Tin Toy
Tin Toy
G | 01 August 1988 (USA)
Tin Toy Trailers

Babies are hardly monster-like, unless you're a toy. After escaping a drooling baby, Tinny realizes that he wants to be played with after all. But in the amount of time it takes him to discover this, the baby's attention moves on to other things only an infant could find interesting.

Reviews
Horst in Translation ([email protected])

"Tin Toy" is an enjoyable early Pixar short and surprisingly the only Academy Award for Pixar guru John Lasseter so far. It's the fourth film from the company and Lasseter's third. In some ways, this can be described as a toy story as well as not only the lead-character is a toy brought to life, but also there's some other similarities, like the toys hiding under the bed felt like they could have been taken right out of the Toy Story universe.The premise was very simple here, but smart execution and character animation makes this short film a good one. It's funny how the relationship from the toy to the baby changes so frequently in only slightly over five minutes. From attention-seeking, to joy, to fear, to full panic-mode, to sympathy and finally back to attention-seeking. Pixar's attention to detail (down to insignificant additions like the baby's freckles) fully shines in this one and was truly deserving of the Oscar win. I like it more than the other two nominees and even 25 years later, it's still pretty entertaining. A must-watch for animation enthusiasts.

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MartinHafer

This Academy Award winning animated short is about some little toys and their efforts to avoid a very rough and drooling baby. While the story is very simple, it's quite funny and worth a look--especially if you want to see what old-school CGI looks like.If you see this film today and know nothing about the history of computer generated animation, then you will probably not be all that impressed. After it all, while entertaining and cute, you may focus on just how ugly and unrealistic the baby is in the short film--not realizing just how much effort it took to make this ground-breaking film. You must realize that all this was made before the Windows operating system was available. There were no Pentium processors--nor even 486 processors. Heck, even the ancient 386s were too new to have been of much use to the Pixar folks. Instead, this was the product of huge computers with rendering software developed by Pixar on whopping big computers. This was also years before their first full-length film, TOY STORY. Technology-wise, it was just a short jump from Pixar's first releases, such as LUXO JR. or RED'S DREAM. In light of all this, then this animated short is brilliant and deserving of great praise. Give this one a look!

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ccthemovieman-1

I still think cartoons, or "animated short features" as some call them, should be funny, unless you know in advance you are going to get a "message," such as moral one or a politically- slanted oneI say that because many of these modern-day cartoons seem to be concerned with showing how clever they can be instead just plain "yuks," if you will. I am not knocking this particular effort: it's certainly different, but it wasn't that funny. If anything, at times, it was almost scary, at least if you sat and openly rooted for the little toy soldier which, I presume, we all did. It certainly showed how little babies, in their youthful ignorance, can be a little too rough with things. Ask your little dog or cat, if you have any doubts. What was very well done to me were the camera angles and facial expressions that made this little baby almost look like a terrifying Godzilla-like monster. I guess he would look like that if you were a little toy and were human. Babies can play rough! I don't know if we needed a "cartoon," however, to illustrate that fact. All of us already know that, don't we?Yes, this was "clever," but give me Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Felix The Cat or Pink Panther cartoon any day, something that will make me laugh out loud. Save the "executed brilliantly" and "gives us a wide range of emotions" movies to the feature films.

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Squonk

'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.

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