Sure, but if we’re talking about a museum display piece, it just needs to look complete enough for display. The folks on the other side of the glass won’t know nor care if Woody’s gun is an original or a replica.
{Sits disconsolately in thread holding a hand-lettered cardboard sign reading “Will Write Film Studies Graduate Theses For Food”.}
I think that the key element is whether the toy is played with as an active or passive object. To explain further: When a kid is playing with a Buzz Lightyear Action Figure With Real Working Wings (wings do not enable toy to fly), he’s imagining Buzz actually taking action. Likewise for Woody, or the Slinky-Dog. This is easiest for anthropomorphized toys, but even an unfaced toy like an Etch-a-Sketch actively responds when played with. By contrast, when one plays with Lincoln Logs, the toy is passive, with the child providing all of the action. Or, to put it another way, Woody the toy behaves like a real cowboy, and a Lincoln Log structure behaves like a real log cabin, but a real log cabin doesn’t do anything either.
I regrettably haven’t seen Toy Story 2, so I can’t comment on the Woody merchandise. But were they primarily intended as collectibles? If so, then their lack of animation makes sense, as (unlike a toy) a collectible is not expected to do anything beyond being visible in a display. Though it’s certainly conceivable that, were such a collectable brought into a household with children and played with, it might achieve a toy status and come to life, much like Bo Peep.
Alternatively, is it possible that for each “character”, there is only one animus? That is to say, no other Woody doll could come to life, because there already is a Woody. The animus of Woody would reside in the Woody representation on which the most energy is focused, which would almost certainly be one in the possession of an imaginitive child who played with it often. Although other Woodies might conceivably come to life, if they were imparted by their children with a distinct character and personality (but they would not then be Woody any more).
At one point in TS2, there are two Buzz Lightyear’s that are 'alive". One had never even been played with- he was NIB. So was the Prospector figure.
The is no gap in logic in the holy text!. It is perfect (or maybe enough people slinging arounfd ideas can be combined into one solid idea. Back in post 14 I said:
About whether or not they know they’re alive, it’s quite difficult to tell what happens when they go limp. Perhaps some aren’t aware that they can move - I think Buzz claimed to be in hibernation, (like in that Alien flick) and didn’t speak or act until other toys interacted with him, and Jessie seemingly collected dust under her owner’s bed for years - implying she never moved from one spot or cleaned herself off. They seem to enjoy being played with, but have no physical interaction in this.
I don’t know.
It’s weird.
P.S. If Disney isn’t anti-gun, maybe Pixar is. Disney’s Tarzan was pretty anti-gun, anyhow.
When the film was originally made, Woody did have a gun, but on later showings it was edited out and replaced by a speak-and-spell.
Woody is “perfectly restored” only to the extent of the doll can be. Yes, the restorer probably can reproduce the gun, but he only has one evening before Al splits for Japan and as he says, “You can’t rush art.” Given more time, he probably could produce a mold for the gun based on old photographs or drawings, mold the gun itself, and do the paintjob. I dare say he could recreate the box, too. But for Al’s purposes, only the doll needs to be restored.
It’s worth noting that Woody is a rarity, despite being licensed merchandise. Just finding him was a stroke of luck for Al. The chances of getting a gun are infinitesimal. I’d have thought he wouldn’t restore Woody, either; I’d think Woody lost cash value in being restored.
As for who comes to life and who doesn’t, it seems to come down to one of two things:
- Lifelike construction. This is the only way to account for Sid’s hash-toys, like Babyface and Legs. They contain just enough body parts to sustain life.
- Communication. The Etch-a-Sketch can draw maps, pictures, and statements. Mr. Spell has a voice and a letter display. That Mr. Microphone thing can presumably use its speaker to talk.
The Woody merchandise includes a yo-yo, a standee, a lunchbox, and a record player, which shouldn’t move. But the “snake-in-the-boot” should. That’s an error.
Fanboy “love” for objects is irrelevant. Sid’s toys and Stinky Pete would be dead if it were true.
I am confused as to why Woody retains no memory of any child besides Andy. Clearly he predates Sputnik I and is about forty years old, yet has no memory of when the show was on and he was new on the shelf.
Case Sensitive, I am a man but I want to have your babies.
Except that even the Woody in the “original” B&W puppet cartoon seems to have an empty holster. 
Now, for me, as a semi-toy collector, his was the part of Toy Story 2 that I found implausible.
Sheriff Woody was the star of his own freakin’ TV show! At the height of his popularity, there must have been Sheriff Woody dolls littering the countryside by the thousands! The idea that sucha prominent character being so rare and so hard to find flies in the face of all my toy-collecting experiences. It’s like saying you can’t find (or reassemble) a pristine original Optimus Prime figure in this day and age – sorry, but a little sleuthing around the toy collector network will turn up enough parts that can be scavenged to recreate one intact museum-quality piece.
Of course, the other major loophole in TS2 was why Andy’s mom didn’t have any reaction when she eventually discovered that her moneybox was broken into and her son’s Sheriff Woody toy was stolen. Especially since she’d surely notice it when Andy got the toy back by the end of the movie…
Well, it was a fairly basic green-colored spring; it just barely manages to qualify as a snake.
I suspect the original intent was that he was a hand-me-down toy from Andy’s (missing) dad.
Geez, guys, get a room… 
Optimus Prime is from the 1980s. That’s a bit more recent than Woody is supposed to be. How easy is it to find Howdy Doody merchandise these days?
Aw, shucks. I’ll have to check with Missus Case.
Case Sensitive,
Bravo on your perceptive analysis. There is, however, one key bit of symbolism that you overlooked.
You overlooked the physical construction of Woody and Buzz themselves. Woody, despite his name, is a rag doll. He is limp and floppy, not at all unlike a flaccid penis. Buzz, in contrast, is made from hard plastic. He is rigidly phallic in general shape and in silhouette resembles a sex toy. In light of that, is the name “Buzz” a mere coincidence? I think not.
We see, therefore, that Woody and Buzz physically symbolize impotence vs. strong, throbbing erection. Buzz’s hard physicality trumps Woody’s limp impotence in their fight on the gas station parking lot. You’ll see, I’m sure, that this adds an uncomfortable overtone of rape to Buzz later taking Woody from behind.
OK, but then what about things like a generic dinosaur? There can’t be a lot of fan boy energy around to animate a dinosaur or a slinky dog…
Of course there is. All five year old boys would rather have a T-Rex than a father. Andy isn’t five years old, butI will repeat, ambiant energy.
This thread has inspired me to watch both TS 1 and 2 again. Bravo so far.
Thank you for raising an interesting point, Scumpup. I believe that Woody’s metaphorical and literal flaccidity has already been adequately accounted for by his symbolic “unmanning” referenced above, however the symbolism of his characteristic limpness, you refer to, especially when counterpointed with the figurative “stiffness” of his name {“woody”, is of course, vernacular for the male erection} had escaped my attention, and is of course yet further evidence of his initially conflicted sexuality.
Buzz’s rigidity, as you astutely note, is the physical opposite of Woody’s flaccidity: I believe I alluded earlier to the symbolism of having Buzz’s helmet {yet more nominal symbolism, given that “helmet”, is, of course slang for the glans penis} “ignite” their relationship. However, further exploration of the text will serve to demonstrate the gaps, if you will, in Buzz’s armour, and lead me to take issue with your “rape” interpretation.
I may have negected to earlier emphasise the significance of Buzz’s casually flaunted laser in contrast with Woody’s obviously absent gun, however I believe that this merits further investigation. While Buzz’s confident phallocentricity appears firmly established as a counterpoint to Woody’s “empty holster” {note the figuratively unclean female Hamm’s snide reference to Woody’s “laser envy”, which would seem to cast their rivalry in classsically Freudian terms}, an important point is that at the crucial moment Buzz’s laser doesn’t work.
Tellingly, this revelation occurs in a male bedroom, as Buzz and Woody are apparently menaced by Sid’s chimaeric toys, whose diverse construction, utilising both male and female, soft and hard parts, would seem to hint at a more complex set of sexual identities than either of the two protagonists had previously imagined: it is further significant that these “hybrid” creations, ostensibly threats to Woody and Buzz {or, on a deeper level, threats to the foundation of a relationship which they had previously envisaged as a conventional heterosexual rivalry} are instrumental in both repairing a damaged Buzz and enabling the pair, through effecting their escape, to finally confront the true nature of their sexualities.
To return to Buzz’s non-functioning weapon, however, discovery of his lack of what he had previously imagined to be his masculine potency - again, in confronting the sexual chimaeras of Sid’s bedroom - plunges him into despair: aghast at being “unmanned”, he begins to enact an exaggeratedly female role as Mrs Nesbit at the dolls’ tea party. At this stage in the narrative, he can only imagine two gender identities: the domineering male, or the submissive female: stricken by his apparent failure at the first, he despairingly adopts the second.
On a figurative level, we can perhaps begin to see Buzz’s apparently masculine arms and armour {an obvious reference to Virgil’s Arma virumque cano… [Arms and the man I sing…]} as less a badge of machismo then a protective carapace to shield his fear of being less than “manly”: if Woody is disarmed at the outset of the narrative, Buzz will later prove to be both figuratively disarmed and, as the aftermath of his plunge from the balcony, literally dis-armed. As I alluded to earlier, there is deep significance in his “re-arming” at the hands of the sexually ambiguous chimaeras, just as there is in the re-arming of Woody at the hands of Sid.
As an aside, I commented earlier on the wordplay between “slot” and “slit” in referring to the significance of Hamm’s role: applying the same phonemic substitution to “Sid”, we are confronted with “sod” - an abbreviation, of course, of “sodomite”: if Buzz reaches a understanding of his true sexual nature at the hands of the chimaeras who “repair” him, Woody reaches his at the hands of a character who nominally represents a passive male homosexuality - Woody becomes a “bottom”.
The two thus have far more in common, in resolving problems of sexual identity, than a casual reading of the text may show, and for this reason the “rape” hypothesis is fundamentally flawed: Buzz may adopt a “top” position in their flight together as he takes Woody from behind, but their relationship is clearly both consensual and mutually fulfilling.
applause
**Case Sensitive ** – I echo **don Jaime’s ** “I want to have your babies.”
I’ve just finished telling Kythereia off for flirting in the Pit. If she reads this thread, she’s gonna kill me.