Toy Story: One step removed from Child's Play?

This post contains spoilers for the movie Toy Story 3. It also contains spoilers for Toy Story and Toy Story 2, but if you haven't seen them by now, I assume you don't care.

The Toy Story movies are just cute movies about the secret life of toys, right? But consider, for a moment, the ramifications of toys as living beings. As viewers have seen, Woody, Buzz, and the gang are often subject to the same emotions of jealousy and fear that we all feel. In fact, it was Woody's jealousy of newcomer Buzz that spurred the first movie's adventure.

Other prime examples are the villains of Toy Story 2 & 3: Stinky Pete and Lotso. Pete became bitter from having sat on a shelf in his package, never taken home and experiencing a child's love. Lotso, on the other hand, had a special bond with a child named Daisy and courageously journeyed back to her side after being left behind, only to discover he had been replaced by a new Lotso. At that point he snapped, and eventually became the embittered overseer of toys at Sunnyside Daycare.

Perhaps the one thing that saves people from the vengence of such toys is the rule, never explicitly stated in words in the films, that humans must never know that toys are "alive". Where this rule comes from is a mystery, but even the freshly unpackaged Buzz Lightyear, who believes himself to be a real Space Ranger, follows it by going lifeless as soon as Andy shows up. It's almost like it's an innate part of being a toy. Except . . . .

As even the first movie showed, there's nothing magical about the transformation from animate to inanimate. It doesn't happen simply because people are present, it happens because the toys choose to do it when people are present. There's always the danger of being accidentally observed, as was teased in Toy Story 3 by the scene with the janitor in the bathroom.

Furthermore, the toys can choose not to follow this rule, as was the case at the end of Toy Story. All of the toys let Sid see them move on their own, with Woody lecturing him the whole time. And frankly, perhaps the toys didn't think the whole plan out. After scaring Sid silly, what do they think he's going to do? Yes, he'll probably stop torturing and destroying them, but he's also likely to throw all the toys in his room away as soon as possible to get them away from him. So in the end, all of Sid's mixed-up toys wind up in the incinerator at the Tri-County Landfill. But I digress.

So what happens when one day an embittered toy realizes there's nothing actually stopping it from taking it's revenge on the humans that wronged them? Imagine Lotso taking his revenge on Daisy by sneaking back in and suffocating her with his own plush body. Imagine the Child's Play movies without the complication of needing a voodoo ritual to inhabit a doll with a human soul. It's enough to make a kid never want to play with an anthropomorphic toy again.

More 1990s video game finds

I've been searching the Google Groups archives again to find past posts to rec.games.video.classic. Here's what you can now find in the blog.

• 14 March 1995: Another week's finds [Compuvision, James Bond 007, Microsoft Arcade, & Space Jockey]
• 29 July 1995: Weekday Finds [2600 games in Birmingham, plus meeting Ralph]
  
• 3 July 1996: June's Finds [heavy sixer, Chuck Norris, H.E.R.O., blue 2600 catalog, original Odyssey games, Pong coin-op, Scramble handheld, Vectrex]
• 27 March 1997: Re: Finds that made you feel like a moron.
• 3 December 1997: Re: What was your last thrift purchase??
  
• 30 July 1999: Brag: Hardware for $0.10 each (& More finds today) - An additional post added to the end.

I've got several more to add, but it's late, so look for them in a day or three.

Video game brags and a disaster

I've posted the tales of several good classic video game finds I originally posted to the rec.games.video.classic Usenet group. Back then we called them "brags". I also dug up the tale of my phone call with Billy Mitchell shortly after his perfect Pac-Man game. Finally, I posted the story of the first time our house flooded from a burst washing machine hose. (The second time was two days later, believe it or not.)

• 14 May 1996: Flood
• 29 July 1997: Finally, a brag!
• 12 Feb 1998: $50 Brag
• 10 August 1998: Re: Stop me before I buy again!!!!
• 10 March 1999: Brag, anti-brag, and book
• 5 April 1999: Small brag & Wico info
• 16 April 1999: First good 2600 brag in a while
• 19 April 1999: Hardly a brag
• 4 May 1999: Today's finds
• 30 July 1999: Brag: Hardware for $0.10 each
• 14 July 1999: Re: Someone got Perfect Pacman Score????
• 3 May 2000: Brag: Instant Astrocade collection & more
• 30 May 2000: Brag: NES Arkanoid controller
• 17 July 2000: Brag: 2600, 7800 games and more
• 26 May 2006: Brag: INTV games
• 28 May 2006: Re: Just a small brag
• 14 April 2007: Brag: Turbo board game

Belated Hannah update: 18 months

I've been meaning to write this entry for months now. I was going to give physical stats and such, but I don't have them. In the interest of getting this out, she's still 5% in height and head circumference and still below the chart on weight. However, she's on a steady curve and finally hit 20 pounds so we could turn her seat forward! Oh, and she has 12 teeth: eight incisors (four top & four on bottom) and four molars (at the four corners, after a gap next to each end of the incisors where her canines will grow).

I'm teaching her to turn out the lights around the house, as I obviously went wrong somewhere with my sons. They couldn't turn a light out as they leave a room to save their life. Typically the first thing I do when I get home from work is go around and turn out the lights in the back, because everyone's in the living room or kitchen. Naturally, I have to hold her up so she can reach the switches, but maybe she'll keep it up on her own once she's tall enough. She's got enough fine motor skill to do it, but sometimes gets confused as to which way the switch should go to turn the light off or on.

Developmentally, the doctor said she should speak 7-27 words, if I recall correctly what my wife recalls the doctor saying correctly. That's the main thing I want to document now: her vocabulary. Unfortunately, that's rather hard as it has rapidly increased since she turned 18 months, so there may be words I've left out. Note that she's not speaking these absolutely clearly, but her family can understand them when she says them. And she there may be a few that she used in the past that she's not using as often now.

Andrew

Apparently her favorite brother, because she's refusing to say "Walter", even these months since she hit 18. We wonder if she's doing it on purpose to taunt him.

baby

One of her earliest words. It applies to just about anything people shaped. She first started using it for baby dolls at the store, but she's since used it for action figures and young kids bigger than her.

ball

bubble

For her, this actually means apple.

bye-bye

Daddy

dog

This means almost any animal with four legs. (In the months since, she can disinguish between dog and kitty.)

duck

Mainly for rubber ducks, but sometimes real ones too.

ear

eye

juice

Any drink to her is juice.

Mama

meemees

Means she wants to nurse.

no

You might notice that "yes" isn't on the list. At 18 months, as best I remember, she wasn't yet saying "yeah" or "yes", just "no", which made it hard to ask her a simple question.

shoes

This was possibly her first word; it was certainly one of the earliest. The girl loves her shoes (and sometimes other people's).

thank you

tissue

This is sometimes hard to distinguish from "juice", just from the sound. Luckily, she has other ways of letting us know what she wants.

toes

uh-oh

Used most often when she or someone else drops something.

Wow, a genuine 2600 game thirft store find

I was let off work a little early on Friday because of the holiday weekend. I thought I'd hit the comic book shop before going home as Fantastic Four #589 was out and it might have more Dire Wraiths in it. (I ultimately discovered it doesn't, but Rom is mentioned by a letter writer in the letter column.) To avoid an intersection that gets nasty at rush hour, I decided to take the old way to the store. Unfortunately, I was having a senior moment and started to take the way to a store that's been out of business for years now.

After getting back on track, I realized I was passing a thrift store I'd seen a few times, but hadn't yet stopped at, so I did. I'd been in the store maybe a minute when I spotted a Master Merlin. I'd never actually held one of these sequels to the classic Parker Brothers electronic game, so I quickly grabbed it. When I finally got the battery compartment open, it looked okay. Some minor battery acid on one contact, but nothing that looked like it would prevent it from working. Worth a $2 gamble, I thought. I also found a Michael Bolton CD with several of his hits on it. He probably hit his peak back when I was in college and my iPod is currently Bolton-less, so this is a great buy at $1.

I finally stumbled upon a box of 2600 games. And VIC-20 games? Huh. Anyway, looking through them, I see one title that I don't think I have. Unfortunately, my PDA with my lists of games owned died a while back, so I'm shopping blind. After being quoted a $3.50 price with only $5 on me (cash only store) and $3 already committed, I decide to take the gamble that it won't go anywhere before tomorrow after I check to see if I have it.

I get home. The Master Merlin works fine, I'm happy to report. And it turns out I indeed do not have Solar Storm by Imagic in my 2600 collection. Let the worry begin that it'll disappear before I can return.

Finally, late Saturday afternoon I get back to the store. The box is still there, but someone's moved some of the games around. Looking, looking, whew, it's still here. When I get to the register, it's only $2.50 plus tax. Either I heard him wrong yesterday or their prices are inconsistent. Finally tested it late Saturday night, just before posting this, and it works just fine.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I found an Atari 2600 game I didn't have at a thrift store. Yes, I found one at a video game store last year, but that's not quite the same. Most of my finds of games I didn't already have of late have been Intellivision games, which is not my primary system of interest. The 2600 is. I'll be savoring this for a few days.

Postscript: My timing couldn't have been better, apparently. On Monday, this thrift store posted an ad to Craigslist specifically mentioning "Atari Video Game systems" [sic]. So if this thrift store wasn't on my competition's radar before, it is now.