Tin Toy

"Tin Toy" is a simple short with only two main characters. A little tin toy band member that walks around and plays the symbols is the protagonist, and the destructive little baby is the antagonist. It's a simple story that follows the very childlike statement that "You don't want something unless someone else does." and vice versa.

A little tin toy is lonely. A baby crawls into the room and the tin toy can't wait for the baby to play with it. Soon it finds out this baby is a destructive force, tearing apart and drooling on everything it sees. The tin toy has several changes of heart which end in a bit of a twist ending.

This is one of Pixar's earliest shorts, and the animation is far from perfect. It doesn't have the fluidity seen in their later productions, but you can't blame them, this was '80s computer animation. One thing that Pixar has kept over the years it's their perfect way of portraying emotion. Just through little movements of the face, they give great emotion, which is what this short relies on, as there is no dialogue. It's a good and sweet natured short.

My rating: *** out of ****. 5 mins.

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.

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.

I love Pixar's shorts! I know this was one of their earlier ones. However, the baby was so unbelievably creepy that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. I'm so used to their characters being likeable...even if they have a bit of a quirky, odd look to them, like Geri in Geri's Game. Despite Geri's large ears, large nose, bushy eyebrows, prominent chin and exaggerated eyes from his corrective lenses, he has a sweet, endearing quality to his face. But the baby in Tin Toy is so unsettling, he's likely to make a starring role in your next nightmare.

I wish I could review the whole short. I'm sure the content was good...it always is. This is just one you may want to take a hard pass on.

'Tin Toy' is a wonderful piece of computer animation. It's especially interesting to view after looking at Pixar's 'Toy Story' which was made several years later. I like to see this film as a new twist on the giant monster movie. Here the monster is a drooling baby in pursuit of a wind up toy. The baby stomps around the room with the grace of Godzilla (which is to say no grace at all). Often seeing the baby from the little toy's point of view helps create this monster movie feel as well. This is a hilarious film, with an ending that's all too true to life.