There's a scene in the trailers for Toy Story 3 where the toys meet the kids of the Sunnyside Daycare Centre and all hell breaks loose. They're damaged, drooled on, smacked around and generally played with in the way that little kids play with toys before they learn to value their possessions.
It's a theme that most will remember better as the main reason to dislike Sid, the kid next door and demented antagonist from Toy Story. This kid, aside from blowing up Combat Carls and attempting to launch Buzz Lightyears into orbit, deconstructs toys and re-assembles them as new and exciting toys, like a baby-headed spider or a duck with arms and legs. Wait, hang on...
Why is Sid, arguably the more creative of the two kids in this film, demonised for fucking about with toys? Alright, we know they come to life, and they're our heroes, but Sid's basically an outcast. He's a geek! He's easier to empathise with him than with Andy, to be honest, who plays imaginatively but somehow keeps all his shit in pristine condition for years. How the hell is Slinky Dog not a knotted mess like every other fucking slinky that leaves its box?
OK, so the people are ancillary in these films anyway, but let's be fair to Sid. The consequences of Woody's actions may have scared him off of pulling apart toys and putting them back together, but from there he was probably traumatised enough to move onto doing it to small animals, and then maybe people! Woody made The Human Centipede happen, ladies and gents!
That's obviously not what we see from the small shout-out to Sid in Toy Story 3, a shout-out you need to keep your eyes peeled for, but you can surmise that where he is now is not where he wanted to be in life. The kid seemed destined for a more creative course in life, dammit.
It's reasonable that the younger kids don't play gently with the toys in Toy Story 3, but when you're watching these films, everyone remember Sid Phillips, the true tragic figure of the Toy Story trilogy.
Toy Story 3 Week continues tomorrow.