Let's Talk Toy Story

By Kestron

Let’s Talk Toy Story

Toy Stories 1, 2, 3, 4, Shorts, That Time Forgot, and Of Terror. Also Lightyear. We’re gonna talk Lightyear too. And ultimately, we’re gonna talk about the trailers for 5. We won’t be talking about them in order because I need to explain why I’m bringing one up at a time.
The Toy Story franchise never had a timeline problem. It was straightforward. Release order. Toy Story 1, 2, 3, and the Shorts/Of Terror/That Time Forgot. Then we got Toy Story 4.

Toy Story 4

And man, Toy Story 4 just had to like, not do any research at all. Toy Story was entirely complete and entirely cohesive. Then this ONE MOVIE made us have to sift through everything before scratching our heads.
Bo is now a freaking lamp. I will forever call this one of the dumbest retcons. Because it doesn’t let them do anything narratively at all. Nothing. It enables nothing. They wanted her to be in an antique shop? She’s already ceramic and from a classic children’s tale in a classy style. She’d absolutely be in an antique shop.

They literally did the entire retcon exclusively to bait Woody inside the shop without showing Bo. They could’ve found another way. Some other toy or knick knack from the box Bo was carried off in. Show the lamp separate from Bo with no connection to Bo other than having been in the same box that was given away.

It’s a messy retcon that had no purpose. In regards to the movie’s existence as a whole we didn’t need Bo closure to begin with, and ultimately that’s what Toy Story 4 is when you come down to it. There was something in the subtext about the only closure being her absence and a dejected “Yeah, we even lost Bo…” from Woody. It helped hammer Lotso’s point home that kids rarely if ever love toys forever. There was needed subtext in the little closure we had. It served a very specific narrative purpose.

How little effort they put into adding Bo to this movie is already incredibly frustrating. Then we talk about the Bonnie era before TS4.

Bonnie Era Spin Off Media

We get a handful of shorts. Rex is bullied and accidentally floods the house by plugging the bathtub whilst seeking affirmation from his newfound water toy friends. Buzz is impersonated by a happy meal toy for all of two seconds before being immediately realized. Barbie and Ken sneak into Bonnie’s backpack expecting to go on vacation but instead play in kitty litter sand with the other toys while gaslamping a depressed Ken.

And the episode length ones. We get a feature about the toys being gladiators against dino toys. And one about the horrors of a hotel and toy trafficking. We’ll talk about the latter in a bit.

What’s the point of bringing these up? Bonnie has the toys a minimum of six months to go from summer to Christmas (Halloween also needs to fit so it can’t be Christmas to summer, not that Of Terror has to be Halloween but it’s nicer to be around that timeframe), and it’s heavily implied that the toys have been with Bonnie a long time and acclimated into this being normal life with no looking back. Dolly is barely present if at all and definitely not belittling Woody in these either. Woody is front and center in all of these in fact.

Then came Toy Story 4 which wanted a preschool Bonnie and so retconned that Woody and the toys were newcomers, and Woody was washed up and not loved by Bonnie or even cared about. Great job keeping your promise to Andy, Bonnie. That lasted a couple weeks? Actually less. If the toys are newcomers and Andy was leaving for college, then Bonnie’s school year has to be starting immediately as Andy leaves. There is days to a single week tops between 3 and 4. We can’t afford a year’s worth of time because the gang is treated as newbies to Bonnie’s room. Woody is belittled as the newcomer who doesn’t know Bonnie and needs to stop hoping to be played with again. By Dolly, who we hardly if ever see in the other Bonnie era media.

So… where’d the Bonnie era go? It’s now retconned entirely? C’mon. At least we’re going to be consistent from here on out… right? Nope, we got another short to mention.

Lamp Life

Here we get a short where Bo explains to Woody about her adventures in between the flashback at an undefined point after Toy Story 2 and TS4 itself. Bo grows up through several different kids, and is tossed around the world.
We go through one baby and their sibling starting at age 1ish until about age 10ish. So 9ish years.
Then ambiguously we montage through 2 more babies, a roadside Jessie style abandonment moment, and then end up in a baby shower. It’s implied she then ages with the kid into teen years. Then she ends up… on a ship? Then in some super snowy area? Before finally being glued down to the lamp for an undefined but significant amount of time in the antique shop. Toy Story 4 implies a long spance of time since Bo was in the antique shop. It also implies she was in there a long time.

You seeing the problem yet?
In Toy Story 2 Andy is at the most generous 8. In Toy Story 3 he is 18. Bo stays with the first family about 9 years. It’s implied she grows up with a second kid for at least 15 years in the middle of this. Ignoring this and calling it another hand change montage piece, it’s still 7 different hand changes and a trip around the world then a significant amount of time in the antique shop and a significant amount of time as a lost toy before Woody shows up - in one year. This is also assuming Bo is dumped the same night Toy Story 2 ends.

How do we reconcile this!?

Woody: “That all happened!?”
Bo: “Yeah! Well… more or less.”

Oy vey, Pixar. Oy vey.
Lamp Life doesn’t feature any character arcs or anything you’d find in a story being told just to be told. The short exists purely to fill in the blanks on Bo’s backstory. There’s no value to this short as a standalone piece. So if we’re just going to hand wave it away before the credits even roll, what was the point of telling it in the first place? We didn’t need this short, it didn’t need to be made. This could’ve been left fully unsaid, if you’re going to hand wave away a short who’s whole purpose is to fill in gaps before the credits roll, why make the short? You pulled the glue out of the gaps before it was even in the gaps.

So, this is just a thing now? We tell contradictory stories and hand wave anything incompatible?

Lightyear

Yeah that’s exactly what we do now.

Okay so Lightyear.
Buzz does not have his helmet down for any significant portion of time in this movie. Buzz does not use his wings for more than a 30 second sequence… in space where there’s already no gravity. Buzz is more of a kind dork who’s slow to accept change than he is an arrogant, mocking leader. Spoiler: Zurg is Buzz. Not his father. Buzz is Zurg. Zurg does not want to destroy Buzz Lightyear, he wants a fuel cell to go home. Far too many supporting cast members are added that we never see referenced in the Toy Story series, even in passing - main, central characters with more appeal to children than Buzz himself perhaps.

There is no way for our toy Buzz to get the idea he can fly significantly implanted, for toy Zurg to think himself Buzz’s father, or for Buzz to become obsessed with his helmet. The personalities are completely different. To Infinity and Beyond is never said while flying, only in a solidarity finger touch moment. Now you might say it’s being filtered through a kid’s imagination, but it’s not. Toy Story 2 shows a display case Buzz with no child interaction. Toy Story 3 resets Buzz to unintervened factory settings.

This is all fine and dandy as an ultimately enjoyable Toy Story inspired spin-off… until the movie opens immediately with “This is the movie Andy saw in 1995, it was his favorite movie and led to his Buzz obsession” (paraphrase). Pixar that could’ve been left unsaid and people would be much happier left to personal interpretation. The Pixar Theory Cinematic Universe thrives on this stuff. The movie was fine without this title card, with it you’re just setting a level of expectations you don’t fulfill.

And it’s not hard to make this all work. When Lightyear is failing to jump to hyperspace, and he’s basically crashing each time, and the computer is literally yelling at him to eject, let him. Crash the ship into the ocean each time. Buzz ejects and uses his wings to fly back down. When Izzy’s climactic moment of spacewalking comes, make the scene cooler. Make the tension come from her actively using the wings and trying to figure out how to use them.
Make Lightyear inseparable from his Space Ranger suit. For the amount of nostalgia for Rangering he’s going through, this is very narratively supported. Have his helmet down always. Never flip it up. Have one of the planets or moons have no air on it. Have the pen guy bump his helmet up and Buzz start gasping for air as he suffocates until someone flips his helmet back down. Or use Zurg shattering the helmet as a climax. Do something with it.
Take that first time the gang sees Zurg and have him step out of the suit. Buzz says “Daddy?” a’la Cap seeing Bucky Barnes, Chris Evans Easter eggs yay, just like he does later, and then they get away. They discuss who Zurg could be and their conclusion is Buzz’s father, maybe they do the abusive father trope and they assume Zurg wants to DESTROY BUZZ LIGHTYEAR. Then the movie continues the same way later.

So we’ve already retconned all of the Bonnie era shorts into non-existence with Toy Story 4. Now with Lightyear we’ve also retconned Toy Stories 1, 2 and 3 for the reset Buzz moments with Lightyear. Lightyear actually reinforces Buzz’s new more goofy personality in Toy Story 4 if anything, lending to the idea that Toy Story 4 is almost a silent reboot of the franchise.

So all that’s left intact is Toy Story 4, and a movie within a now retconned movie. Great.

We Didn’t Need More

Toy Story 3 already closed the loop. Andy went to college, passed his toys on to Bonnie, Woody learned to accept that Andy’s childhood was over. We left off on a completed trilogy. There was no thread left to open up.
Then Toy Story 4 cut Woody’s shoulder open to pull the stuffing out.
Then Lightyear forgot who Buzz was like he went into a mode above Demo mode.
Why? Toy Story is the original movie. Toy Story 2 was originally intended as a straight to home video practice film before they decided they liked it and made it a full thing. Toy Story 3 closed off the ends and gave us a conclusion to the franchise. The Bonnie era media kept Toy Story fresh for kids and merchandising agreements. Toy Story 4 decided we needed to give more closure for Bo Peep, or alternatively decided it was absolutely necessary to change the damsel trope she had going. Lamp Life exists in theory to explain where Bo was but soft retcons itself before they even finish, making it a pointless short to have made in the first place. Lightyear is a spin-off that gets too ambitious with its canonicity claims.
Like these are all good movies I actually like all of them in a vacuum, but as a set? It’s getting really sloppy trying to keep coherent. Any problems arise? It only happened mostly. Toy Story 4 at least closed with finality, Woody left with Bo. The arc is done. Woody is a lost toy now. Jessie took over for Woody… from Woody… who Dolly made very clear meant nothing… y’know what forget it. The point is, the canon is finally done, so we can move on to things being stable moving forward, right? Wrong.

Toy Story 5

This movie just had its first trailer drop and boy howdy hey.
Okay this is where I forego objective analysis and complain.
WHY DO WE NEED THIS?
The villain of this movie is… Lilypad. The tablet.
This is very directly and blatantly a Leappad. Not an iPad, a Leapfrog tablet. Leapfrog tablets are built from the ground up to be educational and remain educational. I remember trying endlessly to find a game that wasn’t just blasting elementary concepts at me when I was a kid on my Leappad. Yeah, let’s dog on Leappads and not an iPad. Like if you’re gonna do this story, it’s iPads that kids have. Leappads are way out of fashion by this point and were in my opinion never a problem. It’s iPads that give access to YouTube and app stores and social media. But Pixar has always been partial to Apple having been founded by the same guy and they do need to make it look like a toy but like c’mon you could’ve made it more generic or a different animal than just literally ripping off Leappads.
Jessie communicates with the lost toy Woody… through a toy Walkie Talkie. Please tell me the movie shows she had to signal him to get in range and close enough, please don’t just leave that as a known constant thing they do from long distance.
Jessie is also clearly in charge and feels responsible for Bonnie, making the Dolly conflict with Woody in Toy Story 4 even more strained than it already was.

Mr. Potato Head: It’s good to see the two of them fighting again.
Slinky: It sure is.

- Toy Story 5 Trailer

No, Pixar, it isn’t. Don’t tell us how to interpret the trailer. We did this in two different movies already. The arc is done. They’ve been close friends since Toy Story 2, they should be stoked to see each other after all these… years? Not bickering. The trailer doesn’t show why they’re bickering, but leaks have said before the movie was even announced that Buzz and Woody would bicker over Buzz feeling like Woody was stealing Jessie. This has been done in Toy Story 3 already. Jessie has made very clear she likes Buzz. Woody literally left the entire gang he was supposed to be loyal to so he can go be with Bo Peep. Chill out Buzz.

Now we’ll go back to the continuity discussion.

In the trailer an army of Buzz toys emerge from the ocean and we see another clip of a lot of Buzz’s executing some plan. Lightyear in universe came out between 12 and 16 years ago. This is not unreasonable, it’s like toys from Toy Story 3 (yep) or the original How to Train Your Dragon specifically being a big thing still. It’s not impossible, but after 16 years, unless Lightyear was turned into a franchise with a few sequels, it’s unlikely. There is the Toy Story 2 video game technically.

Now here’s something interesting, in the announced cast list for Toy Story 5, Ernie Hudson is taking over the role of Combat Carl from the late Carl Weathers. Combat Carl is a key player in a different Toy Story film…

Toy Story of Terror

In Toy Story of Terror Bonnie’s family is on a road trip when they stop off at the Sleepwell Motel. While Bonnie and the family get a good night’s sleep, the toys get trafficked by the owner’s highly trained pet lizard and locked in a display case. The owner then sells the toys online. Jessie, as the only one remaining toy free, must face her fear of boxes to help save the gang.

This is significant because Combat Carl is a main character in this episode. He has lost his hand and gives Jessie the pep talk she needs to keep going, while reminding everyone what being an adult is like.

Combat Carl: Jessie! Remember your training!
Jessie: But I don’t have any training!
Carl: Well… forget about that!

Why is this significant to the continuity discussion? Because this was Carl’s first and last appearance to date, outside of a passive reference in Toy Story 4. Toy Story of Terror also exists in that limboland that got retconned by Toy Story 4’s direct continuation of Toy Story 3. So because Carl is in the movie, it forces Pixar’s hand down one of a few paths.

1. Carl and the gang recognize each other and collapse their universe’s timeline into gobbledygook but keep the Bonnie era shorts canon
2. Carl and the gang do not recognize each other and it finalizes the decanonization of the Bonnie era shorts
3. This is a different toy from the same line of toys, similar to how we see a lot of different Buzz’s throughout the franchise, preserving the ambiguity.

Another interesting thing to note is that Pixar is very well known for hiding Easter eggs. The Toy Story series in particular has had a habit across multiple movies of leaving Easter eggs on the license plates specifically, including A113 and the Unix command that famously erased all of Toy Story 2.
And in Toy Story of Terror specifically, the license plate reads “MCU726”, which is either a coincidence or a reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, potentially Earth 726.

What this could be a nod to is the idea that these are happening in an alternate universe, so they happen, but not in the main continuity. I don’t like hand waving things either, but without doing some level of hand waving we can’t make everything work in Toy Story at all.

Conclusion

Toy Story has never been intended to extend to another movie. Toy Story 2 was never even supposed to hit theaters, and they rewrote the rules by making it a staple movie. Toy Story 3 was intended to close out the franchise once and for all. Toy Story 4 decided it desperately needed more money from Ham’s piggy bank and so sloppily reopened patched concepts, that it then closes more firmly than the last time.

Toy Story 5 is the dying gasp of a company desperate to stay relevant, and reopening the already twice closed fabric. We didn’t need this. The trailer itself already shows the sloppy job they’re doing making an excuse to bring Woody back. We’re not beating a dead horse anymore. We’re using it as a puppet and promising this funeral is the last one over and over again with no end in sight.

Conclusion

So in the end the point I’m trying to make is really that the Toy Story series has gotten very sloppy about its continuity. We have three different conflicting threads and we have to handwave at least two to make any of it work. Toy Story 4 is fun for Forky’s inclusion but was opening a file we didn’t need reopened, 3 was already a perfectly fine closing. Toy Story 5 isn’t even out yet and already causing even more continuity problems. It’s time Pixar puts Woody down and lets him live his life. We don’t need more.

Toy Story’s problem isn’t that it made more movies. The problem is the directors and writers forgot to watch what came before, forgot to care. They chose nostalgia bait, rule of cool, and narrative convenience over a cohesive universe. I have presented at each problematic point a very easy fix to each issue, that preserves the rest of the film without collapsing the universe. If I’m capable of that, surely Pixar’s writing team should be.

Conclusion

Is this the final conclusion I’m going to write for this article? Probably not.