't become magnetized enough while Buzz and Woody were holding it, but seconds later it was able to lift all three of them.

So everyone's working together at Sunnyside, and toys are taking their equal share. Still the age-appropriateness issue has not been resolved. Those toys should not be in the hands of toddlers

• No, but it has been discussed many many many many many many times above.

So Woody washes all the toys off with the hose to clean them off, but wait, this has 3 questions.

• 1.They shown Buzz being washed,and water shorts out electricity, so shouldn't Buzz get electricuted and stuff?
  • Buzz runs on a battery, he's not plugged in. He's an action figure, his electronics aren't that expansive that he's going to electrocute anything.
• 2.Woody and Jessie were washed, so shouldn't their cloths get damped and be darker?
• 3.If the hose was running alot, shouldn't the family relize it and check outside?
  • It's not exactly flooding the yard, or running for more than a couple minutes, tops. I dunno about you, but most people don't have an alarm that goes off when the hose goes on for a couple minutes.

The Toy Story Universe

Based on the events of the second movie, Woody has to be at least fifty years old. Why is he so unaware of both his own product history and the idea that things with Andy aren't going to last forever? Particularly the latter, since he's presumably had previous owners, even if they were within the same family.

• His original owner (presumably Andy's dad) might not have watched the show his toy came out of as a child, or his family might not have owned a television set, so Woody never actually saw the series he came from. The third movie shows he's accepting of the idea that Andy has outgrown him, so we can probably assume his abandonment crisis in the second movie was a temporary thing. Particularly since his decision to go to the museum was clearly heavily influenced by sympathy for Jessie.
• I don't remember the second movie very clearly, but it could be that he's just a new toy based off of an old series. I mean, they're still making Star Wars dolls - uh, I mean action figures. (Though of course, why would they want to put him in a museum if that were the case?)
  • No, he's definitely an older toy. He comments at one point in the second movie that he hasn't seen a record player in years.
• Dating the film is almost impossible thanks to conflicting factors in Merchandise-Driven shows, Sputnik, and SNES graphics.
  • This Troper's dad, born in 1951, says "Woody's Roundup" is pretty clearly a Captain Ersatz of Howdy Doody. Howdy Doody, for those of us born in the same era as Andy (presumably), was a show that ran from 1947 to 1950, starring a cowboy marionette and his frontier-themed friends. Like Woody's Roundup, it was heavily merchandised and doomed by the start of the space age.
• Could be Fridge Horror also: Where is Andy's Dad throughout the series? Why does he emotionally cling so much to his toys, more so than the average loving child? Why does his mom condone, nay support this almost obsessive imaginary life with his toys? Implication: After his Dad died, Andy found comfort in the imaginary world of his toys, especially Woody and Buzz, whom he found to be male role models.
  • What's so obsessive and unusual about Andy's love for his toys?
  • Perhaps Woody, being so old, is a hand-me-down from Andy's deceased father? Woody is shown to be especially loyal to Andy, more attached to him than any other toy. If Woody spent time with Andy's dad when HE was a kid, who then grew up, put Woody away somewhere, and then gave Woody to his son Andy, that would explain a lot of both Andy's and Woody's behavior in the films. Even the second one, where he might actually remember and sympathize with Jessie about being put in a box for a long time. That would definitely put him on the fence; he was put in storage, but got out eventually to play with Andy.
  • NO, WOODY IS THE FATHER.
• Maybe his other owners didn't love him the way Andy did. Or, as others have said, maybe he wasn't opened/was in storage before Andy. Also, he seemed to know that Daycare would be a bad place - it's possible he lived in one at some point.
• At first blush, one might imagine that the toys' memories are erased and reformed every time they get a new owner. This would explain why Woody doesn't remember his product history, and yet the Prospector remembers his life before Al bought him and Jessie still remembers her first owner.
  • Ruled out by the third film. Jessie, despite being in Andy's custody for years, still remembers her first owner. The toys also show no sign of memory loss after they've been officially passed onto Bonnie.
  • Another possibility is that Andy is the only kid to play with Woody. Perhaps he was part of the final run of the series, with the line being shut down sometime after cancellation. With the line discontinued, Woody was never sold with the rest of the set. He languishes in some old toy store or outlet for decades, before Andy comes across him one day. And the rest is history.
    • If that were the case, one would think Woody would bring that up when the Prospector laments his own similar fate.

Can Barbie and Ken dolls have sex? Or maybe, can toys in general?

• See the relevant episode of Robot Chicken for the answer to your question.

Ken: This has never happened to me before!
Barbie: Not having a penis never happened to you before?

Is Emperor Zurg Buzz Lightyear's father in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command?

• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is probably like the Ewoks and Droids shows made after A New Hope. While it may be canon to Toy Story (given how Disney tends to treat its televised spinoff series), it's probably not canon to the Buzz Lightyear series within the Toy Story movie. The Zurg from Toy Story 2 is probably the equivalent of an Empire Strike Back or Return of the Jedi Dart Vader action figure. The only significant difference (to anyone who isn't a collector) is the packaging, but it gives the toy's "mind" an entirely new, deeper backstory. The original Zurg toys, fresh out of the box from the toy store, would likely have had no more personality than "I will destroy Buzz Lightyear!" and "I am the ruler of the galaxy!"
  • The show played around with this in the episode where Zurg takes over Roswell. During a lightsaber duel, Buzz pins Zurg down, but Zurg throws him off by saying "Buzz, I am your father." When this confuses Buzz, Zurg punches him in the face and says, "Psych! Made ya look, dimwit!"

While Slinky is this troper's fave character by far, his Slinky middle always bugs me. First off, his slinky is around 12 inches long in Toy Story, but while he gets stretched out as a result of trying to help Woody and Buzz it stretches to at least 50ft. How/ why is this possible? I don't think that Rule of Funny or Rule of Cool apply here since seeing him get hurt was neither cool nor funny (unless you have a warped sense of humor).

• Well, a standard slinky can stretch up to 87 feet long, so it's not really movie magic. However, how Slinky, after getting stretched so far out, can still retain his shape in the scene after is still a mystery. And I agree, it wasn't funny.
  • It wasn't supposed to be funny.
  • It's not supposed to be funny. That was Slinky's heroic moment. The more peril he's in the more heroic he becomes. He was injured desperately trying to rescue his friends with no regard for himself, it just might be the most commendable thing any character does in the first movie. Note that, despite being in obvious pain with the other toys tending to him, his only comment is "I should have held on longer."
    • But it was a useless act. With Slinky getting stretched out, it accomplished nothing to move the plot, apart from perhaps adding suspense to the rocket scene. Why was it here? What purpose did watching him get hurt serve to move the story forward? Honestly, they could have done without it and the scene would still be the same.
      • The point was to get the other toys involved. Slinky was trying to reach Buzz, Woody and RC so they could be pulled back onto the truck but RC was losing power and Slinky couldn't get a strong enough hold. It's basically so the other toys don't come across as useless dicks. They turned on Woody when they thought he'd killed Buzz and threw him off the truck when they thought he'd don something similar to RC, this was them winning the audience back and re-establishing that Slinky was completely loyal to Woody. Plus it added to the drama.
• Has anyone else noticed how Slinky's midsection seems to retain a lot more strength in 2 than 1? To list off some features, he offered it to used to bungee cord off from a two-story house, to descend and stretch 10ft to get to a suitcase, and then stretched past 20 feet in the baggage handling area.
  • That's probably more related to the length and strain put on his middle section differing greatly in the movies. In the first one he was completely stretched out for several minutes while being pulled in two directions (he was basically the only thing keeping RC moving for a while there). In the second one all his stretching is for brief periods with the other side free to recoil back to the stretching end. Just like how if you stretch a slinky for a few seconds it'll be fine but if you stretch it out and keep it like that it'll warp.

Buzz's wings pop out with enough force to easily tear through duct tape (it was how he got off the rocket in time). Isn't that kinda unsafe for little children to play with?

• Plus, why wouldn't he have just used the wings to escape from the rocket earlier?
  • When Sid attached the rocket to Buzz he was all depressed about being a "stupid, insignificant toy" and therefore had accepted his fate of being blown up. By the time Woody had convinced him otherwise, Sid had woken up and taken him outside for the "launch" and couldn't escape without being noticed.
• Since when was safety ever a concern with toys?
• Maybe someone decided to put that in as the "recalled Buzz Lightyears" Sequel Hook for the original second film.
  • I think that in that instant, Buzz's wings were faster and more powerful than they would be normally, because Buzz was in control and not Andy. It's like how Woody can move all of his fingers when he's talking to the other toys, but to Andy, all he'll ever have is a thumb and four closed-up fingers. To Andy, Buzz's wings will only ever be a light pop and fwoosh, while when Buzz needs them to tear duct tape, they will. Besides, maybe the duct tape was old and dilapidated.

Whatever happened to Andy's father? In a recent interview, John Lasseter explained that Woody was originally conceived as a hand-me-down from Andy's Father, but we never see him even being mentioned in Toy Story.

• It would explain a lot to me -- Andy's affection for an old cowboy action figure, the family up and moving in the first movie, and more besides -- if Andy's father had passed away before the events of the first movie. That's my personal theory anyway.
• The "real" reason is that Pixar wasn't advanced enough at the time to do adult male characters. Apparently, if you watch the backgrounds in the first film, all the human characters shown are either women or children.
  • You've piqued my curiosity as to why they could do adult females (and children) but not adult males. Link, please?
  • More likely they had no problem with males in particular; they just had problem with people, so they kept the human cast to a minimum.

If every single Buzz Lightyear toy believes himself to be the 'real' Buzz, then did Woody ever think of himself as the 'real' Woody? If so, wouldn't he be sympathetic to Buzz's delusions? And if not, why not?

• Woody is not shown as being terribly empathetic. Plus, it's pretty obvious that his trying to prove to Buzz that he's a toy is his way of getting Buzz to understand and move through those stages of "new toy" syndrome as fast as possible, and so, maybe Buzz won't be as big a threat to his position as favorite toy. Woody is pretty dead-set in his role of importance.
• The way the other toys interact with Buzz in the first movie makes it pretty clear that they haven't encountered any toys with similar delusions before. Woody is clearly surprised when he finds out that Buzz really thinks he's the Buzz Lightyear. ("And all this time I thought it was an act! Hey, guys, look! It's the real Buzz Lightyear!") So the Buzz Lightyear toys seem to be unique in this respect.
• It might be related to the fact that Buzz was one of the few 'electronic' toys that Andy had. He needs some amount of batteries to operate (for the LED lasers and the voice), whereas most of the other toys in Andy's room are just plastic and articulation. The Buzz Lightyear toy is one of the only ones he has that needs to be activated in some capacity (removing a little plastic tab in the battery case, for instance, to initially turn it on), and that turning-on instigates a sort of Buzz Lightyear protocol, as we see much later come the third movie (Buzz having a 'reset button' and a 'demo mode'). It's this activation that probably makes him function as 'Buzz Lightyear' instead of 'a toy'. Any newer toy that requires activation like this would probably behave similarly.
• Another explanation is that it is a case of whether or not the reality can accommodate the delusion. Given how the toys generally bear some character resemblance to that which they are modeled after it's safe to assume they could believe they were actually that thing if not given evidence otherwise. Most of the time though it doesn't matter because the reality of being a toy is often an obvious contrast to what they could think they were. For example Woody would instantly realize he's not the actually Woody the Sheriff because his initial memories of being stuffed into a box alongside a bunch of identical Woody toys would make no sense whatsoever. And would soon make the more obvious conclusion. However, in Buzz's case, being stuff into a box seems like being set for launch due to his box being modeled after a spaceship. While being with loads of identical Buzzes gives the impression of being part of a space ranger army, possibly a cloned one. On top of this any strangeness he would inevitably encounter could be explained by being on an alien planet. Given this a more pronounced sign of him being a toy is needed, like a commercial for a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Another example is the LGMs in the first film whom seemed to believe that they were space aliens due to the rocket shaped claw crane they lived in.

The timeline is all screwy. It worked well enough until Tour Guide Barbie's comment about retailers' short-sightedness "back in 1995." This sounds like it's been at least four or five years, therefore the sequel takes place in 1999 at the earliest. But if so, then why is Molly only now starting to walk?! If it's been several years she should be about preschool age now. I know, I know...

• The "back in 1995" comment was a Shout-Out to Real Life, in which this exact thing happened in the Christmas season of that year (the year Toy Story first came out). I would call it a Rule of Funny as well as a Rule Of Take That.
• There's no inference that Andy got his Buzz "back in 1995." Molly just learning to walk implies that the sequel only takes place about a year after the first, maybe less considering the first movie ended at Christmas, and the sequel takes place in summer.
• What this troper didn't get was , why does Andy appear to have gray hair as opposed to his originally brown color at the end of Toy Story 3. Perhaps he's now in his late teens already.
  • They actually say this out loud in film 3, Andy is 17. And the grey hairs could be genetic. I know a girl who's only 18 who has grey hairs already. It's not that uncommon.
• Barbie is fresh out of the box, even a year ago could be a long time for her.

When Woody explains his plan near the end of the first movie, he says: "we're gonna have to break a few rules." So the toys hold still in front of people because it's a rule? Who makes these rules? Is there an organization, a deity? Obviously there's no punishment for breaking the rules.

• I'd presume it's a universally accepted facet of toy society -- being animate in sight of humans is something that simply Is Not Done. A taboo.
• I think they know it would freak their owners out, which would normally have bad consequences - they'd be thrown out, exorcised, maybe destroyed.
  • By that token, maybe it's the same type of thing as the Muggle relationship in the Potter Verse: toys had to pretend to be lifeless after a history of being persecuted and destroyed or whatnot. Regular people have been none the wiser for centuries now, and think that all the old stories about toys coming to life are nothing more than legends of old.
• See the Word of God link above. The toys becoming inanimate when humans are looking is an involuntary instinct. Obviously, a lot of social conditioning has been laid on top of it, like the way they always make sure to return to their prior position when someone walks in the room. And also, it seems like toys CAN resist this instinct, as seen at the end of the first film. But unless they make the effort, they'll go still automatically when a human shows up.

From the humans' perspective, what would the difference between Buzz's "Demo Mode" and "Play Mode" be?

• Well strictly speaking from the Toy Story Collection line, the Demo mode is pretty standard "press any button on his chest and it will operate his voice" with basic laser function. Play mode operates on an interactive basis and features much more options such as wing tip lights, connectivity to helmet and wrist communicator and movable features.
• The "demo mode" in a lot of toys restricts the music/voices to short excerpts or a subset of clips.
• Likely to preserve battery while the toy is on show at the store.

In the Toy Story-verse, what do collectible figurines do? I mean the kids toys find fulfillment in being played with, so expensive or adult-oriented figurines that aren't meant for play still have a vestigial instinct for being played with and are doomed to a life of sadness because they exist just for someone's collection, or are they just fine with it? (Yes, this troper is overanalyzing and well aware of it. I'm just thinking of some of the figurines I've acquired over the years, or kitschy knick-knacks, that kinda thing.)

• Lawn gnomes and Christmas Decorations seem just happy serving their job as ornaments so I think that as far as collectible figurines go, as long as they get to serve their primary function, they're happy. That's the main key, as stated by the film's director John Lasseter, about bringing an inhuman object to life.
• figurines that aren't meant for play still have a vestigial instinct for being played with and are doomed to a life of sadness because they exist just for someone's collection- That's the theme of the second movie, so, yes.
  • Not really. The ones from the second movie were meant for play, but were being treated as collectors' items instead. Plus, the only ones who had any real desire to be played with were the ones that had been played with in the past- as long as the collectors' items were never played with at any point, they're probably fine with it. This is the only explanation that enables me to sleep at night with a bookshelf full of fresh-from-the-store-or-amusement-park plushies...
  • Presumably, a figure designed primarily for looking at prefers to, well, be looked at--that's what they were made for. They'd probably freak out if someone actually tried to play with them.
  • This troper always imagined figures to be somewhat snobby. They're designed for "sophisticated adults" (in their mind) and not crude children. They're designed to be visually appealing and admired, playing with them (especially being played with by children) could even be contrued as an insult to them. ("Look at my beautifully sculpted face, what have you done to me!") It makes me think of "high-brow" vs "low-brow" entertainment. Someone who spends their free time at the opera might not be down with watching monster trucks (not impossible of course) and vice versa. Neither fate (being admired from afar vs being played with) is evil, per se, but more a case of "to his is own".
• Bo Peep doesn't seem to mind being used as a play thing, and remember she's a lamp decoration
• A popular WMG goes that toys only have personality once someone gives them one. It seems reasonable to conclude that once a toy has been played with and given a personality, it'll come to life.
  • But this is disproved in |Toy Story 2 with Stinky Pete. He's never been played with.
    • Ah, but he has been handled (or at least his, ahem, package has been handled) by someone that has deeply immersed themselves in the whole Woody's Round-Up thing. He hasn't been played with, but he's the property of someone who knows what his personality should be. It would also explain why he's so hell-bent on being collected... he absorbed that as being his "destiny" from his owner.
• I don't think it's so much that toys have an instict for play, so much as they have been played with, enjoyed it, and want to continue doing it. For example, the toys that have been played with, such as Woody and Jessie, appreciate being played with, and want that feeling again. Stinky Pete on the other hand, who has never been played with, has no desire to be anything but a collectable.

I know it's highly unlikely that we'll ever get a Toy Story 4, but on the off-chance that we do, do you think we could leave out the "Buzz thinks he's a real Space Ranger" bit? We've gotten three variations of it now and I think enough is enough.

• I agree, I thought it was shoehorned in as early as |Toy Story 2 just for the sake of bringing back a popular character.
  • I've got to say, I disagree (well, first I hope that they never make a fourth movie... It's perfect the way it is methinks), maybe it's just me, but I saw it the first time as just funny, the second time as anwway to add some tension and as a minor Running Gag... And then the third time? I thought it was just brilliant, I mean, look at it this way- the first two times it was Played for Laughs, right? So we assume the third time it will be played for laughs as well... And then it's not, and it is heartbreaking.

Why does everyone hate the Buzz and Jessie pairing so much? Both are a bit impulsive and action-loving. That's definitely chemistry.

• People didn't like that pairing? That's news to me...I wasn't convinced at all in |2, but when I saw |3 I thought the pairing was really developed well and shipped them together much more than I did Woody and Bo.
• A lot of people find it to be more appropriate for Woody and Jessie to be together since they're both from the same toy line. Makes it strange since Woody was always with Bo Peep.
  • And a little bit racist.
    • Wait...huh?
    • I second that. What the...?
    • Okay, just guessing here, just guessing, but I think what the above troper meant by "racist" was that shipping Jessie and Woody just because they're from the same toy line is comparable to shipping the only two black characters of a show. By extension, disliking Jessie and Buzz as a couple is comparable to xenophobia, disliking an "interracial" pairing.
    • Yeah, The Pototato Head/Potato Head pairing is horrible, since it would have set toy integration back fifty years had they not adopted the aliens.
  • Well… There are some people (not everyone, but some) who hate that pairing because they think it gets in the way of their perfect Toy Story Ho Yay…

Why don't Andy's toys look like they've actually been played with and handled? I don't mean broken or anything like that, just why don't they have any of the natural wear and tear something gets from being used?

• Maybe because they had to rebuild the 3D models from scratch for |3, given the timespan between |2 and |3.
  • That would make more sense it if was the other way around, i.e. not having to remake the 3D models.
• Andy was very careful with them when he was a child, and it wouldn't be out of character of him to clean them as needed, or to go to a repairman like the one that polished Woody in |2 (Heck, he could have become an apprentice).
• Andy could also have done some repairing of his own, such as reattaching Woody's arm at the end of the second movie. Some basic model-building skills (particularly painting) would be easily applicable for toy repairs.
• Woody at least went through more repairs (his arm is back to normal, so they must've taken the extra stuffing out. Wear and tear isn't always noticeable. Most of my toys from childhood are still in good condition. Also, we don't know exactly how long the toys have been boxed.
  • The new stitching of the reattached arm is still visible in some scenes. It's more likely that the stuffing spread out a bit more evenly throughout the upper arm to the point where it's not that noticeable.
  • This Troper has a binder with relatively large images of Woody and Buzz. Not only is the stitching on Woody's arm visible, but if you look even closer at Buzz, you can see that there are very small scratches and pockmarks on the bottom of his left boot.

In the universe of the movie, toys seem to be magically animated, and possess personalities independent of their original intent (i.e., Stinky Pete can be cultured and well-mannered, Zurg can be Buzz's loving father, etc.). So how would that apply to the toys from Small Soldiers? Would their magical toy personalities be different from their technological, A.I. personalities? Split personality disorder?

• Method acting.

Weird Question, would a paper toy (like a Cubee or another papercraft) be alive in the Toy Story world, considering they're technically a toy that you build, would they be a paper statue or would they be alive like the other toys?

• Hand made toys coming to life has already been addressed above, and the answer is yes.
  • Dolly in particular appears to be a hand-made toy that's perfectly animate, for canon credence.

I can't believe that this has not been asked yet, it bothered me as I saw the movie, maybe I am just missing something, but how did Lotso/his people think to interrogate that seemingly insignificant telephone toy to find out where Woody and the gang went? How could any of them have possibly known that he knew about all of their tricks AND that he was informing Woody and helping him to orchestrate his master plan? I am pretty sure when the phone was talking to Woody, they were off in the corner, and it was daytime so the usual hustle and bustle of the daycare center was going on, so nobody would notice, especially because Woody was supposed to be at sunnyside covertly. What?

• The phone guy does mention he's been under the radar for a while, and that they haven't broken him- presumably he's been on Lotso's suspect list for a while, but until now has evaded him. But when a bunch of new toys stage a plan that clearly required inside knowledge? Perfect suspect.'
  • I actually wondered if Chatter Phone was Lotso's informant all along.
• I theorize that the toy guards came into the Caterpillar room, saw the open door and Chatterbox, and assumed he was in consortia with the escaped toys. Heck, they could have rushed in and seen Chatterbox only a few minutes later, and through bashing, throwing and breaking off a wheel, they might have eventually extracted the escape information from him. Poor phone.

Not really a big deal, but if Sunnyside has security cameras, wouldn't toys have been caught coming to life by humans watching the cameras?

• The monkey is probably very meticulous about deleting or altering security logs of moving toys, replacing them with edited footage. Either that, or nobody ever actually looks at the records.
• Nobody checks them, since they're presumed to be boring. Nothing happened as far as humans can tell, no break ins, no vandalism, no theft. No reason to review the security footage if there's been no incident. I'm no security expert, but it'd make sense for security footage to be left alone unless there's been an obvious break-in. If they were really so interested, they would've hired a guard to actually watch the monitors instead of leaving them alone.
• It's also possible that the cameras are only meant for daytime monitoring of children. They're not meant to be used at night, and are shut down when the staff leaves. The monkey turns them on, and just monitors without recording.

Also not a big deal, but why does Buzz's instruction manual say to not told the reset button for more than 5 seconds is all it does is set him to Spanish Mode? Also, why would the section that states how to get him back to english be only in the spanish section? of the manual?

• The in-universe creators of the Buzz toy clearly made it incredibly badly. The plastic shaping of it is nice, but the electronics were poorly designed. For example, it has a friggen spanish mode.
• They were kind of in a hurry at that point, so it's entirely possible that Ham accidentally skipped the English section of the manual that dealt with this issue, and started reading the section of the manual that was in Spanish, and thought briefly that this was the only place to find the necessary instructions.

Why did the toys need to cross the dumpster the same time the garbage truck was going to pick it up?

• Just some Fridge Logic, before Woody was even trapped inside the dumpster, why did the toys need to choose that exact moment when the garbage truck was approaching to cross it? Couldn't they just have waited until it emptied the dumpster's contents and then proceeded? It's not like they were really rushed or anything, especially with Lotso's guards not wanting to kill them anymore. And furthermore, why did they even need to cross the dumpster in the first place? They could have just climbed it's ledge down to the ground, or at least jump across part of it.
• You could argue that they're in a race against time at the moment. Sometimes in a rather tense scenario, a person believes they can make it, even if it will be close...IF they make it. Before the possibility of using a Garbage truck came around, on-foot appeared to be the only option presented. This would be one hell of a run, especially if you consider the fact that they also have to remain hidden from early worms on their way. Personally if I thought much stealth was to be used in an already long trip, I wouldn't waste valuable seconds waiting for that truck.
• If the toys had stayed where they were, they would probably have been seen by the garbage men.

Mr. Potato Head's eyebrows lack consistency. They are not shown to have any peg or hole to attach to, nor does there seem to be any piece to attach them to his eyes (like his nose and 'stache), yet they always separate from his eyes whenever he falls apart. While this could be a special trait only when alive (such as plastic being able to detach or magically spawn in order for a toy to blink or talk, such as Woody's teeth), it also happens during the "Death By Monkeys" bit in Toy Story 2, and during the Caterpillar playtime scene in Toy Story 3 both of the Potato Heads' eyebrows are shown attached to their bodies without their eyes. (Yet during the original's opening, when Andy takes off "One-Eyed Bart's" eye, his eyebrow is attached to his eye.) Also, his expression seems to be inconsistent (in the previously mentioned monkey scene, his eyelid can be seen, whereas his eyes are usually completely open while not "alive").

• And speaking of One-Eye Bart, was anyone else bothered that his missing eye in the third was not the same as in the first? Yes, it makes perfect sense since he is a young kid, not a professional screenplay writer or director, but still it would have been nice. (And this may be my OCD speaking, but it would have made for some nice symmetry for One-Eyed Bart's missing eye to stay the same, One-Eyed Betty to be missing her left eye, and the aliens to each be missing a different eye each.)

Claw machines

Do all long-term claw-machine dwellers worship "The Claaaaw", or is it just the squeaky green guys?

• Not all worship The Claaaaaw.

In first Toy Story, Woody and Sid's toys are able to save Buzz by revealing to Sid that toys are alive. Woody more or less states that acting like toys when humans are around is only a rule and that the rule can be broken when it's important. So why is this strategy never employed in the sequels? It's certainly not for lack of equally life-threatening situations where it would have come in handy.

• I'd say it's because Sid is just a child. No one would believe him, and there's not much he'd be likely to do about it. Seems to me that most of the times in which the toys are alive around humans, there's a lot of them around, so keeping up the charade would be worth it, even though they could be seen, like during the yard sale rescue in Toy Story 2. There are other parts in the series where they take risky action in order to do things, just none where they reveal themselves to people because there are no other children threatening them. There's even some where something just barely turns out okay without the humans being suspicious, like a few examples in Toy Story 3. In the credits, Stretch puts a note in Bonnie's backpack for no other reason than to talk to Bonnie's toys, and what do you think would happen if Bonnie found the note? Or her parents? Plus, there's the fact that Woody wrote a note to Andy telling him to bring them to Bonnie, and if Andy's question to his mom had been any less vague than just "Mom, you really think I should donate these?" then she could've found out the toys somehow made it back to the house. She and Andy both thought that his mom accidentally threw them away, but Andy now thinks his mom got them back for him. If he'd thanked her, she'd tell him she didn't do it and then he'd be creeped out. Or, she could've seen the note and told him she didn't write it, resulting in similar consequences. In his mom's mind, all he was asking about were some other non-favorite toys in his room that he is thinking of donating somewhere, probably Sunnyside. So, it worked out like a Xanatos Roulette; Woody was risking a lot to write that note, but it still managed to work perfectly. So, uh... long story short, they have done things that at least severely risk revealing themselves in Toy Story 2 and 3, but they didn't directly demonstrate their sentience both because it was never necessary and because doing it to adults is too risky.
• My personal theory is that overriding the instinct of becoming lifeless when there's a human directly looking is a very hard thing to do and/or requires supertoy strenght/willpower, so very few toys are able to do it at all. Woody being an old and loved toy would be able to and Sid's constructions being made of several toys may be able to sum all the willpower together. Think about Cast from Hit Points or Once in a Lifetime thing.

What role do batteries play in the context of toys being alive?

• Obviously toys don't need batteries to move around, just like they don't need biological systems (oxygen, water, and food as energy sources, etc). It can basically be taken as a given that the toys have an infinite amount of magical energy that they can use a given amount of at a time, (since toys with no moving parts like Hamm and toys that don't have enough structural support to stand up like Woody have no problems) so why would a toy need batteries unless they are just pretending to for the humans' sake? This would explain it except that the series seems to imply that batteries are required. For example, Lotso mentions that Sunnyside's toy repair area has "enough spare batteries to choke a hungry hungry hippo," which wouldn't be necessary since the daycare must have adults present that will change the batteries when needed. It's not like they're so stupid and ignorant about toys that they'd throw them away just because they need new batteries, and thus the toys need to provide their own batteries. There's also the part in the first in which RC is rendered stationary because his batteries are dead. How many of his functions does he lose; is he completely inanimate/unconscious without batteries? If so, why can Mr. Potato Head or Hamm do anything? They're basically empty shells with a few holes in them.
  • The only answer I can think of is: Every toy is a different case. Just like Slinky acts like a "person", yet Bullseye acts like a dog. Buzz only needs it to his leds, but RC needs it to move(He seems to still be conscious when he stops moving)
  • If you were to take the battery out of Buzz Lightyear, he could still move around and stuff, but none of his electronic components would function. Hence why RC could not move; generally speaking, remote control vehicles need batteries to move.

It bugs me how loud humans are every time they are coming to where toys are. Everyone yells or talks to themselves and walks loudly. Maybe the toys have super hearing or some kind of 6th sense?

• Maybe it helps that humans (even the children) are huge giants compared to the toys. Even if a human is walking and talking normally, it probably sounds extremely loud in the toys' ears. You would probably hear Godzilla's steps even if it was just going about its business.
• I ascribe to the Epileptic Tree that toys can hear humans louder and at greater distances than humans can hear; likewise, what sounds like "talking" between toys would barely sound like a whisper to humans. It's the only way the Masquerade could be maintained.

There's no consistency regarding whether vehicle toys are alive or not.

• In the first movie, RC and if I recall, some of Sid's toy cars are alive. In Toy Story 3, Lotso's trucks appear to be alive, though they don't actually have faces. Every other toy vehicle--the Barbie cars, the trains from the beginning of Toy Story 3 and at Sunnyside, and various other bit 'characters' aren't. What's the deciding element?
  • If I remember correctly, Lotso's truck was driven by another, smaller toy, it wasn't moving by itself. It probably does depend on whether or not they have faces or something. RC had visible eyes, the other toy cars we've seen do not.

Considering how much the plot borrowed from it, why is there no visual Shout-Out to The Brave Little Toaster?

• I like to think I'm just missing it, of course, but Pixar can put in Totoro, Fry and Shake, Scruffy the Janitor, but it's too much trouble to slip Toaster or Radio or Blanky or the others in the background? Pixar could have easily put them in Sunnyside, in one of the kitchens, or, hell, even somewhere along the conveyor belt.

Meta Toy Story IJBM

I'm a toy kitbasher. Are my Transformers and Warhammer figures plotting to kill me?

• Only if you kitbash them poorly. Do a great job, and they'll love you for making them awesome.
• Starscream might be trying to overthrow you.
• God help us all if the Death Guard and Decepticon armies get into a war with my Tau Empire force, which has recruited the Autobots as auxililary troops...wait, no, that would be awesome.
• I should be safe. The 20 Batmen will keep me alive.
  • Unless he turns against you, too. Then you're deader than a very dead thing.
• Oh God... what happened to the toys at the bottom of my drawer... the ones that "didn't survive the operation?" Holy crap, the wingless, headless Starscream, the legless Sideways, mutilated patchwork BB, no... nooo... PLEASE FORGIVE ME!
  • You think you got it bad? This troper made a custom Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner figure, once. Among others. What do you think they're going to do to me?!
• Pathetic mortals! I have all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their allies! Plus the Technodrome, along with the Shredder and every evil mutant he ever created! We will crush you!
• Those small, fragile, easy-disassembled trinkets? Pah, a little girl's array of durable dolls and tough trucks will really rule the room. Warhammer figurines would probably end up being more GRIMDARK versions of the Army Men.
• Absolute fools, all of you. I (proabably) still have all of my custom built bionicle warriors in my lego box somewhere in my closet! I can bust them out and poke you with little plastic swords!
• This troper has a robot Viking. IT WILL DESTROY YOU!
  • And I, Prime Evil, have two Talking Daleks. I call your bluff, each and every last one of you.
• Depending on whether or not vehicle toys count, your Scalectric and model Trains have to put up with you putting hundreds of volts through them just to make them move. God forbid if they ever work out how to steer themselves.

This has to do with the negative Toy Story 3 reviews outrage. No less than five tropes are dedicated to the "controversy" sparked off by the Rotten Tomatoes score. Isn't that a little excessive? Twice is more than enough, but five times is definitely overkill. Instead of spending precious energy hating these reviewers, use it to celebrate this great film instead. I can understand a little anger, but this is ridiculous. Five years from now, this "injustice" will be forgotten and people will still enjoy TS3. It's not the end of the world.

• First of all, which tropes are you referring to that are "dedicated" to the negative reviews? Secondly, I agree that some of the reaction to the negative reviews has been a little excessive, but you need to understand that Nerd Rage is a very powerful force, particularly on the internet, which gives an outlet to said Nerd Rage. And when you look closely at it, much of the anger is very much justified. There are exactly 3 negative reviews out of nearly 200, and for the first day and a half after the film's release, it had a score of 100%, just like Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Admittedly, a perfect score for the whole trilogy isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme or things, but it is disappointing that it didn't happen, particularly since there is something wrong with all three negative reviews. One of them is Armond White, who everybody who follows Rotten Tomatoes hates because he is very clearly a Troll, who gives good reviews to bad movies and bad reviews to good movies for the sole purpose of attention and to screw up the RT score. The second is some nobody with a film blog who is seeking attention the same way White is and by all accounts shouldn't be counted as a film critic by RT. Finally, there is Cole Smithey, who deserves the least of the fan backlash because he's a legitimate critic with an honest slightly negative opinion of the movie, but his reasons for giving the movie a rotten rating amounted to "the 3D wasn't good, the toys were out of character, and the movie was too scary and mature for younger audiences to be rated G." None of the 3 rotten reviews deserve to be taken seriously, and yet RT is taking them seriously enough to allow them to sully the reputation of an otherwise practically perfect series of films. As for the "just shut up and enjoy the movie" argument, I won't deny its validity, but for many people it's the principle of the thing, and for others, the knowledge that an entire legion of professional film critics said that this series of films was So Cool Its Awesome does in fact add to the enjoyment of series, and are upset at that the mere three people who, for very stupid reasons, dared to take that from them.
  • The tropes that mention it: 8.8, Fan Dumb, wall banger are still present. It was also on He Panned It, Now He Sucks and Hatedom earlier, though someone (you?) read my rant and decided to reduce the complaining. Thanks. Anyway, I understand getting into an internet rage every now and then, but does anyone seriously think Pixar's blowing a casket like you tropers? 100+ million for the 1st weekend box office and near-unanimous positive reviews is a lot to celebrate, and they earned it. As much as Armond White deserves ridicule for trying to ruin their victory with his remarks, it's best to stop feeding the fire. It never phased him before, so why would this be any different? The best way to defeat a troll is to ignore him. By having at least three internet articles trashing him post-Toy Story 3, we're giving White the attention he craves, and he deserves none of it. Don't ruin Pixar's victory by reveling in White's misery.

Do all toys based on TV shows act like the onscreen characters they are based on? (Woody didn't really seem to, but Buzz did...) And, if so, what do my Megatron and the Fallen do all day?

• More or less the same thing the Zurg action figures do all day, presumably. Which is to say, probably try to conquer the other toys, and failing miserably due to lack of any abilities beyond that of the average toy. Unicron toys, wanting to be very, very alone and lacking any way to do anything about it, are presumably simply antisocial.
• Or maybe they hold seminars on Plastic Corrosion and share macrame tips.

It occurs to me that I may have inadvertently given some of my toys zany personalities that will inevitably lead to shenanigans now that they've found new homes. Should I be concerned?

• Awesome. They can join forces with my army of Decepticons and conquer a daycare.
• It's all subjective, above troper. Andy saw Rex as the meanest dinosaur that ever lived, and in actuality he's The Chick of the Five-Man Band. There's a good chance most of your Decepticons are actually peacemakers.
  • TV show toys start out acting like their model character, though, whereas Rex is a generic. The character of the decepticons in question likely resembles that of the show characters (Woody and Jessie are still similar to their source characters, after all), but how much their personality diverged and evolved on its probably depends on how well they adjusted to the reality of their toy nature (look at Buzz here, later-movies personality compared to earlier ones. He acts similar, but different).
  • Rex's personality, I always thought, came from his toy design. I mean, look at him -- for the biggest, meanest dinosaur ever, the toy designers seem to have gone out of their way to make sure he doesn't actually scare the kids; he's all gentle, rounded contours and goofy-looking eyes. The result is a friendly, but neurotic toy dinosaur who shies away from confrontations and, despite insisting that he's a dangerous predator, couldn't hurt a toy fly. (Trixie clearly comes from the same toy lines as Rex, and has an equally "kid-friendly" design, but since she's not supposed to represent a bloodthirsty predator she seems somewhat more well-adjusted.)

It just bugs me that a lot of IJB Ms on this page are actually alluding to real life. More specifically, Decepticon Action Figures. Should there be a spin-off of this movie series where Transformers Action Figures are the main cast and it deals with the adults' fascination with toys?

• No, that is simply a matter of people being fascinated with the premise, and applying it to their own toys- basically, discussion of how the rules of Living Toys work with licensed characters, using examples the tropers are personally familiar with. Although a spinoff TV show featuring a variety of licensed character toys would indeed be awesome. If they set it at a toy store (or a daycare center with a high toy immigration rate), they could even have a rotating product placement cast!
• The movies have to create their own licensed characters because it'd be too costly and difficult to cast the kind of toys kids played with in real life. (that and they might as well tell a story with their own characters instead of yet another Transformers series) Buzz Lightyear and to a lesser extent Woody are likely the in-universe equivalent of such franchises as Transformers that are big toy sellers and popular with kids.

Critics being upset about the believability of Andy wanting to bring a toy with him to college. Seriously, how many of you brought your toys to college?

• * coughs* I may have taken quite a few to class with me. Rendering takes time and Iron Man/The TARDIS/Nite Owl/Various Dinosaurs/Remote Controlled Daleks/Lord of the Rings figures are a remarkably fun way of passing said time.
• I brought my LEGO figures, Decepticons and * cough* my beloved stuffed monkey.
• Just one, the stuffed doggie I've had for as long as I can remember
• Raggedy Ann lived in my dorm room. But she got moved to a less conspicuous spot when she drew weird looks from my roommate's boyfriend. Also, Lando Calrissian, Piccolo, the Pink Ranger, and Will Smith did battle on my bookshelf. And a few of the guys I knew brought their Ninja Turtles.
• This troper is going off to college soon, and has been convinced by 3 to take her own Woody and Buzz with her.
• This troper brought her favorite Care Bear, who she's had since the age of three. And a few Beanie Babies, although they were mostly for display.
• This troper not only took several dolls with her to college, she also had her 1978 'Large Size Action Figure' Princess Leia doll in her luggage during Basic training at Ft. Jackson. Leia had her own space in my locker during my entire Army career. None of my COs had a problem with it.
• This troper has half a dozen soft toys, some Lego and a model Dalek in her room, though admittedly they are mostly just ornaments now.
• This troper brought his beloved teddy bear from 3 years old and a Kirby plushie from Nintendo world in 2007, mostly they're "bed buddies" so he doesn't feel lonely until he finds a girlfriend.
• I brought my teddy bear and some model airplanes. They all stayed on a shelf, however. ;-)
• I, er, collect liscenced character plushies. At last inventory, I had Turtwig, Charmander, Piplup, Bulbasaur, Lickylicky, Giratina, Domo-kun, Godzilla, Cthulhu, Simon and Boota, Theodore Roosevelt, Scotty, Sonic the Hedgehog, a super mushroom, Kirby, Pac-Man, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde, and three of those plush microbes (swine flu, common cold, multiple-resistant staphlococcus aureus). Either they're all very happy about being taken to college, or I'm going to be strangled in my sleep one of these days for never playing with any of them.
• Dude, you're bringing swine flu and multiple-resistant staphlococcus aureus with you to college. If Toy Story holds any weight at all, it's not strangulation you need to worry about.
  • Remember cowardly apex predator Rex, though; toy simulacra of real-world killers aren't necessarily as fatal as their conceptual progenitors.
• Hell, I bought new toys just for the college dresser display.
• I took my favorites, but at least partly because of Toy Story.

Isn't this really just the 1986 film The Christmas Toy?

Let's see: all the toys in a kid's playroom come to life when no one's watching, but freeze in place and act like toys when spotted by humans. These toys know that they're toys, and are happy just be played with and making their owner happy; they are, however, slightly insecure about the prospect of being replaced by newer, cooler toys. One year, the kid receives a Christmas/birthday present which threatens to displace the current favorite. The new toy is a space-themed doll which doesn't realize it's a toy, instead believing it has somehow landed on a strange new planet. The jealous older toy remains in denial about it's status as the favorite, which eventually causes both to get lost far from the safety of the playroom. They must put aside their differences to make it to safety. Granted, I'm working from a fuzzy childhood memory here, but isn't that kind of... exactly the same?

• • Funny, my mother made that exact same comment no more than one hour ago, when I was joking about sex toys, and the conversation went to cat toys and their interactions. I hadn't actually thought about that movie for awhile until she brought it up.
    • If it's the same movie I'm thinking of, then Toy Story at least does away with the requirement that the toys be in exactly the same place where their owner left them. But if it makes you feel any better, this kind of "borrowing" is nothing new.

Why does my Woody doll have a thick torso, thick arms and legs while the movie Woody is clearly thin?

• Making toys that exactly resemble their movie counterparts is probably harder than you think. Or They Just Didn't Care. A full-featured Buzz Lightyear would be awesome...
• Really, how hard can it possibly be? Especially for Woody. Just a little less stuffing, and a closed mouth smile (instead of a toothy smile), and bam, exact movie replica. Buzz, I can understand, since retracting his wings and helmet probably would be difficult to make, and the kung fu button seem impractical. But there's no good excuse not to make a proper Woody toy.
  • There is a Buzz doll out there that does everything the movie Buzz does except the karate attack.
• This has been lampshaded by John Lasseter in the Toy Story Collection videos. The newer Woody may not have a closed mouth, but it's the damn closest thing to a real life replica ^{[dead link]}

The Caterpillar / Butterfly Room Load Distribution

Okay, so bear with me. At the day-care centre under Lotso Andy's toys are put in the Caterpillar Room. The Butterfly Room is where the other, older toys live. Lotso says to Woody that living in the Caterpillar Room a burden they ask the new toys to shoulder so that the older toys who can't withstand the wear and tear don't have to go through it. It's never actually revealed whether Lotso is just lying to them, whether they do move toys out of the Caterpillar Room once they've been played with a bit, or if the new toys are just offered up as a sacrifice, to be played with until destroyed to protect the older toys, or if there is really a need to put some toys in the Caterpillar Room.

If there is that need, you'd expect that to be the kind of system that would be set up, though it is crude, maybe there would be exceptions made. If the toys in the Butterfly Room have been there a while, they would also have been through the Caterpillar Room themselves; I'd expect them to be resentful if the new toys wanted to dodge the duty that everyone went through, putting the older toys' lives at risk if one day the Caterpillar Room is empty of toys and one of the adults picks up some to go there.

There are reasons to presume there is a need or presumed need to put toys in the Caterpillar Room. Woody complains Andy's toys aren't age-appropriate for the little kids. If there were enough age-appropriate toys, wouldn't they be in that room out of choice? Or would they avoid it to have better company and the repair facilities of the Butterfly Room. The Caterpillar Room seems largely empty. As a simple question, does the room need toys to be played with? Or are the little kids to play only with the other stuff? Or do the toys just imagine the need to give the little kids toys out of toy-instinct?

There are though other reasons Lotso might try to push the new toys into the Caterpillar Room. It could help to ensure the newcomers not make trouble for the group when they are allowed to become full members of the daycare-toy society, or it could just be a way to keep them loyal to his rule, allowing the newcomers in in only when they are loyal to him without a particular concern for the needs of the community.

It's not that I sympathise with Lotso, he's a jerk, and I liked the movie, but when Barbie returned to the daycare everything was supposed to be brilliant. If there really was a problem that necessitated rationing toys between the room so that the older toys weren't killed, it wouldn't just go away because they have a democracy. The only thing that would stop it would be if a large number of little kids' toys arrived offscreen.

So what's going on?

• A few things, which work to demonstrate that the situation under Lotso is clearly unfair. Assuming that there is a shortage of little kids toys in the Caterpillar Room, meaning that some of the older kids toys in the Butterfly Room have to take up the slack:
  • Firstly, while it's all very well for Lotso to talk about 'paying your dues' and how once you've served time in the Caterpillar Room you can go into the Butterfly Room, it's hinted if not directly shown that the reality doesn't work like that, for the simple reason that even most new toys would not last long under the kind of rough wear and tear they receive from toddlers; they arguably don't have a chance to move up into the Butterfly Room. Furthermore, it seems that Lotso cherry-picks new arrivals for those who will be useful / loyal to him and leaves the rest to rot; Buzz has a chance to get out, but the rest 'aren't going anywhere' and are described as 'toddler-fodder', the clear implication being that they aren't getting out of the Caterpillar Room. It's not just 'older toys' who are put in the Butterfly Room -- after his mind-wipe Buzz gets put in there on his second day -- but those who are loyal to Lotso, or otherwise frightened of him enough to obey his orders.
  • Also, as has been noted previously on this page, those toys are not age-appropriate for children that age and for that kind of play (particularly the Potato Heads), and probably shouldn't be in the hands of children that age. They will break easier, and possibly harm the children. Not only that, but there's also completely unprepared for what happens; during his tour, Lotso doesn't mention anything to prepare them to expect the kind of rough treatment they end up receiving; they go in expecting an idyllic playtime, and almost get torn apart. It's not just selfishness that motivates them to seek admittance to the Butterfly Room; they clearly don't belong there. And if you think about it, there's also one toy we see a lot of who would be perfect for the Caterpillar Room, and that's Lotso himself. He's a big, cuddly, brightly coloured teddy bear, fairly sturdy in construction but not likely to harm the children if he breaks or if they play with him the wrong way. Yet notice also how Lotso has arranged things so that he is nowhere near the Caterpillar Room when playtime comes. There's probably others as well who, for one reason or another, have gotten on Lotso's good side enough to keep them out of the Caterpillar Room. It's all very well to say that new toys need to take the bullet for old toys and it's unfair for them to try and shirk out of this, but it's just as unfair for new toys which are not supposed to be played with by toddlers are being put through all that while old toys which are perfect for toddlers get away from it.
  • The toys in the Butterfly Room are shown to have repair facilities, spare parts, etc -- all things which can keep them going longer. This despite the fact that they are also shown to experience less overall wear and tear. The toys in the Caterpillar Room, however, are basically left to fend for themselves and, at the end of the day, are shoved into cages with no indication that they are given any kind of repairs or mends after the rough treatment they get. That is nakedly unfair, since they are subject to more work and yet have little access to resources; the situation is clearly weighed against them.
  • And finally, how things change when Barbie and Ken take over, and how this affects the distribution of labour, and why this is better. We clearly see at one point that two of Lotso's old goons from the Butterfly Room have been transferred to the Caterpillar Room, and we also see there's a kind of pit-stop thing going on. The clear implication is that there's now more of a rota system at work -- rather than a situation where some toys are permanently in the Butterfly Room and others in the Caterpillar Room, it's not hard to imagine that they take turns, maybe having one day or play-period in one room, then switching to the other. It also seems like the repair facilities mentioned above have been more equally distributed so that the toys in the Caterpillar Room which have greater need of them have greater access to them, meaning that they can withstand the brutal treatment they receive for longer and last longer. Maybe not ideal, but certainly an improvement.

Is it wrong for me to think that grown-up Andy is really, really cute?

• No, it is not. And no, you are not alone in that sentiment. He kind of looks like a grown up Hiccup, in a way.

Wait, so Andy's Mom isn't going with him on his first day of college?

• What? Not everyone needs their mother to go with them.

Is it just me, or does Andy's mom resemble Justin's mom quite a bit?

• • I think it's just you, I've never thought so. Maybe a tiny resemblance, but it's a stretch.

Need Help Sorting

Where did the Barbies at the end come from? Andy didn't have any, and Molly's not old enough to take an interest in them.

• Who says Andy didn't have any? Or maybe his mom collects them.
• I wouldn't put it past misguided relatives giving Barbies to Molly, either. Not everyone buys age-appropriate toys for kids.
• You'd be surprised how young a girl will be given barbies. Mt sisters had them when they were far too young to play with them.
• If you listen to the commentary, it becomes clear that this is a case of Rule of Cool at work.

Since when are the little green men characters in the Buzz Lightyear universe? They were the mascots of Pizza Planet, but there was nothing to tie them in to Buzz Lightyear.

• Maybe they were part of Buzz Lightyear franchise and were later added as mascots of Pizza Planet.
  • Snoopy somehow became the mascot of Metlife Insurance. Anything is possible in character licensing.
• Or alternatively Buzz is part of a Pizza Planet backed line of toys. It doesn't seem that far of stretch given the space theme for the company to be the ones behind the Buzz Lightyear universe as a way of creating an interest in space themed stuff for kids.
  • This troper figured the LGM toys were made exclusively available at Pizza Planet while other toys in the Buzz Lightyear line could be bought in other stores. I have noticed that some toy lines (i.e. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) had certain products that could only be obtained at certain stores.

Regarding the same scene as the above, why does Andy put Woody in the toy box, while the secondary cast and even Snake and Robot get to stay out? It's not like he suddenly dropped from favorite to least favorite! And it can't be that being in the toy box is more of an honour than being on the shelf, since we know that Mr. Potato Head/Slinky/Rex/Hamm are in Andy's "third tier" right below Buzz (and eventually Jessie/Bullseye/Mrs. Potato Head/possibly the aliens join that tier).

• To keep the dust off him?
• Maybe they all got out of the toybox after Andy went to sleep so they could spread out comfortably. Woody was just too depressed to join them.

This one concerns the entire Toy Story universe, but I thought about it in particular following the third film. Namely, just what constitutes a legitimate "owner" of a toy?

• Throughout the movies, the main toys seem obsessed with getting back into Andy's possession (or in the third film, with Woody trying to convince the others that they're still Andy's toys). But just what makes them eternally Andy's toys? We of course sympathize with them when they fall into Sid's hands, are stolen by Al or are donated to Sunnyside, but on what authority does a toy recognize one person as having a legitimate claim to them instead of another? Technically, Buzz and Woody became Sid's toys when he won them in the claw game at Pizza Planet (he had no idea where they came from). They never accepted this position, but in real life, if I won a toy in such a game, it would be mine. Al steals Woody and adds them to his collection. Even though he acquired them illegally, possession is still 9/10ths of the law. Who would know how he got them? Technically, Woody belongs to Al then. I know the toys have an emotional attachment to Andy, but in real life, toys get lost or sold off all the time. The fact that the toys reject any other owner besides Andy (until the end of the third film, of course) [[[Fridge Logic]] only seems to raise more questions]. Are Bo Peep, Wheezy and the other toys lost between the second and third movies THIS VERY MINUTE seeking out Andy? When does a toy reject a new owner and when do they consider them legitimate?
  • "I know the toys have an emotional attachment to Andy" -- you've just answered your own question here, really. You tend to discuss the toys as inanimate objects (as they would be in real life) where in the context of these movies, they're clearly emotional beings who regard their owner as, say, a child regards a parent. In such circumstances, possession being 9/10s of the law means diddly; if you find a lost kid in a supermarket or (heaven forbid) kidnap it (as are probably the closest real-life comparisons to the first two movies), s/he doesn't suddenly become yours and is unlikely to immediately regard you as their new parent. In practical terms, the toy is probably going to consider the kid who possesses and plays with them the most to be their 'owner', as these are the circumstances where this emotional bond is more likely to develop, and presumably the bond is only broken when the toy is either actively discarded or directly transferred to a new owner. Neither of these happen in the first two movies, and in the third when the toys believe they have been discarded (other than Woody, who knows they weren't) they're disgruntled and willing to stay at the daycare; it's only when they realize that Andy hasn't discarded them that they're willing to try and get back to him. When Andy gives the toys to Bonnie, he is clearly transferring ownership of them to her -- as such, while they might still care for Andy, they're willing to accept Bonnie as their new owner. As for the other toys, they've clearly been discarded or transferred themselves by this point, so have doubtless gone through something similar.

In this movie, it's implied that Christmas decorations are alive. In the last movie, it was implied that lawn gnomes are alive. If that's the case, what else is alive? Statues? Cardboard cuttouts? Masks? Suits of armour? Puppets? If that's the case, is there a size limit for things that turn out to be alive? This is kind of bothering me.

• It's complicated. We see in Toy Story 2, there's a bunch of Woody's Roundup merch that doesn't come to life.

Why is there a ladder there?

So, they're on a conveyor belt leading to a furnace, and then suddenly there's a ladder there, that's the perfect size for them and leads to a stop button. Why it there in the first place (the ladder and the stop button), and why is it so small (from the look of it humans would be able to reach that thing with no help from a ladder)? But a human wouldn't need it anyway considering none of them would be on the conveyor belt in the first place. It would of made a little more sense if it was for really weird situations but it comes after spinning blades.

• It is quite possible that those are for repairmen who need to get access to that area
  • Really tiny repairmen.

Am I the only one who thought Woody and Jessie were supposed to be romantically linked?

I spent a large amount of the 2000s thinking that there was supposed to be text there. I knew of Buzz's crush on Jessie, wherever it came from, but I didn't think much of it. Come the third movie, and apparently Buzz and Jessie are the couple. I call Relationship Writing Fumble, even in the third movie its there in spades.

• • Where did you get that Woody and Jessie were romantically linked? There wasn't anything to show that. Where as Jessie and Buzz, well, they might of well have put "Ship them!" in big letters on the screen.

1. ↑ Fridge Brilliance after reading the above entry-->
2. ↑ How did Big Baby get inside the vending machine, hmm? Try to answer that one.