tek's rating:

Toy Story of Terror!, on ABC
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This first aired October 16, 2013. It's set sometime after the 2010 movie Toy Story 3 (and maybe after some Toy Story short films that I haven't seen yet). So, if you haven't seen all three Toy Story movies, it won't make much sense to you. (I finally watched Toy Story 3 for the first time a few days ago, in preparation to watch this special.) You may not want to read this review, if you haven't seen the movies, especially the third one.

It starts with a scary vampire movie, which the toys are all watching on a portable DVD player in the trunk of a car. Bonnie and her mom are on a trip, I guess. Anyway, Mr. Pricklepants is talking about all the standard horror movie tropes, which he continues to do throughout the special. The car gets a flat tire, so Bonnie's mom stops at a motel to call for a tow truck, but they can't get one til morning. That means everyone has to stay at the motel for the night. Mr. Potato Head decides to leave Bonnie's suitcase to check out the room's amenities while Bonnie and her mom are sleeping, and the other toys follow him. So of course Pricklepants acts as if they're all actually in a horror movie, themselves. Which it soon comes to seem as if they are, when the toys start disappearing one by one. The last one is Jessie, who is definitely scared. She meets an action figure named Combat Carl, who's spent an unspecified amount of time avoiding whatever it is that's been taking all the toys.

And I guess that's all I want to say about the plot. Once we do find out what's going on, it becomes a much more realistic, but no less scary kind of horror, if you happen to be a toy. But of course there's ultimately a happy ending. Anyway, it's not really a Halloween special per se, but it really is kinda scary, and it did air close to Halloween. As can be expected from Pixar, there's great animation and clever writing, and all the voice actors from the movies are back. So it was definitely a fun special for fans of the movies, and a worthy entry in the Toy Story franchise. Though standing on its own merits, I'd say it's just okay.


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Toy Story franchise
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films: Toy Story * Toy Story 2 * Toy Story 3 * Toy Story 4
specials & shorts: Toy Story Toons * Toy Story of Terror! * Toy Story That Time Forgot * Lamp Life
spinoffs: Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins * Buzz Lightyear of Star Command * Lightyear