Tin Toy

Infobox Film
name = Tin Toy


caption = Tinny, the star of the film
director = John Lasseter
producer = John Lasseter
writer = John Lasseter
starring =
music =
cinematography =
editing =
distributor =
released = 1988 (SIGGRAPH)
November 22, 1995 (with "Toy Story")
runtime =
country = USA
awards = Academy Award for Animated Short Film
language =
budget =
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0096273

"Tin Toy" is a 1988 Pixar Animation Studios short film using computer animation. It was directed by John Lasseter and won the 1989 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In 2003, "Tin Toy" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

The film takes place in one room and stars the toy of the title, a mechanical one-man band named Tinny, and a baby named Billy. At first the toy is delighted at the prospect of being played with by Billy, until he sees how destructive he can be. Fleeing beneath the couch, he discovers dozens of other toys who are too terrified to come out as they went through the same experience. But then Billy falls over on hardwood floor and starts crying, and Tinny decides he has to help no matter what. His antics succeed in cheering Billy up, to the point where Billy picks him up and shakes him violently before throwing him away. Once the toy has recovered from this ordeal he is annoyed to see that Billy has forgotten about him and is now playing with the cardboard box and bag he came out of and walks off with the bag on his head, wandering around the room with Tinny following.

References to other media

*"Puffin' Billy", the theme song from "Captain Kangaroo," is used at the start. "The Price Is Right" opening is also heard on a television in the background at the start.
*Initial drafts of "Toy Story" had cast Tinny of this short in the lead, and was considerably more of a road movie, as Tinny endeavored to find a place to call home. After a cowboy-themed ventriloquist's dummy was inserted into the story (the precursor to Woody) and began taking more focus in the plot, Tinny's role morphed into that of Buzz Lightyear.
*There was going to be a sequel to Tin Toy called "A Tin Toy Christmas.", which would be a half-hour long television special to be used to convince film studios that Pixar was capable of producing a feature film. This idea was brought to the table at the initial talks with Disney for "Toy Story", but Disney was uninterested in the concept and urged Pixar to produce a feature immediately. [""]

References

External links

* [http://www.pixar.com/shorts/tt/index.html Information at Pixar's site]
*
* The Big Cartoon DataBase entry for [http://www.bcdb.com/bcdb/cartoon.cgi?film=38949&cartoon=Tin%20Toy "Tin Toy"]