Toy Story 2 question

[ThunderAeroI]

The Disney channel has been showing nonstop Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 for the past few days and on one of my rewatches of Toy Story 2 I cuaght what I consider a major problem with the plot in the first 20 minutes.

Why is it that Woody has no idea who he is, Buzz did when he arrived.

Perhaps stupid but I dont hear it explained anywhere either.

 

[od0_ital]

Woody is a stuffed doll with a pull string while Buzz has electronics. Different technology gave Buzz the "advantage" of knowin' his tie-in history while Woody just knew himself as Andy's toy.

 

[UssGlenn]

The electronic nature of Buzz is the easiest theory. However, my favorite alternate theory on this is that toys only remember their tie in history of they are designed after the show has been created. If Woody's Round Up was based on the toy Woody, and the rest of the Round-up Gang created only to be supporting characters for the show, they would remember their back-story but Woody wouldn't. Same with Buzz, the toy line is created after the show. We never meet any other TV show tie in toys.

 

[Gaith]

It's a movie about toys.

 

[Jax]

It's a movie about toys.

So this...

 

[David cgc]

Woody's been out of the box and played with for decades. Maybe he forgot his original backstory. Though I do also like the idea that the other members of his round-up came along after Woody was... born? Crafted? Incepted?

 

[Trekker4747]

Woody is fine-crafted, hand made, rag-doll from the 1950s made with loving care to tie in with a beloved children's TV show. He's meant to be a child's pal and loved toy that can last for generations.

Buzz is pop-trash, in one year out the next, TV-show tie in intended to make bank for some company and he was made in China by machines. In short. He sucks as a child's toy/loved play thing.

Buzz is meant to serve a purpose and void to help a company make money and just to get the consumer masses to shell out $20 for a cheap piece of plastic with easily removed shitty stickers, visible screw holes, a cardboard box for a "spaceship" and crappy sounding audio effects. Buzz is a piece of shit and an example of modern toy-making. Slapped together product with no real "thought" in it.

It's only through Woody, a hand-crafted toy intended for years of use and love, that Buzz is able to become a "better toy" and connect with Andy and the rest of the other toys.

It's a symbol of what toys have become, it's probably a pretty good bet that most of the toys people my age had are in landfills or a box in the attic as the pieces of plastic they are. If they were kept and put on display it's only because they "looked cool" with maybe a touch of sentimentality. It's more likely any toy you kept was a toy like Woody as it's got some "connection" to it with a semblance of heart and reality. I've got a Bert (from Sesame Street) doll I had when I was a child that I loved and I still have it! It's sitting on a bookshelf in my bedroom it's a reminder of my childhood. All of my Ghostbusters and TMNT toys that I played with all of the time and had a ball with? They're in a box in my parent's attic.

That's why Buzz "thinks" he knows who/what he is and Woody knows he's a toy. Simply put, Woody is a better toy than buzz is, as are all of the other toys (who apparently always knew they were toys as the way Buzz acts and behaves in the first movie they seem unfamiliar with.) They're all classic toys that people assign emotions too. Buzz was a plastic piece of shit whom Andy only cared about because, as I said, Woody made Buzz a better toy through the process of the first movie.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

Some good theories here, all not bad at all. Do they say if the cartoon is based of the to, or the toy came afterwards. I suppose it would be possible for the toy not to know anything about his show if he never watched it and was designed before it.

How many cases are there of a cartoon being based off an already existing toy? Most cartoons when I grew up were about selling a toy not about an existing toy.

I don't really buy the theory that buzz does not know because hes a worthless product of the industrial age. If I had to choose, I'd say woody predates the show and as such has no knowledge of what he really came to be.

 

[Sephiroth]

I have to ask, how long has Woody been around? He seems to be from the late 50's, so I take it he was originally Andy's Fathers toy, perhaps grandfathers, so there HAD to be times where Woody was put in storage, Is he just so old that he's forgotten?

 

[CaptainCanada]

I have to ask, how long has Woody been around? He seems to be from the late 50's, so I take it he was originally Andy's Fathers toy, perhaps grandfathers, so there HAD to be times where Woody was put in storage, Is he just so old that he's forgotten?

He's from the 50s.

His lack of knowledge of the past is one of the series' more notable plot holes (not that it really matters).

 

[Trekker4747]

I have to ask, how long has Woody been around? He seems to be from the late 50's, so I take it he was originally Andy's Fathers toy, perhaps grandfathers, so there HAD to be times where Woody was put in storage, Is he just so old that he's forgotten?

It would've been interesting if they explored this a bit more and showed that when the toy is in it's original box or in a toy box they pretty much go into a coma and aren't aware of the passage of time between trips in and out of the toy box.

But, yeah, you'd think after some 50 years of existence Woody would be used to seeing children come and go and periods of non-use.

 

[David cgc]

He was pretty sanguine about going to the attic at the beginning of 3. Maybe it was because he had experience with being a hand-me-down.