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When “Toy Story” premiered on Nov. 22, 1995, it didn’t just charm audiences — it detonated an artistic revolution. Pixar’s debut feature, it was the first full-length film made entirely with computer animation. Three decades later, “Toy Story” remains a touchstone not only for its technical brilliance, but for what it says about childhood, creativity, and growing up. Its plastic world, animated in pixels, mirrors our uneasy transition from toys to touchscreens — a warning and a wonder about what play means in the age of technology.
“Toy Story” follows the secret life of Andy’s toys, led by the loyal cowboy Woody (Tom Hanks), whose world is upended when flashy space ranger Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) arrives. When a night out leaves them stranded, the two must overcome rivalry and danger to return home before Andy moves. As jealousy turns into friendship, their journey redefines what it means to be loved and to belong.
Before “Toy Story,” computer animation existed mostly as a novelty. Pixar’s early shorts, including the 1988 short film “Tin Toy,” were clever experiments, testing whether computer software could mimic human emotion. The traces of “Toy Story” can be seen even in these early tries. In “Tin Toy,” a jittery one-man band toy tries to escape from a mischievous human baby, evoking both humour and empathy.
By 1995, Pixar’s RenderMan software had matured enough to produce an entire feature. What made “Toy Story” groundbreaking wasn’t simply its code, but how it fused technology with storytelling. The film’s animation style wasn’t just about replicating life but reimagining it, giving plastic, paint, and fabric emotional resonance through light and movement.
Everything on screen had weight. When Buzz Lightyear is introduced, his polished armor reflects sunlight with calculated precision, a telling fact of his freshness and confidence. Contrastingly, Woody’s fabric shirt creases with every anxious gesture, showing the marks of time and wear.
Underneath its technological novelty and buddy-comedy exterior, “Toy Story” told a more melancholy story, one of aging and obsolescence. Woody, the hand-stitched cowboy, represents a well-known past, a world of imagination built from fabric scraps. Buzz Lightyear, all chrome and laser beams, is the future — mass-produced, media-saturated, and irresistibly new.
Their rivalry is both comic and tragic. Woody resents Buzz’s flashy modernity, while Buzz genuinely believes his own illusion of flight. “Toy Story” never looked down upon its audience. Though a film following a child’s toys, its characters and themes were never childish.
What “Toy Story” brought to the big screen was something psychologists had been debating for decades. From his studies of child development, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget suggested in the 1920s that children were born practicing animism, which is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as feelings, intentions, and consciousness. His claim continues to be very influential in approaches to education. “Toy Story” essentially portrayed through film what children had been wondering for decades — whether their toys could really be alive.
The film resonated deeply with audiences across age groups. Commercially, “Toy Story” was the highest-grossing film during its opening weekend, and the second highest-grossing film of 1995 worldwide. Critically, it received three Academy Award nominations, as well as a non-competitive Special Achievement Academy Award. It was the first animated film to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay, this latter recognition speaking to its maturity and depth.
“Toy Story” presented the fear of being forgotten between two generations of toys, the older, vintage Woody and the newer, commercial Buzz. 30 years later, this anxiety has expanded to include a third group that has collapsed the previous two into one — the toys that don’t get played with at all.
In 2025, the average American child aged from eight to 18 years old spends seven and a half hours a day watching or using screens. There’s even a new term colloquially used to describe children with excessive screen times: the “iPad kid.” As a result, toy companies have turned to social media to stabilize sales, either by establishing online followings or relying on nostalgia as a marketing tool. The fundamental pleasure of playing, of inventing new worlds, feels like a lost art.
Pixar seems to sense this societal shift. The original “Toy Story” produced a multiple-film franchise, with the second installment coming out in 1999, the third in 2010, and the fourth in 2019. A fifth installment is scheduled for release in 2026. “Toy Story 5” will directly address the issue of the “iPad kid,” as the story’s main antagonist will be a frog-like tablet named Lilypad, which has enamored the toys’ child.
Yet “Toy Story” itself might seem like a proponent of technological advancement against older forms of storytelling. After all, its ushering of computer-generated imagery slowly phased out hand-drawn animation and defined Pixar as an animation industry giant that only uses the former. Still, while other films might have used CGI for its novelty, “Toy Story” used it to define style and aesthetic. The film’s computer-generated world is luminous and precise, and celebrates the beauty of materiality. Its artistry reminds that technology can amplify imagination when used to create space for wonder rather than consume it.
Perhaps this is why “Toy Story” continues to resonate across generations. For adults, it’s nostalgia for a simpler age; for children, it’s still an invitation to dream with what’s at hand. For both, it can be a bridge for parents to show their kids a forgotten kind of storytelling, one where fabric cowboys and plastic space rangers reign supreme. Its medium and message are inseparable: It used the newest tools of its time to defend an older kind of creativity. 30 years later, Woody and Buzz remind us that the future of imagination isn’t on a touchscreen — it’s still, somehow, in our hands.
—Staff writer Erlisa Demneri can be reached at erlisa.demneri@thecrimson.com.
