YOU ARE A TOY! It’s hard to believe that it’s been 30 years since Woody the cowboy uttered that frustration at Buzz Lightyear but that was exactly the topic of conversation at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event for the 30 Years of Toy Story panel.

Here’s a look at everything we experienced at 30 Years of Toy Story at the 2024 D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event.

What We Learned

  • Panelists included Pixar CCO Pete Docter plus Pixar notables including Andrew Stanton, Bob Pauley, Bonnie Arnold, Jonas Rivera, and Katherine Sarafian.
  • About 120 people worked on the first Toy Story film, today there’s more people than that just on the animation team. Not to mention every other department that make up the house of the Lamp.
  • There was no Woody dolls when they were animating the film, Pete recalled having a modified Fred Flintstone doll that was crafted with Woody’s proportions that helped animators as a reference point.
  • Andrew remarked about the passion Tom Hanks had for the project and shared a list of lines of dialogue that they wanted to record for Woody’s pull string box. He shared some hand-written notes on the page that were lines improvised by Hanks during the very first recording session. Some of the iconic lines he came up with?
    • There’s a snake in my boots!
    • Somebody’s poisoned the waterhole?
    • I’d like to join yer posse fellas, but first I’m gonna sing me a little song
  • Bonnie shared how those early days were extremely tight because the medium was still an unknown and everything was drastically underestimated including (and especially) budgets. The whole team reminisced about how they would cook for each other, pool resources, and the spirit of camaraderie that helped them keep working to get everything finished.
  • Katherine championed Bonnie later in the panel talking about how she had so many female role models to look up to at the studio. “There’s lot of good women behind the scenes — they are not in the pictures [shown here] but trust me it was happening.”
  • As an editor’s side note, to address the elephant on the room, John Lasseter’s name WAS mentioned in passing and in stories where he was a pivotal player to the point of the story. A few photos shown throughout the presentation also had John in them but he was not the focal point of the photographs.

Video

We did not capture a full video of the panel but YouTube user Jaime Thomas posted a mostly complete video of the panel.

Photos

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See it for Yourself

D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event took place in Anaheim from August 9 – 11, 2024. 

MORE INFO: Check out all of our coverage for D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at MouseInfo.com/D23

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