Tin Toy

This animated short is about the constantly changing interaction between a toy marching band figure and a baby.

The story is simple but engaging. The marching figure has a mind of its own, first avoiding the terrible baby who terrorises toys (and even the boxes of the toys). When the baby cries, the marching figure decides that he has sympathy and compassion, and bravely goes back out to cheer the baby up. I got alarmed when the baby puts a bag on his head, and I was lifted up by the bravery of the marching figure.

The animation looks sub standard in modern day standards, but when I look back twenty years ago, the 2D animations I watched when I was a child were nowhere as good as this.

With "Tin Toy", Lasseter pushes the boundaries further than he did with "Luxo Jr.". The character of Tinny has truly believable facial expressions including joy, fear and puzzlement. I especially like the part when Tinny first comes out of the box and sees the baby put another toy in his mouth. The horrified look on Tinny's face is a priceless comic moment. True, the baby doesn't look quite right (at least it sounds cute), but I think Lasseter did the best he could with the technology of the time. I still felt bad for the baby when he fell down. After all, ugly or not, he is just a baby!

The third notable short from everyone's favourite 3D animation studio (or fourth, if you're generous to 'Andre and Wally B'), 'Tin Toy' came about when Pixar were clearly gaining more confidence and expertise in their technical field, following 'Luxo Jr' and 'Red's Dream', two very simple but effective shorts revolving around inanimate object characters. Usually credited as the forerunner to the excellent 'Toy Story', 'Tin Toy' is a worthy predecessor even if it has long since been surpassed by the likes of Woody, Buzz and Mr Potato Head, and very enjoyable as a stand-alone film.

Unlike the following year's 'Knick Knack' (made famous once again by its recent theatrical coupling with 'Finding Nemo'), the animation isn't quite so timeless in all regards that it could easily pass as an animated short made in this day and age, but it's not too far off. There are many aspects which sport real flair and improvement over their previous efforts, but others which are only too telling of the limitations the studio was currently facing.

No complaints with Tinny, the 'tin toy' of the title - he's a very charismatic creation indeed, and extremely well-animated. This being a non-dialogue film, it's up to his facial expressions to do the talking, and they do it well – awe, confusion, pleasure, terror, empathy – rendering him another very memorable and sympathetic character in Pixar's canon, and at the same time setting the ball rolling for the wider range of emotions that would later immortalise the heroes of 'Toy Story'. The human baby, on the other hand, is the short's biggest visual weakness - a bold attempt to combine 3D animation with real human mannerisms, something which it isn't entirely successful in (compared to the vivid realism of all his inorganic co-stars, this chunky little infant can't help but stick out like a sore thumb). Some of his actions are nicely rendered, particularly the drooling and sneezing (pure gold), but on the whole he does look and move rather awkwardly - so, while a good effort, the end result there is a little patchy.

Once again, it's the original and surprisingly powerful story that we can really thank for still making this short such stellar viewing today - proving very thoroughly that plot and character are always the wisest investments. 'Tin Toy' presents us with a toy's eye-view of a curious new world that initially seems very inviting, but soon reveals a much more unsettling reality that all local toys live in fear of. Even something as benign and innocent as a human baby from our usual POV can seem positively terrifying from the perspective of a small toy, as this short deftly captures. Its overall air, however, is very sweet, gentle and endearing, and has enough basic charm to be a real winner in the feel-good field.

And I got the message well enough too - sometimes there better solutions to our problems than just running and hiding from them.

Grade: A-

Lasseter as director, anthropomorphic toys and a nightmarishly destructive baby. Yes, Tin Toy was what Disney desired after it won Pixar's first Oscar and acted as the primary inspiration for the much beloved 'Toy Story'. Again, much like with 'Red's Dream', there are several aspects which are admirable and others that proved too challenging at the time. The star of the short, Tinny the one-man band player, is the crowning glory. Beautifully rendered with fluid computer animation where a layer of gloss acts as a reflective surface, allowing another level of aesthetic detail. The environmental scenery, that of a lounge, is full of texture and vibrancy (given the limitations of technology back in 1988). The story is short, sharp and sweet, profoundly more optimistic and fun in comparison to the melancholic 'Red's Dream'. The difficult challenge was animating a human baby, relying on several facial muscle movements to express emotion. Alas, it's aged incredibly badly. The body movement was jagged and unnatural, the skin looked plastic and overall is enough to give anyone nightmares. Indicating that technology and time were factors that became a detriment to this particular model. And as always, these shorts are nearly instantly forgettable, acting as a proof of concept as opposed to an endearing narrative. However, Tin Toy established computer animation as a legitimate art, and so for that I am thankful for Lasseter and his team of animators.

It's wonderful to watch a short animated film like Tin Toy and then watch one like Geri's Game or For The Birds, because you can really see how far Pixar has come over the years. In Toy Story, one of the things that they never got quite right was the look of human faces, but it is clear after watching Tin Toy that they have really improved in that area as well. What you have in Tin Toy is an extremely simple story of a new toy that is at first fascinated but soon understandably horrified by the hideously misshapen baby that he sees terrorizing toys all around him. Besides foreshadowing a huge amount of the plot of the later Toy Story, this short film also contains a lot of symbolism and adheres to a story structure that dates back to medieval literature.

This baby is the representation of the horrible monster that can be found in stories around the world, holding people in horrible fear under its control, waiting for some hero to come along and rescue them. The heroic tin toy spends a few minutes fleeing from the horrifying baby (whose approach is far more fearful than ANY Tyranosaurus Rex), but then when the massive baby falls and begins to cry, the toy realizes his purpose and goes out to amuse the baby ("You're a cool toy!"). Okay, this part never really happened in any of the classic romances where people are held captive by a huge monster, but this is where the film turns from the classic story structure and begins to concentrate on the reality of modern children.

One of the more appealing things about this short film is the closeness with which it portrays real children (although they were horribly far off on the physical appearance). Even the child's momentary pause before sneezing is surprisingly realistic, but there are also behavioral things that are captured here, such as the notorious habit of children becoming more interested in the box that their toy came in than they are in the toy itself. Pixar clearly started off early depicting the interests and behaviors of children on screen, and their films have progressed enormously from short films like this one. Tin Toy is not terribly remarkable compared to the later films from Pixar, but from shorts like Tin Toy it can be seen that they have always worked very closely within this particular genre, which is likely a good reason why they are now making children's films that easily rival even the classic Disney masterpieces.