The Christmas Toy Story?
In 1986 ABC aired Jim Henson’s made-for-tv movie “The Christmas Toy”. Nine years later, Disney/Pixar kicked off the Toy Story trilogy, which I discovered tonight has strikingly similar elements to the 1986 Christmas special.
My family and I settled in tonight to watch a Christmas themed movie since we opted not to attend a local holiday event as planned. After skimming the featured holiday favorites on Netflix my kids settled on Jim Henson’s “The Christmas Toy”, after all, who can resist a movie cover with Muppets on it.
As the movie kicked off it seemed familiar, which means I probably saw the Christmas special when it first aired in ’86, but as the story progressed there were a number of other elements that felt familiar. Familiar, because they carried similar plot elements to the beloved Toy Story franchise.
The story revolves around a stuffed tiger named Rugby. Rugby is an arrogant toy that thinks that the Christmas holiday is all about him since Christmas is when he was unwrapped and he became the favorite toy of the little girl that owns him. Striking resemblance to Toy Story protagonist Woody, no?
Because he doesn’t understand Christmas he thinks he needs to get downstairs and get back inside a Christmas gift to be unwrapped again. As he escapes the room to head downstairs, a much older beat up bear with a cane draws the attention of all the toys to explain to them what Christmas is and how they’ll need to welcome to the new toys who won’t be used to their world. Hmm, an overly friendly beat up bear with a cane who heads up a welcoming comity for new toys…Didn’t Lotso play that part in Toy Story 3?
Anyways, there are some crazy misadventures in between and eventually a handful of the other toys venture out of the room to try and save Rugby along with a cat toy named mew. When they get downstairs Rugby is in the process of trying to get inside a box to put himself in when he discovers Meteora, Queen of the Asteroids, this year’s Christmas toy.
Meteora busts out of he box quickly thinking that she is on a bizarre planet and begins making her way around the living room trying to locate her arch nemesis, which from her statements sounds to be some sort of robot. At first Meteora has no idea she is a toy and feels that the box she was in was nothing more than a prison. It take some coaxing, but finally the other toys are able to convince her she is a toy and get her back in the box. Wait, a space toy that doesn’t believe they are just a toy? Where did we see that? Oh yeah, Buzz Lightyear!
As you can see, at the core Toy Story shares a lot of similar elements to the 1986 Christmas special. Some additional elements include.
- A ditzy doll that shares a striking similarity to Barbie in the Toy Story films
- A scene in which the doll is dressed like Little Bo Peep (I never understood the Bo Peep character in Toy Story, so maybe this explains it)
I’m not saying that Toy Story ripped off The Christmas Toy, but there are definitely some striking resemblances. If you have about 45 minutes jump on Netflix and stream it and let me know what you think. My memory of the Toy Story films isn’t that fresh, so there may be other elements I simply didn’t pick up on that both movies share.
20 thoughts on “The Christmas Toy Story?”
Wow! I could not agree more! If you aren’t saying that Toy Story ripped off this movie, then I am.
So much so, that I am still watching the Christmas Toy right now as I was before I even read your post. I found your post because hile watching this I could not believe the similarities. I have no doubt whatsoever that Toy Story is a direct copy of this movie.
The strange thing is, I can’t find any info on Toy Story using any references from this movie.
haha thanks for your comment Paul. I found a few people talking about this online after I posted this, but it’s amazing how similar the storylines are. It’s even more interesting to see how it spans all three Toy Story movies. Who knows, maybe the inspiration mention comes in the form of an off interview or extra that we haven’t seen. Either way, it was too obvious not to mention in a blog post.
WOW, I also just stumbled upon this. Watching Xmas toy with my son on Netflix. About 10 minutes in I went to the computer to determine the correlation.
Looks like a direct rip off to me!
Thanks for talking the time to write his post, good stuff!
We were just the same thing! Googled to see if there was any official correlation and came across your blog. Dead on!
This movie was a favorite of my sisters and I when we were kids, and this afternoon we decided to see if we could find it on Netflix. After watching it today our minds were blown by all of the Toy Story similarities too.
After Googling, I found this post, and I’m glad to see we’re not the only ones that have noticed this. Clearly someone at Pixar watched this movie a time or two!
Toy story is a complete ripoff of A Christmas Toy! I was shocked at how similar the two stories and characters were!!
Totally agree with you. Also, the Little Bo Peep character in the first Toy Story was originally supposed to be a Barbie… but Mattel wouldn’t allow it. But then they saw how successful the movie was… which is why Barbie then appeared in the other 2 Toy Story movies.
haha thanks for the info Sarah. I had no idea Bo Peep was supposed to be a Barbie. Makes the whole tie in that much more interesting.
I’ve always thought that Toy Story copied this movie. The Christmas Toy has been a favorite of mine since I was little. My only thought is maybe Disney has some sort of right to it? Since they own the muppet stuff and Toy Story is Disney/Pixar. But then again the DVD version has cut out Kermit, who narrated the original version shown on tv.
Hi Karen, thanks for your comment. While it’s a possibility I find this highly doubtful. Disney didn’t own the rights to the Muppets until 2004, which means they had no rights to the story or the characters at the time Toy Story was released.
I watched this last night and looked at the date as it finished to see if it preceded ‘Toy Story’. There are many similarities, including the basic plot (jealously of new Toy’s arrival leads to trouble) as well as many specific elements and devices (space toy thinks the world is real). I would say that this definitely would need to be credited as an inspiration, but that obviously Toy Story, with over 6 hours of screen time between 3 movies, took it much farther.
I watched A Christmas Toy when I was a kid, and later watched Toy Story and never noticed the similarities until I put a Christmas Toy on for my daughter the other day. I thought the same thing!
How come they never sued? Hollywood’s full of crooks.
I Loved the Christmas Toy when I was younger, and the first time I saw Toy Story, I remember commenting that it was just like the Christmas Toy. To be perfectly honest I’m surprised no one mentioned this sooner. I’m betting that the people who came up with the story, probably saw the Christmas Toy in their youth, did not consciously remember all the details, just the idea of toys having life and mobility when alone, and ran with it. Their subconscious adding in little plot points they didn’t even realize they were remembering from the Christmas Toy. Looks can be deceiving, and I would like to believe that Toy Story was inspired by the Christmas Toy, not intended to be a copy or modernized version of it.
I remember back when I was a kid and Toy Story was first announced. I saw one of the trailors where Woody shouts “Everyone back to your places, hurry!” and I thought it would be just like The Christmas Toy, where if they were spotted out of position they could never move again. Turned out I was wrong in that department. What’s weirder is that I didn’t notice what they did have in common until just recently. But yeah, I really think Pixar just adapted the living-toy concept and made it their own.
Wow. Asked my husband to google comparison between both movies since the Christmas toy was my favorite movie. Now my son is 3 years old and we were watching toy story and I was in shock about the similarities!
Bo Beep was used because at the time, Mattel didn’t think Toy Story would make it and that’s why Barbie wasn’t in it. Also, Billy Crystal was suppose to do Buzz’s voice, but he declined. He also, thought it would have been a flop.
Oh my God.
I saw the beginning of this movie when I was no older than five years old. When Meteora made her appearance, I was scared out of my pants, and ran out of the TV room. The memory has stuck with me into adulthood, but I couldn’t remember the title of the movie (In fact, I thought it was some obscure TV show for years,) or any of the character names, so I had no way of finding it again.
There’s a Toy Story Christmas special released this year. I was looking for a gif of a scene from it, and that traumatizing doll showed up in Google’s image results.
Bud, this blog has finally answered a question that’s been lingering in the back of my mind for nearly two decades. Thank you so much.
I always new toy story was a rip ofc of Christmas toy but I didn’t relize just how deep a rip off. Personally as glitchy as the Christmas toy is the toys felt real to me. Toy story they never really felt real. Everyone praises the original and many praise second and 3rd well they are split. Frankly I caught glimpse of 2nd and 3rd on tv. The first one just felt wrong. I was looking for others whom get it.