Toy Story 4: A parent's movie nightmare
Toolbox
Published: April 11, 2005
just heard on the news that Disney studios has finalized a script and will be producing Toy Story 3, with an anticipated release date of spring 2008. For anyone unfamiliar with the Toy Story movies, these are computer-animated productions which follow the adventures of a group of toys that come to life.
I've got an idea for a script for Toy Story 4. Why not tell a story about toys from a parent's perspective? Having survived in a household with three young children I feel qualified to offer my services as a consultant. Comedienne Phyllis Diller once observed that picking up after your kids before they've grown up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Although there is some wisdom to this statement, most parents with little kids still spend the better part of their days stooped over like Quasimodo gathering up toys off the floor.
Because it is virtually impossible to see and retrieve all of the playthings, it is not uncommon to accidentally step on a small toy usually when it is dark and you are barefoot causing immense physical agony. As a public service, toy companies should put labels on their products similar to those on jars of salsa, showing the degree of pain one can expect from stepping on a certain toy. The all-time "throbbing foot dispenser" in our house was a little John Deere metal backhoe. An unexpected step on this particularly evil toy guaranteed an adult an opportunity to experience a white flash of pain and speak in tongues.
By sheer volume, Lego blocks placed a respectable second in the foot pain department. No matter how sure I was that I picked up all of these sneaky, indestructible, sharp-edged plastic squares, there was always one lurking around in the shadows waiting to commit the supreme sacrifice of throwing itself under my bare foot.
Parents of little ones face daily battles of all sorts with their kids' toys. I remember meeting my match in the toy wars department with my son's remote controlled police car, which possessed a life-like siren with the ability to annoy anyone within a 300-yard radius in under 8 seconds. This toy was proof of Albury's Law of Battery Run Toys which states, "The more annoying the toy, the longer the batteries in that particular toy will last."
I was convinced that the batteries in the police cruiser had the half-life of plutonium. This particular toy arrived in our house one Christmas courtesy of an uncle with questionable motives. My dear brother, in a move that can only imply that I did him an injustice in a very major way at some time in our own childhood, executed a double whammy in the practical joke department that holiday by giving another one of my sons a toy a fire truck with an even more obnoxious siren. For the next six months our house sounded like the cross between one long episode of Cops and a continually running Labor Day parade. I am ashamed to admit that eventually I tried to speed along the demise of the fire truck. "What do you say we bring it into the tub and pretend there's a flood," I would suggest to my suspicious son, or "Let's push the rig down the stairs and pretend it accidentally drives off a cliff."
None of my ploys worked, but miraculously, after what seemed like a millennium, the siren on the fire truck started to wane and fade. But it didn't go without a fight. Although the end was in sight the stubborn thing moaned like a distant fog horn for weeks before calling it quits.
With one siren down I concentrated my efforts on the police car. I became convinced that the toy had a mind of its own, as sometimes when tucking my son into bed for the night the siren would give off an unsolicited wail from the bottom of the closet. Or, whenever it hadn't been played with for a couple days and my nerves would finally settled to the point where I didn't have to drink my morning coffee from a commuter mug, I would hear the siren from the boy's room, and I swear it taunted me, "WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP, I'M BACK I'M BACK I'M BACK, WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP."
One day something happened. After the kids were in bed I was picking up and saw my four-wheeled nemesis sitting proudly next to the sofa. I scooped it up and for some reason impulsively pushed the button. Depressing the siren a second time I closed my eyes and imagined that I was pulling over some idiot that just cut me off on the interstate. With the next "WHOOP WHOOP" I was pursuing a thug that just robbed a convenient store. Hitting the siren yet again I was riding in a parade, waving to the people lined up along the side of the road
. After 20 minutes of playing I placed the cruiser down with a new appreciation for the toy.
Then I turned to leave the room and stepped right on the John Deere metal backhoe. Hey Disney, give me a call. Let's talk.
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