‘Toy Story’ has always been entertaining — this time it’s important

Author of the article:

Washington Post

Caitlin Gibson, The Washington Post

Published Jun 20, 2026  •  Last updated 9 minutes ago  •  7 minute read

Bullseye and Jessie are nonplussed by Lilypad's presence in Toy Story 5. Photo by Pixar /Photo courtesy of Disney/Pixar

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Rewind with me, for a moment. Let’s go back to November 1995: Whitney Houston topped the pop charts, Bill Clinton was in the White House, and Motorola had yet to debut the first-ever flip phone. Millennials ranged from not-yet-born to 14 years old – making us the entire target audience for “Toy Story,” the groundbreaking Pixar cartoon and first fully computer-animated feature film. It landed in theatres the day before Thanksgiving – we filled up on popcorn, gorged on turkey, then begged our parents to take us to Burger King for the themed kids’ meal toys.

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A whole generation of us were enthralled by the story of an old-timey cowboy doll, Woody, and the threat posed by the arrival of Buzz Lightyear – a flashy spaceman Woody feared would displace him as the favorite in the eyes of their owner, Andy.

More than three decades have passed. In the Pixar universe, Andy grew up and passed down his treasured toys to his young neighbour, Bonnie. In the actual universe, millennials grew up too, and many are now parents who will take our own young children to see the franchise’s latest instalment, “Toy Story 5,” which opened Friday. The sequel revisits themes from the original: It’s about growing pains, the struggle to belong, and the necessity of adapting to an unsettling new reality. But this time, the plot centers on the proliferation of digital devices and social media in modern childhood – a topic that looms large in the mind of just about every parent I know. Our nostalgia perhaps heightens the impact when our beloved Woody (who has aged along with us; he now has a gleaming bald spot) says, grimly: “Toys are for play. Tech is for everything.”

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Sure, “Toy Story 5” is a movie for our kids. But it is also, undeniably, for us.

(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)

“Toy Story 5” steers our familiar characters into new and provocative territory, placing cowgirl Sheriff Jessie center stage as the leader of 8-year-old Bonnie’s toys. Bonnie is shy and quirky and is struggling to make new friends. This worries her parents, who decide to buy her a popular frog-themed tablet called Lilypad, so Bonnie can chat with the other girls from her dance class. “Are we sure about this?” her parents wonder hesitantly as they order the device, but they’re desperate to help their lonely kid. Lilypad – who, like the other toys, becomes animated when humans aren’t around – instantly becomes Bonnie’s primary fixation.

Does this already feel painfully familiar? I’ve spent years reporting on how parents are navigating an increasingly tech-saturated reality, and many of them described agonizing over their choices, overwhelmed by all the advice from experts and the input from fellow parents. Screen use among children is a thorny, complicated issue, replete with peer pressure (among kids and adults), anxiety, and plenty of parental guilt.

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Which is why “Toy Story 5” could prove to be a genuinely important film: It offers its vast, mainstream audience an accessible approach to a daunting topic, the kind of shared cultural experience that might open deeper, ongoing conversations. Though the movie has been widely characterized as a straight-up toys vs. tech plotline, that description belies a far more nuanced narrative. “Toy Story 5” isn’t an anti-tech film; it’s a pro-human one.

To set up the central tension, however, it first leans heavily into fears about screen time. “What happened to you?” Jessie gasps when she stumbles across a veritable graveyard of half-buried, abandoned toys in a nearby backyard. “TECH!” they cry in despair. When Jessie climbs to a rooftop and surveys the neighbourhood children through their bedroom windows, she is dismayed to see all of them lit by the glow of tablets: “Look at them,” she says. “All on devices.”

The filmmakers said they debated whether to make technology the outright villain of “Toy Story 5,” but ultimately felt they had to grapple with the fact that our devices aren’t going anywhere, nor are all their uses detrimental. This was the right call: Had Lilypad been a truly sinister character, it might have been too easy to dismiss the film as alarmist, patronizing or prescriptive; it might have shamed parents who have given their children tablets or phones, or made kids in the audience roll their eyes and tune out entirely. Instead, the film focuses less on what to keep kids away from and more on what children do need: human connection, uninhibited imagination, meaningful bonds with their families and IRL peers.

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“How’s she supposed to make friends if they ain’t even looking at each other?” Jessie laments when she spies on Bonnie at a sleepover with her dance classmates. The four girls are together in a room but alone in every other sense, each glued to their own Lilypad.

When I’ve talked to children and teens about social media over the years, plenty have readily admitted that they’d rather not have it – but they feel like they don’t have a choice, because they’d miss out on too much if they were offline. “Toy Story 5” captures this potent undercurrent of FOMO, demonstrating the way screens fuel bullying and loneliness.

It’s worth noting that this film arrives at a moment when a pendulum might be starting to swing in a different direction – slowly, and not everywhere, but certainly among growing circles of parents. Beyond the popular “Wait Until 8th” pledge to hold off on smartphones until middle school, more parents (and a growing number of foreign governments) are pushing to ban social media until age 16. Retro landlines are selling out. Parents are sending their kids to phone-free sleepaway camps. Recent social media chatter about giving our kids a “90s summer” is all about steering children toward an existence that feels slower, safer, simpler.

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Millennials remember what that unplugged version of youth was like. So does Jessie. She winds up revisiting a long-ago chapter of her past when she and her trusty steed, Bullseye, wind up back at the farmhouse where she once lived with her first owner, Emily. There was a tree, a tire swing, and endless golden hours of unstructured time. Emily has long since grown up and moved away, but there’s a new little girl living there – 9-year-old Blaze, a kind, creative, horse-obsessed child that Jessie is soon convinced would be a perfect friend for Bonnie.

While Jessie devises a plot to reunite with Bonnie – and introduce her to Blaze – Bonnie is experiencing the darker side of social media: Her dance classmates see a post that Bonnie’s looking for her lost toys and send a stream of mocking messages. She is still reeling from this humiliation when she meets Blaze to retrieve Jessie and Bullseye. Bonnie wants her toys back but feels ashamed to admit as much, so she tells Blaze to keep them. “I don’t play with toys anymore,” she mumbles sadly.

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Blaze is bewildered and concerned. “I hope that girl’s okay,” she says to her mom, in one of the most quietly meaningful moments in the film. Generative AI is never mentioned in the movie – mercifully – but I immediately thought of the rising number of children who are turning to companion apps for social connection. A chatbot can regurgitate whatever you want it to say, but it will never care about how you’re feeling.

Bonnie’s mom notices something amiss, too, and she asks to look at Lilypad, where she finds the bullying messages. “You’re not in trouble, Bonnie, I promise,” she says. “You know that you can always talk with me and Dad.” She doesn’t take away the Lilypad, but she does disable the group chat.

In the end, Lilypad realizes that she has only exacerbated Bonnie’s social isolation; repentant, the tablet tries to banish herself to a donation center. But the other toys rescue and return her to Bonnie’s home. They recognize that Lilypad isn’t inherently malevolent – she simply is what she is, a tool that can facilitate either harmful or helpful connections. And they need Lilypad, it turns out, to help Bonnie reunite with Blaze, so the pair can forge a real friendship.

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So Lilypad is still there in the final scene of the movie, as Bonnie and Blaze are immersed in their shared imaginary world, acting out a joyful and chaotic wedding scene for Jessie and Buzz (finally!). In the midst of their frenzied fun, Blaze grabs the tablet and takes a quick selfie with Bonnie. Then the two friends go right back to playing together.

Technology will keep advancing, the contours of childhood will keep shifting, and it’s hard to imagine where we might be in another 30 years. But despite Woody’s warning, technology isn’t for everything, and never can be. “Toy Story 5” ultimately pulls our attention back toward an enduring truth: What children need most – what all of us need most – is each other.

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