The Worthless Worldbuilding of Toy Story

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hi everybody. I'm here in my arts and crafts room. I see a lot of people in my city protesting, making petitions, all that stuff. It looked fun and I thought I could do something like that. All it requires is something very special in my titanium cranium. My imagination. So, when I think of imagination, one of the very first things to come to mind is those stories about toys. Let's talk about them. Okay, let's not kid ourselves now. Nitpicking the world building and children's animated properties is the reason this heart still beats. It's the reason I've been able to pay for college and start a retirement fund. And I'm going to do it until Pixar dies or I die and I'm not dying. Toy Story is a revolutionary classic. The first ever fully CGI animated film with a very, very simple premise. The toys are alive. The story of Toy Story is a simple and clean one.

[00:00:47]Woody is a sheriff and leader in the bedroom of a lumpy boy named Andy. And Woody gets a little insecure when his position of the top toy gets challenged by the new and shiny Buzz Lightyear. The most glaring and obvious complication comes from a biological standpoint. You know, everyone talks about cars because it's funny. Cars for cars. Cars. How are the cars alive? No. Toy Story possesses the same level of complication, if not more. For one, the toys are naturally provided a template for existence. Buzz Light Your Toys start under the belief that they exist as this character before obtaining a specific level of existentialism, which is then followed by a bittersweet acceptance of this new reality. finding new purpose by being used as toys. To be played with is the highest honor for the majority of toys.

[00:01:29]It's treated like a universal sign of respect, if you will. And right away, we can ask about how life begins for a toy in this universe. At what point does the creation of the toy give it life? Is a toy brought to life when it's first perceived as a toy, or is it when the toy gets created? This is an important question to me because when I was a kid, I would play with the Home Depot sample colors they had in the paint section. I I'm not joking. As a kid, I would get the colors closest to the respective characters and I would use them as inserts. Like, can you tell the Chupo from 2011 that there was any sort of Rayman toy publicly accessible? No, there wasn't. That's what I thought. He doesn't have elbows. How would he have toys? But you know what? Home Depot had a piece of cardboard colored imperial purple. I don't even know why I did it.

[00:02:12]I was mocked for my innovation of playtime, but as you can clearly tell, there's something silly going on in my noggin. Another question. Are posters alive? Could it be a living painting situation like Harry Potter? It's hard to say, but regardless, I'm delighted to say that this video is sponsored by Displate. Displate is your hub for thousands of quality metal posters, each and every one custommade for all your needs. All sorts of sizes and options.

[00:02:34]You can get matte, gloss, textured metal posters, all of which found on a hub featuring an endless supply of cool designs, even the option for personally custom ones. I got a whole batch of posters from each of my favorite franchises with a selection ranging from games, anime, movies, and then I mounted them all up with the convenient magnet mounting. And these are just some of the possible options. You can find plenty of inspired Disney posters available on the site. And if you want a special deal, now's the time to do it. If you use code chupo or click on the display links in the description or pinned comment that automatically applies my code, you'll be given 31% off on all posters. And if you get four or more, you'll be given 41% off. That's code chupo. That's the link in the description or the pinned comment. And with all of that being said, thank you to Display for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel. And now back to the video. The entirety of Toy Story 4 complicates what defies as a toy. Life and death becomes unknown on both ends. Now, technically, the real answer comes through Forky, the primary specimen and outlier of Toy Story. A spork given life once it's given love and playtime from a child.

[00:03:40]Porky's dilemma isn't quite addressed.

[00:03:42]It blurs the line. It especially complicates what counts as a toy, or at least what comes from being played with.

[00:03:48]Once an object is registered as a toy, being played with as characters, all that nonsense, that seems to be when they get to to to to exist to breathe.

[00:03:56]Xanort of Kingdom Hearts fame says it best in the hit game Kingdom Hearts 3.

[00:04:00]When in the Toy Story world, in that game, he notes that toys have hearts when developing a powerful bond with a human. And by heart, he's actually referring to the metaphysical essence of a person's being that includes their personality, emotions, memories, and soul, and not the organ of the heart, even though they have an organ equivalent. According to him, love makes life. But that can't possibly be true because why would any of the Buzz Lightyears or toys in Alice toy barn be sentient? And I don't think the sweat shops had enough time to love every individual Buzz Lightyear. And surely this is public knowledge to some extent, or at least at the level of the government knowing how much you owe in taxes and never telling you. There's estimates of anywhere up to 5 billion toys being produced yearly. It simply cannot be statistically possible for every toy to remain hidden and know the rules of man versus toy. Of course, there's always the possibility of direct interaction with the toy giving you cancer or something. There's so many nonsensical portions of this discussion.

[00:04:55]To be played with is such a loose definition. I played Marvel vs. Capcom on my PlayStation controller. Is the controller alive then? Would my little Home Depot color cards recognize that they live? Or would it be the equivalent of a plant where it's technically alive, but we don't quite register it as that?

[00:05:11]Where do we include sports equipment?

[00:05:13]What's the closest something can be from being a toy while not being a toy? I got to ask, if I take an Adam and Eve sponsorship, will they give me a Woody and Buzz of my very own? Now, the same comes with death. At what point is a toy allowed to die? If they're allowed to have a respiratory system and a limited amount of energy in a given day before needing to rest to sleep, when does a life cycle end? Pain receptors clearly don't exist in the same way ours do. If Woody's arm ripped, I'd imagine him screaming in pain the second it happened. The closest we get to that is Sid burning a big old boiling hole in his forehead. Are Sid's victims in constant pain? Are the amalgamations only partially alive after losing their intentions as toys? Better yet, what sort of injury could warrant a death?

[00:05:54]Once again, Sid toys are the best examples. We see one toy soldier fully decapitated and limping, somehow able to participate in Woody's plans to save Buzz. How would that even be possible?

[00:06:05]Where are their minds located? Because truthfully, the only way I could see that possibly working out is if it was pure magic. If they lost the will to live. And in that case, when could a toy decide their existence has concluded? In Toy Story 3, they weren't all holding hands approaching the incinerator, believing this was the end. They were preparing for what sort of hellish alternate existence they would have to go through after the fact. Let's talk about Legos. Hell, building blocks in general. There has been at least one Lego creature. It's a funny Lego rabbit.

[00:06:33]To what level is this bunny alive? Is every piece fit alive or would it be a Mr. Potato Head situation? What happens if the Lego parts aren't used to build the same thing being shown off? If I've learned anything from Lego YouTubers and LEGO themselves, that it's that the instructions don't get followed all too often. And so, would it be a hive mind?

[00:06:49]Would it be another amalgamation situation? What would the consequences be of the world knowing that toys are alive? Truthfully, I'd imagine they would take everyone else's jobs considering they don't need food or sleep unless they change their minds and need food because it's a it's a toy that eats or they sleep because toys are sleeping all the time. We see it so often. The most important way to mentally absorb the environment of Toy Story without going flipping bananas is by redefining the term of playing.

[00:07:14]Because the toys, they the toys want to play. It's like going to the club or a party or something. I'm serious. Recontextualizing playing as allowing toys to have fun and be our equivalent of hitting the club or something is the easiest way to look at Toy Story. Playing is the desire for most toys. The only ones going against that are the ones having realistic or in their eyes justified reasons to have moved on. Maybe still yearning for that.

[00:07:38]Maybe having some sort of want to be played once again, but for whatever reason, they haven't been able to do that as of late. Stinky Pete wanted to immortalize the entire Woody set in a museum because he's never been out of the box. He never had the chance to go out to party. He doesn't know what he's missing. That's why he's an embittered old man who wants to drag everyone down with him. He never got the toy equivalent of running a keg stand. Also, how is he alive then if nobody bonded with him? Explain that one, Xeanort. Sid was publicly executed by his toys because he partied with them too hard.

[00:08:07]And now some of the creatures look like that. This Gabby has a medical condition with the busted voice box that makes her believe that she isn't able to play. But I mean, you can still get Blackout with only one kidney. She didn't need to be doing all of that. The the daycare could be seen as a more elegant social event for the older toys. You'd assume they're older toys if they get donated. So, the younger areas of the daycare is the equivalent of a 50-year-old man being forced to sit at the kids table. The Pixar short Small Fry is about an 18-year-old trying and failing to use his fake ID, which then concludes with him accepting mediocre dorm parties because he got dropped during fraternity rush week. I could go on and on and on, but in the grand scheme, it really seems like this is the way for toys to cope with their existence, to have fun and do human stuff while not being recognized as alive, knowing that they're a lesser.

[00:08:52]The life of a toy is a cruel and unforgiving one. You could be burdened with any sort of gimmick like being a freaky baby for all eternity, suffering some sort of malfunction that prohibits the intended way of play. All toys face the struggle of being human while not actually being human. It creates a dilemma impossible to fully articulate.

[00:09:09]And I'm not even considering the Kingdom Hearts antics. What could the toys have possibly said when they were dragged to an alternate realm? Fighting the Heartless, learning that Xeanort banished them to an alternate realm, separated from all their loved ones. How would you go from saving the greater Disney universe to being limp in a kid's storage box? Easily the most luck of the draw things for the toys has to be where they end up going. When every instance can lead to a toy going missing, being destroyed, there's a necessary risk and reward that comes from what they do.

[00:09:35]That's why so many toys are in denial about being toys. Because the second they come to that realization that that that there's not all too much impact that they can make compared to what they originally thought, they resort to doing the next best thing. Whatever this is, trying to build their own respective communities in an oppressive world neglect full of toys. Creatures aware that their purpose is to serve superior beings, even if that means waiting for years and years and years for the chance to get used. And that leads to the most important part of this purpose. The children or manchildren who play toys, the original customers of these things, the ones who look at themselves in the mirrors and say, "I'm going to go play toys right now." The hosts who personalities and interests will result in whatever population of toys infest their home. And this is when I realized I'm a bad person. We know of a few kiddos other than the daycare ones who legitimately love their toys and what they brought to the table. But but but truth be told, across the entire series, Andy and that one scared child that adopts in quotation adopts Gabby at the end of the fourth movie are the one only real ones who I would say were adequate acceptable toy owners. The rest are entitled little shits. I'm giving Sid a pass. The worst thing he did was mangle his sister's toys. Otherwise, it's imaginative engineering. He's not that bad. I'd like to think he had a good future ahead of him before Woody completely shifted his life trajectory.

[00:10:51]There's stupid kids. There's ugly kids.

[00:10:53]There's annoying kids. There's a kid who completely abandons one after it doesn't replicate the commercial. That that that one's fair, actually. I thought Skylanders were supposed to come to life. And worst of all, it's Bonnie. If I was a toy under Bonnie, I'd be pissed.

[00:11:08]Andy had an entire dilemma in the third movie about parting ways with his favorite toy, his day one. Knowing how important Woody is to him above all else. And like the very very first impressions of Bonnie are her getting all these cool new toys and almost getting sad that she couldn't get the cowboy one who by the next movie she never uses. There's a reason she had no friends in kindergarten and and slept with a spork almost ready to poke her eye out. She's a designated iPad child, blissfully unaware of forgetting what her toys look like. And Andy would never. All he did was look like a freaky golem child and produce architecture for his playtime sessions. He was a painter and and playtime was his canvas. He plays toys as an art form. His biggest flaw as a character was thinking the Lightyear movie was good, realigning his entire personality around a very mid movie. Maybe it's the fact that literally all the humans in Toy Story look ugly. Everything past three feels too realistic. These movies are the cinematic and visual equivalent of that one smell of cheap rubber or the interior of a twostar McDonald's. You know damn well what I'm talking about.

[00:12:08]Something about Bonnie gets me in the mood to fight fourth graders. You know, at least Andy was aware of his misdoings. After not playing with his toys, he knew that it was probably better to say goodbye to his beloved little things. While Bonnie Bon Bon, she's a filthy child who runs around with minimal familiarity with the elegance of toy time. Plus, the rest of her toys suck. Chopped dinosaur. We already got one of those. The hedgehog's gimmick is acting, and that goes nowhere. This one doll goes nowhere. I think she's supposed to be the sheriff or the most like her favorite toy, but she doesn't go to Hawaii with Bonnie.

[00:12:37]What's the point? There's peas. I think the only one I'm cool with is Buttercup cuz his entire shtick is trying to get the dad arrested, which I agree with.

[00:12:44]Have you seen that man? Bonnie's dad looks like he has Soilent instead of blood. But you know what? Bonnie's incompetence gives me at least a little bit of clarity. Namely, that her actions related to Woody encourage me never to give my cool [ __ ] away because otherwise it'll always end up in bad hands. We'll never know what fully counts as a toy.

[00:13:00]And like, I know my childhood. I got to make up for the sins of my past. If toys are alive, then I've done some terrible things to plenty of innocent teenytiny guys. So, about a week ago, give or take, I drove roughly 200 miles to my parents house, not to bond with anyone or get a better spot on their wheels or anything like that, but exclusively to apologize to my dearest toys I abandoned oh so very long ago. So, I said hello to my amiibo version shelf I embarrassingly spent too much money on. I went into the storage room to say hello to the friends I abandoned. If I could talk to my fourth grade self, I would call him a loser because like look at some of the things I dropped the birthday money on.

[00:13:34]Of my old toys, I had plenty of stupid looking plushies. Especially I had this Leummy one from Mario with backwards hair. The Shadow the Hedgehog that looks like I drew him and it came to life. A few of them had sawdust on them. I I don't even know how that one happened. I thought the bins were shut pretty tight.

[00:13:50]Uh why did I own a green toad? In what world did I go through the mall or something and go, "Mommy, mommy, please may I get the green toad?" I I I think I was bullied a lot. All of these guys were goofy looking to some extent, but the worst of them had to be this Sonic from I want to say 2010. It felt like a childhood pet that's clearly suffering. You got to put it down. This Sonic was limp. It was shriveled. The inadimate equivalent to a crusty eye dog. To compensate for the torture it's gone through. I took him outside. I gave him one last play. I let him see the sunlight for the first time in who knows how long. Apologized profusely for our timeline together. I I reflected on what we did, what what what we caused, all all of that nonsense, and then I chuck that son of a [ __ ] back into the basement where it's out of sight and out of mind, just like the rest of my old toys. I have no idea what I should do with them. It creates an interesting dilemma. Would a toy prefer stasis or death? Would a toy be obliged to remain dormant for its existence? Or would it be better to put them down? Was Sid doing service work? Was he creating the equivalent of extravagant euthanasia? Uh listen, if there is a key takeaway, all I gained from this experience is that children are awful. Did you know that every single bad person in history was a child at some point? That's right, the food for thought. Like, I'm not even interested in how a Rubik's cube is alive or why the footprint marking thing was normalized to any capacity since I would imagine it wouldn't be all too common or even the moral dilemmas of being reduced to this insignificant of a life form. What I do want to know is what we can do to make children more productive for everyone. What if we kept children in dog cages until they were eight and then on their birthday we let them work in mines and factories until they turned 14? It's genius and cost effective. Gosh darn it. I know what I'm going to protest for. I got something catchy, too. Get together with all of your neighbors and bring back child labor. Yeah. 2 hours later.

[00:15:48]Apparently that's frowned upon.