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.
