Toy Stories

I love the Disney/Pixar Toy Story movie franchise.  The voice casting of the characters is nearly perfect, and the personalities they've given to all the toy characters are cute and charming.  I love the way that they've worked in toys familiar to many children of my era -- if not actual duplicates of trademarked toys, many bear enough of a resemblance for viewers to identify and relate to them.

The messages of the Toy Story movies are meaningful too -- they are stories about friendship, love, looking out for one another, and finding one's purpose in life.

But for all that, there's something in my favourite of all the Toy Story movies, Toy Story 2 (my favourite because it brings us Jessie and Bullseye, as well as a brief shot of a Breyer-like collection of plastic horses) that troubles me.

The trouble is the portrait it paints of the adult toy collector, Al, of Al's Toy Barn.

Al McWhiggin (did you know his last name is McWhiggin?  I didn't until I looked it up!) is not the type of owner the toys want to have.  As toys, they want to be loved and they want to be played with -- their purpose, as they see it, is to bring happiness to children.  That is, after all, what makes the Mint in Box (MIB) Old Prospector toy from Toy Story 2 so bitter -- he's never been removed from his package so he was never played with and never loved.

I do love my model horses, but in ways I don't like to think about, I am Al.  

Al image courtesy of Disney/Pixar

What bothers me about being Al is not that I hurt the feelings of my toys (I'm not that crazy).  What bothers me is that I get joy out of collecting and displaying them, and that's not really what toys are meant for.  As the Toy Story movies declare over and over again: toys are meant to be played with. 

Now Al (a.k.a. "The Chicken Man") is not a sympathetic character.  Not only is he a toy collector, but he steals toys he cannot buy and has amassed his collection primarily for the purpose of selling it.

And Al does have an impressive collection.  I could easily see myself doing the same thing with say, a collection of Lone Ranger toys, or a collection of Black Beauty memorabilia.  And who's to say if, despite his mercenary intentions, Al doesn't have a childhood connection to the "Woody's Roundup" program that started him collecting all the "Woody's Roundup" toys in the beginning?

Does this make me an "Al"?

I guess I would feel better about amassing a collection of toy horses if there was a child in my family I could pass the toys on to, but there is not.  Not only are there no children of a suitable age, but I am the only person in my family, in fact the only person in all of my extended family -- living or dead -- who is at all horsey.

I can't say how I came to be the only one, but I have loved horses for as long as I can remember.  I've no idea what started it -- it's just something that's always been.  Perhaps it was the wooden rocking horse I had as a child.  My older sister and brother had both rocked on it before me, but it was a sturdy beast and was perfectly functional by the time it was my turn to go riding.  I can't think of any other horse in my life earlier than that one, but it seems a small platform to build a lifelong obsession upon.

But back to being Al.  Although my shelves full of Breyers do sometimes make me feel guiltily "Al-ish," I don't get the same feeling from my collection of clinkies.  Perhaps this is why I'm so attracted to fragile horses.  Clinkies, after all, are meant to be displayed and not played with, so by putting my porcelain ponies out in a cabinet get ogled I'm only doing what any clinky collector would do.

How about this?

Still, I like to share my toy horse stories and the only good way I have to do that is to line them up on shelves in much the same way as I do my clinkies.  I do sometimes try to steer visitors away from the "horse room" (a.k.a. my office) if the dust situation in there is too bad, but I like it best when people come in and ask questions about all the toys I have and why I have them.  So it's not like I'm at all ashamed of my hobby -- it's just that I sometimes wish I could pass on my love for and knowledge about my hobby horses to a suitable child.

As participants in this hobby all of us -- collectors, conservationists, record keepers, restorers, sculptors, customizers, tack and prop makers, showers, judges, writers, social media mavens and entrepreneurs -- have a part to play in building and maintaining what is rapidly turning out to be an impressive legacy of model horse lore.

That, above all else, makes me proud of what we do.  We aren't really Als: we're more like the Disney/Pixar Toy Story team.  Together, through all the different things we do, we use our talents and imaginations to bring our toys' story to life.