New DVDs: Toy Story 3

I suspect that most parents have seen Toy Story 3 by now, either in the theater this summer or on DVD since its recent release. (In the latter case, you've doubtless seen it…countless times.) Our family is no exception—Dash went with his mom when it first came out, and we've owned the DVD since a few seconds after it was available—but I myself had missed out on actually seeing it until this past weekend.

Anyway, no surprise: It's the usual Pixar masterpiece—funny, moving, playing simultaneously to kids and parents on a bunch of levels. Or at least it shouldn't have been a surprise to me, since the animation studio has been spoiling us all into such expectations for years now. But somehow, I hadn't been expecting as much this time around. My line of thinking when I first heard about the movie went something like: A second follow-up to a 15-year-old movie? Man, I'd really rather see Pixar break new ground. I guess Disney's just cashing in on the massively successful franchise. If Pixar is ever going to disappoint, this would be the one.

Well, I was wrong. Toy Story 3 offers up the same brand of ultrasmart writing, directing, and animation we've seen recently in WALL-E and Ratatouille. Once more, live-action studios could take lessons from Pixar's brain trust in matters like exposition, here provided in slightly-dark-yet-humorous form by a grizzled Chatter Telephone (playing the Elisha Cook, Jr. role) and, for the vital villain backstory, a burnt-out toy clown named Chuckles (voiced by the always brilliant Bud Luckey). And yet the bonds among the core group of toys, and between them and their now-grown owner, are realistic enough to make the film's deeper explorations of love and loss genuinely moving; Pixar's remain the only animated films at which kids often are called upon to comfort their parents, rather than the other way around.

So, Pixar: I can't believe I ever doubted you. I am so sorry. It will never happen again. Not even with your toughest test of my expectations yet, the upcoming Cars 2.

[Image: Courtesy of © Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.]

New Games: Woody’s Run-Around Roundup

The San Francisco–based toy and game company Wild Planet has a niche to itself, comfortably between the designers of expensive, high-end tech-y toys you’re afraid to give your young kids for fear they’ll break them, and the producers of cheap, disposable toys you expect your kids to break instantly. Its products are well-made enough to last a while under the high stress our kids put toys through, but also generally come in at a reasonable price point. I’ve long been a fan of the company’s remote-control SpyGear vehicles, several versions of which—it can now be told—terrorized the halls of the Cookie art department a few years ago. (The responsible party or parties remain at large.)

Parents will also appreciate the Wild Planet’s focus on active games for pretty much all ages—most welcome when you’re trying to find ways to pry your children away from DVDs for an afternoon or two. Its latest of these is Woody’s Run-Around Roundup, branded to the upcoming Toy Story 3 movie. The game features five pieces: one large handheld “tagger,” shaped like Woody from the movie, and four character “targets,” in the form of Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Hamm, and Rex. The tagger shouts out  instructions (in Woody’s voice), telling a player to tag the character whose name begins with R, for instance, or the one wearing a white spacesuit; that player must then “tag” the correct character with the Woody figure to advance to the next question. (Embedded microchips allow the “tagger” to recognize automatically when someone has made the right or wrong call and respond accordingly, with either encouragement to try again or a new character to tag.)

The game has several modes—solo and multiplayer timed games, in which you’re trying to get through a set number of questions in the fastest time; a memory game, in which you have to remember a sequence of challenges as it builds up; and a hide-and-seek treasure-hunt game. You can set up the four target characters just about anywhere kids can get to, and thus make the timed games quite exerting in a decent-size backyard—but the games can also be played indoors on a rainy day, in one room or spread throughout a house. Parents can join in and play with the kids (depending on how much sleep you’ve been getting, you may or may not have to ease up on them) for a whole-family game, but it’s also simple enough for kids age three and up to play on their own. In short, you have lots of options.

And if you’re not into the branding (which in the case of my son did provide a little extra help in getting him away from the TV), never fear: This is in fact a variant on a previously existing Wild Planet game, Animal Scramble, in which the characters are simply various animals—a monkey, an elephant, a giraffe, and so on. (Both the branded and unbranded versions require three AA battteries.)

It’s not super-high-tech, but all in all, you and your kids end up with quite a lot for your 25 bucks or so. Which is precisely what I’ve always appreciated about Wild Planet.

[Photo courtesy of Wild Planet]