One of Disney’s most beloved cast of characters, the Toy Story gang, returned on December 2 for a 30 minute short film on ABC. The Toy Story franchise has put on one short before this most recent one in October 2013, called Toy Story of Terror!, and then a year later created this Christmas themed short titled, Toy Story That Time Forgot.
The short film was a fun and brief story revolving around main characters Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Trixie (Kristen Schaal) and Rex (Wallace Shawn. Just like the short film before it this one takes place after the events of Toy Story 3 so the toys are now with their new owner Bonnie.
Bonnie is taken to a friend’s house for a play date right after Christmas and she brings her toys along with her. To her disappointment her friend is too enthralled with playing his new video games rather than playing with any of his new toys so Bonnie quickly abandons her backpack of toys to join her friend playing video games.
Of course in typical Toy Storyfashion, once the kids leave the room the toys come to life and interact with one another. Woody, Buzz, Trixie and Rex soon meet some of the new Christmas toys the boy had gotten, who have yet to be played with. The toys are super cool looking dinosaur-warrior action figures called Battlesaurs that any young child in our real world would love to own.
Trixie, Bonnie’s blue dinosaur toy, quickly becomes friends with the main Battlesaur, Reptillus Maximus (Kevin McKidd), who shows her around his world (aka the dinosaur play-set that he comes with). The twist of this short film is that Reptillus Maximus and the rest of his gladiator dinosaur friends aren’t yet aware that they are children toys due to the fact that they haven’t been played with yet, thus making them extremely violent to other toys. It is up to Trixie and the rest of the gang to convince the other toys to “surrender” to their child and allow themselves to be a play toy and that it will open up so much more happiness for them.
Without spoiling the end, lets just say the film ends on a happy note because of course its a Disney film after all. Both the toys and the children end up learning a bit of something. My favorite part was the life lesson at the end geared towards the young children watching: that sometimes it is better to use your own imagination and play with your loving toys rather than spending all day in front of a TV screen playing video games.
Overall the short film was a quick, cute and entertaining Toy Story fix. Although it wasn’t very Christmasy as it was advertised to be, children this Christmas who are a fan of the short will be happy to know that the Battlesaur action figures will be actually sold in Walmart stores.
Luckily this won’t be the last Toy Story to look forward too since it was recently revealed that there will be a Toy Story 4 coming in 2017.