And I was Buzz Lightyear for Halloween once, a fact that will shock no one that has made it this far into this essay. I still own VHS copies of Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, the latter of which we woke up early before school to watch its parent television series. Two of my first three video games were related to Toy Story (we got videogames relatively late, so they were Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Toy Story 2 for Playstation). I owned multiple 12-inch Buzz Lightyear toys, an RC toy (which despite its name, was not remote controlled), a Buzz Lightyear Space Explorer spaceship toy, Buzz Lightyear light-up sneakers (I was very cool), a Woody marionette, and who knows how many other smaller action figures and fast-food toy tie-ins. More personally, I also don’t think that it’s a stretch to call Toy Story my first pop culture obsession. Since 2005, there have only been two traditionally animated Disney feature films- The Princess and the Frog (2009) and Winnie the Pooh (2011)-as Disney has largely abandoned the animation style that made it a cultural behemoth in favor of a computer-animated style that is increasingly indistinguishable from Pixar as a whole. , Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, while many of the early-aughts features under Disney’s solo banner failed to break into the larger cultural memory at best and were critically or financially disappointing at worst. Within a decade, Pixar was dominating both critically and commercially with megahits like Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that as Pixar’s first feature film, it marked the beginning of the end of the Disney Renaissance. Its impact goes beyond the three sequels (one of which was once the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time ), spinoff tv shows, short films and specials, and unending merchandise that it has spawned over the last 25 years. It’s almost impossible to measure Toy Story ’s impact on pop culture and the millions of children who, like me, were younger than 10 years old when it came out.
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