Review: Toy Story Toons

Oh dear, it’s been well over a year since I last wrote something about the Toy Story franchise (which was a post on Toy Story That Time Forgot in December 2020) and since then a whole other movie in the series has been released – though to rather mixed reception.

Having discussed the original trilogy, the Buzz Lightyear cartoon of the early noughts, and the two holiday specials (Halloween and Christmas) it’s now time to turn my attention to what’s known as the Toy Story Toons: three short films set post-Toy Story 3 and pre-Toy Story 4 in Bonnie’s house. Together forming a neat little mini-trilogy, they are Hawaiian Vacation, Small Fry and Partysaurus Rex, originally released over 2011 – 2012 at the start of the theatrical releases of various Pixar/Disney films.

Though they may be short, they each contain the seed of creative storytelling innovation that’s so prevalent throughout this franchise. Well... two out of three do. Small Fry has a fun premise, but fails to utilize it in the devastatingly clever way you’d expect from a Toy Story short, though Hawaiian Vacation and Partysaurus Rex make up for it by being instant classics: perfect gems of comedy and colour.  

Their run-time isn’t long enough for the extended parent/child metaphors of the films, or even the fun parodies and character portraits of the two holiday specials (which showcased Trixie and Jessie respectively). Rather, they just have fun with the concept of how small sentient toys negotiate a giant world. How do you fake a holiday getaway with the limited resources of a child’s bedroom? And what does bath-time look like through the eyes of a toy? Someone at Pixar said: “what if it was like a rave?” and I think that’s genius.

Hawaiian Holiday was released first in 2011, coming before the theatrical release of Cars 2 (and was probably the best part of that movie-going experience). It’s winter break and Bonnie is heading to Hawaii, leaving her toys to enjoy a vacation from her. Cue card games, stage auditions and computer gaming.

But then Ken and Barbie pop out of Bonnie’s backpack, assuming they’ve arrived in Hawaii. They’re quickly relieved of this notion, and Ken is devastated. As he weeps in Bonnie’s backpack, Barbie quietly tells the others that he’s been planning this trip for months, and wanted it to culminate in the couple’s very first kiss.

So the toys put their heads together, and transform Bonnie’s room into a Hawaiian resort. The details are clever: the leis are candy bracelets, the wildlife is the toys in costume, and various lamps and filters provide ambient light. The happy couple go deep-sea diving, sunbathing, horse-riding, surfing, and the way they stage this itinerary is even more clever: deep-sea diving involves them dangling from strings in an empty fish tank in front of a TV screen while bubbles are blown in their direction, while surfing takes place on skateboards in order to create the “wobbly” effect of balancing on the water.

Finally, Woody informs Barbie that the beach is ready for the big finale... but she’s got things under control. Putting on warm winter-parkas, she and Ken head out onto the snow-covered porch, foregoing the fake Hawaiian beach for a beautiful winter sunset as the backdrop for their first kiss. Then they fall off the porch and into a deep snowdrift. It’s hilarious.

It’s a perfect little nugget, and the way it all comes together is ingenious, from how Barbie and Ken get involved in the story (they obviously heard Bonnie talking about Hawaii at Sunnyside Daycare and crawled into her backpack, which neatly deposits them in Bonnie’s room) to Barbie choosing the vastness and beauty of the real world as the venue for her first kiss as opposed to an artificial beach.

Ken’s redemption arc was completed in Toy Story 3, but he’s still a comedic highlight, from taking pictures with a plastic camera (“ca-click”) to the way he slides his feet across the floor when he walks. We get to see a few toys that weren’t highlighted in the longer holiday specials: Buttercup the unicorn, Chuckles the clown and the Peas-in-a-Pod, and for a real deep-dive Easter egg, at one point Barbie wears the zebra-striped bathing suit that was worn by the very first Barbie doll that ever went on sale.

Best gag: Hamm changing the channel on the television set while Barbie and Ken are scuba diving so it looks like a shark is about to devour them.

***

Also released in 2011 was Small Fry, placed before the theatrical release of The Muppets. As mentioned, this is probably the least of the trilogy, not only because the franchise has done this premise before (a toy goes missing while at a fast-food joint) but because it’s not all that funny either.

Which is a shame, because the absurdity of a small McDonalds toy sincerely trying to pass itself off as the real Buzz Lightyear despite being half his size sounds hilarious on paper, and they probably should have stuck with the mini-Buzz’s ridiculous lies (“he says the plastic in the ball pit made him shrink!”) as the crux of the story.

Alas, the story returns to the real Buzz, left behind at Poultry Palace (is that meant to be a play on Pizza Palace, or just a dig at KFC?) Having been – somehow! – overpowered in the ball pit by a tiny Happy Meal toy that escaped its display case in a desperate attempt to get played with, Buzz is left behind when Bonnie’s mother takes his miniature doppelganger in his place.

He races through the ventilation systems and ends up in a support group for discarded Fun Meal toys, a disparate group of truly weird figurines led by a mermaid called Neptuna “from the Mermaid Battle Squadron tie-in of ‘98”. It’s at this point the story grounds to a halt as we go around the circle, getting introduced to a dozen or so of these unwanted playthings, whose existence is presumably a jab at the more bizarre toys that have been given away with Happy Meals.

This means it is probably all much funnier to an American audience, and director/writer Angus McLane clearly had a lot of fun designing all these fake Happy Meal toys. According to TV tropes, he even came up with backstories for all their designs: T-Bone is from Steak Force, a series focused on a team of robots that battle against the evil Vegetenarians, Funky Monk is from Rappin' Robin in the Hood, a rap-themed adaptation of the Robin Hood legend, and Beef Stewardess is from Dairy Air, a barnyard-themed airline.

But what does all this have to do with the switcheroo between the two Buzzs? Nothing. Big Buzz manages to escape, confronts Little Buzz, and then takes him back to the support group where he can share his feelings about not being played with. Why didn’t they just let him stay in Bonnie’s room?

Basically, it’s a confusing short that doesn’t really have anything meaningful to say. Hawaiian Vacation ends on the sweetness of Barbie and Ken having their first kiss, while Partysaurus Rex gives Rex a much-deserved Day in the Limelight, but Small Fry... just happens. The strangest thing is that it once more revolves around the borderline obsession toys have for being played with (there’s a whole bit in which Buzz has to play with “Lizard Wizard” and then pretend to abandon him, which is clearly traumatic for the toy in question but played entirely for laughs) and then does nothing with it.

It also cheats when it comes to how mobile Buzz is. Other Toy Story films and shorts have been ingenious in the way the toys manage to navigate the world around them: they have to make maps, hijack cars, stow away in luggage, take long and dangerous treks, but here Buzz makes it safely back to Bonnie’s house from Poultry Palace off-screen, and with no indication of how on earth he knew where he was going.

I suspect the short in its entirety was build on the concept of how strange some of those plastic Happy Meal toys actually were (remember the Chicken Nugget toys with detachable clothing? Or the plastic gardening tools?) Which is by no means a bad baseline premise or source of gags – the problem is that nothing interesting comes from it.

Best Gag: Um... maybe the serendipity of Buzz realizing that one of the toys in the support group is called Gary Grappling-hook, providing him with a quick and easy way of escape.

***

Finally, there’s Partysaurus Rex, released in 2012 before the 3-D rerelease of Finding Nemo, it really thinks about how the world would be experienced by a toy, and captures that perspective for the enjoyment of the audience.

In this case, the disco lights and techno music and a growing magnitude of bubbles in Bonnie’s bathroom makes for such an appealing visual that I’m only sorry it doesn’t last longer.

There’s less of a plot here than in the prior shorts: Rex is made fun of by the other toys for being a “party pooper” (poor guy accidentally pops a bubble that Mrs Potato Head is trying to make as big as possible) which motivates him to act out-of-character when bath-time ends and the floating bath toys glumly point out that once the water is drained, they’re robbed of their mobility.

Realizing he has the advantage of arms, Rex turns on the water, blocks the drain, and throws in the bubble bath. A good time ensues, and that it’s a wild rave actually makes sense on a contextual level, as it’s established there’s only fifteen minutes of bath-time per day. So of course the toys want to make the most of it, and every time Rex tries to scale back, he’s reminded of the “party pooper” taunt and presses on...

...which inevitably leads to panic when an overflow becomes imminent.

I personally hate it when the other toys make fun of Rex, so they get their comeuppance when a massive wave of bathwater bursts through the door and knocks them all off their feet – which ends up being the only bit of setup/payoff in the whole story. Like I said, it’s short on plot. But who really cares when it’s only six minutes long and lets Rex be the cool guy for a change?

Partysaurus Rex also has a great sequence in which we’re transported fully into the world of Bonnie’s imagination, in which a small toy boat becomes a single ship drifting through ominous waters, and Rex is portrayed as a monstrous sea-beast that rises from the depths of the ocean to an enormous height –

Only to reveal the real context of the drama is Bonnie in the bathtub. It’s like the opening of Toy Story 3, giving us a glimpse of what play looks like within a child’s mind, another sequence in which the franchise is at its best. It’s also littered with plenty of fun supporting characters who manage to be more memorable than the methodical run-down of Happy Meal toys in Small Fry: the grizzled sea captain, the friendly rubber duckie, the star-crossed lobster/jellyfish sponges, the flirty dolphin – they all pack a punch despite extremely limited screen-time.

And Rex even gets to keep his reputation as a Partysaurus when he’s asked to oversee the festivities out on the lawn with the inflatable toys in the paddling pool.

Best gag: It would have to be the Smash Cut between the chaos of the bathtub overflowing to the quiet hallway where the other toys are talking – right before the wave of bubbles and bath toys sweeps them off their feet.

***

This trilogy makes up the first set of the Toy Story Toons; there is another that came out just before or right after Toy Story 4 which feature the likes of Bo Peep, Forky and the duo of Bunny and Ducky, which I’ll get to in due course. I’ve never actually seen any of them, so I’ll hold off until I rewatch and review Toy Story 4, which is a film that gets a lot of stuff right... but also a lot of stuff wrong (though apparently less so than Lightyear).

Personally, I think I would have been happy with these little “popcorn-sized” films as the last codas of the franchise; they depict our beloved characters as safe and happy at Bonnie’s house, just mucking about and living their best lives. That Disney/Pixar keeps milking this particular cow is already demonstrating diminishing returns, which is a sad legacy for one of (if not THE) best trilogies ever made.