Tin Toy

I think I've only seen this one time before now, at the animation cinema during the 1989 DaVinci Days Festival. I suspect many others have never even heard of it.

USA Today had an article a few days ago coinciding with the opening of Toy Story 3, listing 10 bits of Pixar Toy trivia. Among them,

1. Tinny, the one-man-band character from the Oscar-winning Pixar short Tin Toy, was supposed to be a star of 1995's Toy Story. But he was deemed too antiquated. A military action figure was suggested before filmmakers settled on a space toy.

While the clip is clearly dated, it was a jaw dropping example of detail and sophistication in the young genre of computer animation 20 or more years ago, and I find it kind of charming in a retro sort of way- for example, I love those balloon diapers. The Wiki page says

Tin Toy is a 1988 Pixar Animation Studios short film using computer animation. It was directed by John Lasseter and won the 1988 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In 2003, Tin Toy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

I have much enjoyed the Toy Story series- in fact, there's nothing I've seen from Pixar that I haven't enjoyed. There are a few of their features I haven't seen: Cars, Ratatouille, and Up; I haven't seen the new Toy Story either. I love the bittersweet quality that infuses everything they do, the subtle moodiness, the moments of real sadness. It makes the saccharine moments actually sweet, rather than cloying. Which brings me to this comic from The Far Left Side.I love things that make me happy and sad at the same time.