Toy Story is the best animated franchise in movie history.
I stand by that.
I’ll also be honest. I haven’t seen Toy Story 5 yet. I have seen every other Toy Story movie, and part of me still believes the story should have ended with Toy Story 3. That ending felt complete. Andy giving the toys away felt like the right final note. It hurt, but it hurt in the way growing up actually hurts.
You leave things behind.
You do not always mean to.
You just do.
But the more I think about Toy Story 5 making a tablet the villain, the more I understand why Pixar went there.
Because Toy Story was never only a growing up story.
The deeper theme was always being replaced.
Woody was scared of Buzz because Buzz became the new favorite. Jessie had already been forgotten by the girl who once loved her. The toys have always lived with the same fear: what happens when the person who once chose you stops choosing you?
That is why these movies work.
They are about toys, but the fear is human.
Everyone knows what it feels like to be replaced, or at least to worry that it could happen. Replaced by a new friend. A new coworker. A new relationship. A new version of someone’s life that no longer has the same space for you.
Pixar just made that fear small enough to fit inside a toy box.
And now, with Toy Story 5, that fear has a new shape.
A tablet.
The tablet makes sense because the toys were always losing attention
The tablet as the villain feels obvious at first.
Of course Pixar would go there. Kids use tablets. Parents complain about screen time. Everyone knows the iPad kid stereotype. It is an easy modern topic.
But I think it goes deeper than that.
The tablet works because it is the newest version of the same old Toy Story problem.
The toys are always fighting for attention.
In the first movie, Woody loses attention to Buzz. Buzz is newer, cooler, flashier, and more exciting. Woody is still loved, but he no longer feels safe in his place. That is what makes him act out. That is what makes the story work.
The fear is not really that Buzz exists.
The fear is that Andy might choose Buzz instead.
That same fear keeps showing up in different forms. A child grows up. A toy gets left behind. A favorite becomes something from the past. A room changes. A kid changes. A toy waits around for a person who no longer reaches for it.
That is brutal when you really think about it.
Toy Story made children laugh at talking toys while adults quietly felt the sadness underneath it.
That is why making a tablet the threat actually fits the franchise. The tablet is not random. It is not Pixar trying to sound modern for no reason.
It is the next thing that can replace the toys.
And maybe the hardest thing they have ever had to compete with.
I grew up during the shift from toys to screens
I grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s, so I feel like I caught both sides of childhood.
I remember toys still feeling big.
Action figures. Pokémon cards. Beyblades. Game Boy. Trading things at school. Going to someone’s house and seeing what toys they had. Making up games outside. Playing with stuff that did not do anything until you made it do something.
Then slowly, everything started moving toward screens.
The Game Boy got bigger. Consoles became the center of the room. The iPod Touch showed up. Then the iPhone. Then tablets became normal. Then kids were not only playing games. They were watching other people play games. Then Roblox became the hangout. YouTube became the babysitter. TikTok became the background noise.
I am not saying all of that is bad.
I played video games. I liked technology. Most people do.
But there was a real shift.
Toys used to ask something from us. You had to bring the story. You had to make the sound effects. You had to decide what the character was doing. You had to be bored for a minute before the game in your head started.
Screens changed that.
A screen gives you the color, the sound, the reward, the movement, the next thing, and the next thing after that.
That is why the tablet is such a strong villain for Toy Story.
A toy waits for a child to imagine.
A tablet starts entertaining right away.
That is not a fair fight.
Working in childcare made this feel even more obvious
I worked in childcare for over seven years, and I watched the shift happen in real life.
When I first started, kids talked about toys, shows, cards, Beyblades, and whatever game they made up at recess. Then over time, the conversations changed.
More Roblox.
More YouTube.
More iPads.
More kids talking about games they played online instead of games they played in the room.
And I heard parents say the same kind of things over and over.
“He cannot get off the iPad.”
“She has a meltdown when we take it away.”
“It is the only thing that keeps him calm.”
“She would stay on it all day if we let her.”
After a while, it became clear that the tablet itself was not the whole problem. A lot of the problem was how adults let it enter the room.
That may sound harsh, but it is true.
Kids are kids. If you give a child unlimited access to the most entertaining object in the house, of course they are going to want it. Of course they are going to choose it. Of course a regular toy starts looking boring next to it.
That does not mean the child is bad.
It means the tablet is really good at what it does.
It also means adults have to be honest about what is happening.
A tablet can be useful. It can help a child learn. It can give a parent a break. It can keep a kid calm during a long car ride or a stressful moment.
But when the tablet becomes the default, everything else has to fight harder.
Toys have to fight harder.
Books have to fight harder.
Outside has to fight harder.
Boredom has to fight harder.
Even other people have to fight harder.
That is what makes the Toy Story 5 idea feel real.
The villain is not a tablet because tablets are evil.
The tablet is the villain because it represents how easy it is for childhood to be replaced by something faster.
The real fear is being replaced by something cooler
Everyone focuses on screen time, but I think the bigger idea is replacement.
That is what Toy Story has always understood better than almost any animated movie.
Being replaced is one of the most painful feelings because it makes you question what you meant in the first place.
If someone can move on from you, were you ever that important?
That question is sitting underneath Woody’s whole character.
He wants to believe he matters because Andy loves him. But then Buzz shows up, and suddenly Woody sees how fragile that position is. He is still Woody. He did not change overnight. But Andy’s attention changed.
That is what hurts.
And that is why the tablet works so well as the next villain.
The tablet is new. It is cool. It does a thousand things. It gives instant rewards. It is what other kids are using. It is what the culture keeps pushing forward.
How does a toy compete with that?
How does anything older compete with that?
That is where this becomes more than a movie about kids and screens.
A lot of people know this feeling.
A worker replaced by younger talent.
A creator replaced by a new platform.
A brand replaced by a trend.
A friend replaced by a new friend group.
A parent watching their child need them less.
A childhood object sitting in a closet while life moves on without it.
The reason Toy Story keeps hitting people emotionally is because the toys are living through something we all fear.
They remember what they meant to someone.
Then they have to watch that meaning change.
The tablet is not scary because it is technology
I do not think the right takeaway is “screens are bad and toys are good.”
That is too simple.
There are plenty of good things kids can do with technology. Some games are creative. Some videos teach them things. Some digital spaces let kids play with friends when they cannot be together in person.
The issue is not that screens exist.
The issue is that screens are built to win attention.
That is the part people do not always want to say out loud.
A toy has to be picked up.
A book has to be opened.
A game outside has to be started.
A screen is already ready.
It asks less from the child at the beginning, then gives more back right away. That is powerful. Adults struggle with that too. We act like kids are weak for wanting tablets, then we check our own phones every few minutes.
So maybe Toy Story 5 is not only pointing at children.
Maybe it is pointing at all of us.
We all know what it feels like to choose the easier thing. The faster thing. The thing that does not ask us to sit with silence. The thing that fills the empty space before we have to.
That is the world the toys are up against now.
They are not only competing with a tablet.
They are competing with a whole culture that has made boredom feel like a problem to fix.
But boredom used to be where imagination started.
That is what worries me most.
Why this is a smart move from Pixar
I still believe Toy Story 3 was a perfect ending.
But I can admit this is a smart direction.
If Pixar was going to bring Toy Story back, it needed a reason beyond nostalgia. It could not simply be “remember Woody and Buzz?” That might get people in the theater, but it does not make the story matter.
The tablet gives the franchise a reason to exist again.
It connects the old Toy Story fear to the current childhood problem.
That is what good storytelling does. It does not repeat the old emotion in the exact same way. It finds where that emotion lives now.
In 1995, the fear was the shiny new toy.
In 2026, the fear is the glowing screen.
Different object.
Same wound.
That is why people care. That is why parents will talk about it. That is why adults who grew up with Toy Story will feel something before they even see the movie.
Because they know the toys are fighting a losing battle in some ways.
And they know the feeling.
We all do.
What brands and creators can learn from this
This is also a good lesson for marketers, creators, and brands.
People do not pay attention to nostalgia only because something is old. They pay attention when the old thing helps explain something they are feeling now.
That is why Toy Story still works.
It is familiar, but it is not only leaning on memory. The tablet gives it a current fear. It gives people a reason to talk about it. It gives parents a reason to argue about it. It gives adults a reason to think about their own childhood.
That is the part brands miss all the time.
They bring back an old logo, an old product, an old character, or an old song and assume people will care because they remember it.
But memory alone is not enough.
The old thing has to mean something in the present.
Toy Story means something because childhood has changed. Toys have changed. Attention has changed. Parents have changed. The things competing for a child’s imagination have changed.
Pixar found the pressure point.
That is what makes the tablet villain interesting.
It is not only a plot device. It is a cultural signal.
It tells us what childhood is competing with now.
The reason this still matters
I do not know if Toy Story 5 will be great.
Maybe it will be. Maybe it will feel unnecessary. Maybe it will make people cry again because somehow Pixar always knows how to do that with plastic toys.
But I do think the tablet as the villain makes sense.
Because Toy Story has always been about the same fear.
Being loved, then being left behind.
Being chosen, then being replaced.
Being part of someone’s world, then watching that world make room for something new.
That is why these movies have lasted. They are not really about toys coming to life when humans leave the room. They are about what happens when love changes shape.
The tablet is just the newest version of that fear.
And honestly, it may be the most accurate one yet.
Because the toys are not only asking if Bonnie still loves them.
They are asking if a child raised around endless screens will still have the patience to choose them.
That is the part that sticks with me.
A toy can sit quietly on the floor for years.
A screen never has to be quiet.
And maybe that is why Toy Story 5 made a tablet the villain.
Because the scariest replacement is not always the thing that hates you.
Sometimes it is the thing everyone else wants more.
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