Tonight ABC aired the
first PIXAR horror show for TV: Toy Story of
Terror. Well, I for one, was disappointed in this TV special, for it wasn’t
horrifying nor terrifying enough to warrant the name. (Kids need to be traumatized by Halloween specials, don’t they? Otherwise, they’ll love Halloween and get fat from all the candy from tick-or-treating.) Plus, the story didn’t make
use of the possibilities that exist these days for such a story; for you see, nowadays there are
action figures available for all the big slasher movie killers, like Jason from
Friday the 13th, Michael Myers from Halloween, Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc. Maybe
the now older kid could buy some of these horror movie killer action figures
and they could chase around our heroic toys, but because the plastic weapons
can’t actually damage or hurt our stalwart playthings, they just laugh it off,
and then they all learn to get along?
Plus, there are lots of
scary alien and monster dolls these days too, including all the original Universal horror
characters: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon,
etc. So couldn’t they have had the family buy some of these horror character
dolls and then have the original Toy Story characters get all scared and chased
around by them? Or, maybe for extra realism, the now older kid could buy the
monster dolls as an investment and never take them out of the box, so the
monstrous dolls can only threaten through the plastic shrink wrap, and then the
regular Toy Story characters decide they have to save these monsters from their
box prison, so they do, and then they all make friends. Wouldn’t that have
worked well? And so Halloweeny, too.
And as for the plot of Toy Story of Terror, didn’t we see this
already in Toy Story 2? Is the world
now made up mostly of maniacal toy thieves who sell their pilfered products on eBay?
It just seems like they are demonizing collectors, and in a rehashed plotline,
when there are so many other possibilities out there for a Halloween-themed Toy Story plot. I mean, I love the Toy Story stuff just like anyone else,
but how about mixing it up a bit?
