The villain in this film is a Care Bear-like toy called “Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear,” who goes by “Lotso.” Lotso’s truncated name sheers off affection (“Huggin’”) from excess (“Lotso”). This question is an ecological problem as much as it is an existential one. If we look past the allegorical reading, however, we are left with the inescapable thingness of the toys in Toy Story 3. We may be falling, not flying, but at least we are “falling with style,” as Woody puts it in the first movie. Sure, childhood will end, Woody tells his friend Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2, but at least he’ll have his friend and companion “to infinity and beyond!” Interpersonal relationships lessen the inevitable vertigo of intimations of mortality. Towards the end of Toy Story 3, Andy’s mother says “I wish I could always be with you,” implying that sentimental bonds are the only ballast against the inevitable tide of time and change. When Woody and his friends slide towards the incinerator in Toy Story 3, clasping one another’s hands in the face of the inevitable, we recognize that “Buzz Lightyear, c’est moi!” After all, the film charts Andy’s journey from childhood birthday parties to moving out and heading to college (perhaps the first twenty minutes of Up provide the rest of that life narrative). Toy Story 3 follows the narrative to its inevitable conclusion: where should toys go once their owner is no longer a child? In some ways, it would be easy to read this fear of disposal as an allegory for the human condition. (The Toy Story movies serve both audiences.) These two affects of consumerism seem to maintain a paradoxical relationship to one another-the more urgent the child’s drive to own the next big thing, the stronger the adult’s nostalgia for those Proustian My Little Ponies. As a former occupant of a Rainbow Brite canopy bed, I recognize both childhood acquisitiveness and brand nostalgia. Andy and his friends will of course forget their last favorite toy because there will always be a new one that everyone buys (along with the matching sheet set, as we see in the first Toy Story movie). One of the striking aspects of the Toy Story movies-their visual aesthetic, ironic humor, and childhood nostalgia-is that Disney purchased the rights to represent branded toys, which means that the films jettison the craftsman’s uniqueness and the playroom’s timelessness. In the real world, there seems to be a failure of imagination when it comes to what happens next to the toys that we treasure.
These fates belie the luminous fantasy sequences that begin each movie, the alternative world of childhood play. In a consumer culture that tells us that pieces of plastic are our friends, as the theme song “You’ve Got A Friend in Me” underscores, how do we justify their constant replacement? In the first Toy Story movie, Woody fears replacement by Buzz Lightyear or destruction by a vicious neighbor in the second, he faces being broken by his owner or consigned to a museum shelf and in the third, donation or the trash heap loom large.
This scene highlights a theme central to all three Toy Story movies: anxiety about waste. In this scene, Woody fears becoming a part of our culture’s detritus: “I am a lost toy!” Woody laments, recognizing that, if unclaimed, he might become just another piece of garbage. With this play on Sunoco, Pixar reminds us of fossil fuels, our cars running off of dinosaur bones. One of the best sight gags in Toy Story comes when Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear are stranded at a “Dinoco” gas station, its brand logo a silhouette of a brontosaurus.