10 Fun Facts About Toy Story 5

1. New Toys!

When coming up with ideas for what would become Toy Story 5, co-director Kenna Harris said, “From the beginning, we knew we wanted to include tech. How would the toys feel about a device in their room? What started as a binary good vs. evil story morphed over time, because tech isn’t going away. So, what does that mean? The toys are probably stuck with Lilypad. As we thought about what that conflict could look like, it turned into a fun movie.”

2. The Animators Got Some New Toys Too

The toys aren’t the only ones being confronted with new technology. “Computers have gotten a lot faster over the last 30 years, and the software has gotten much more complex, which allows us to do more things,” visual effects supervisor Thomas Jordan said. “But more importantly, the animation system we use is friendlier for artists. They don’t need computer backgrounds, because the tools are much easier and accessible.” And faster! How much faster? Pixar’s render farm is estimated to be at least 12,000 times more powerful today than it was back when the original Toy Story was made. The render farm is where each individual frame is output to its final form. It’s a complex process, and a single frame can take at least 24 hours to render (some scenes in Luca took 50 hours per frame to render!) Pixar’s render farm is basically a supercomputer composed of 2000 machines and 24,000 cores. That sounds like a lot, yet even with all that computing power, a film like Monsters University still took two years to render.

3. Lots of Curls

One of the new software tools the animators were able to utilize was put to work on the curly hair of a new character, Blaze. While previous characters had long and loose curls, Blaze’s tight curls required more detail and complexity. The software developed for her hair allowed the animators to make it look and behave authentically in different scenes. But Blaze’s hair wasn’t the only thing to benefit from these advancements. There are 25,304,146 individual pieces of hay in her barn!

4. Daffodil

These computing advances also helped the creative team to create sequences as visually powerful as they are technically complex. One example is the scene in which Jessie and Bullseye ride an actual horse named Daffodil. According to visual effects supervisor Thomas Jordan, “Daffodil is a very complicated character, because she has the anatomy of a real horse. As Daffodil is running, Jessie is holding onto Daffodil’s mane, and Bullseye is holding onto Jessie’s foot. It is the most complicated motion, I think, of any shot we have in the entire film – and it goes by in a flash! But it really elevates the excitement in the film.”

5. The Art of Rigging

The production team spent more than a year bringing Daffodil to life, which included building a complex rig and running all the simulations. To facilitate this, a new technology called “invertible rigging” was created. Pixar CTO Steve May explained, “The idea is that you can do direct manipulation, inverse and forward kinematics, with every control in the character. You can bend a finger or pull it, move the hand, then pull the elbow and shoulder with it, solve the way feet make contact with the ground and make the ankles roll. Riggers no longer need to build unique controls for special manipulation.” But sometimes it’s best to get back to basics. In a callback to the days of Bambi, Pixar brought in a real horse for animators to study!

6. RenderMan

Finally, the production team was able to utilize a new version of Pixar’s rendering software, RenderMan XPU, for the first time on a feature film. XPU can use both CPUs and GPUs concurrently, enabling artists to interactively see full-frame renders nine times faster than before. In addition, the Luna extension for Presto (Pixar’s core 3D animation system, first used for Hoppers) was expanded. Luna allowed lighting artists to work across multiple shots at once.

7. It’s Not All About Computers

All this talk of render times and rigging is fascinating, but Pixar has never lost sight of the fact that the most important components of any film are story, characters, and emotions. For example, Bonnie’s outfits shift with her emotions. At the beginning of the film, we see her in a multi-layered outfit with ruffles, but as the movie progresses and she retreats into herself, we see her outfits getting simpler and simpler, until eventually she is wearing her sweatshirt just like a comfort blanket. Fortunately, by the end of the movie she is back to her signature multi-layered/ruffle outfit, indicating she found her way back to herself.

8. Say What?

This is the first time Jessie’s voice box recordings are heard when pulling her string.

9. The Starlight Children’s Foundation

As part of its 25-year collaboration with the Starlight Children’s Foundation, Disney brought Toy Story 5 to over 400 children’s hospitals, including more than 300 across the United States. Through Disney Movie Moments, young patients and their families were able to watch the new film alongside Toy Story-themed deliveries of toys and Woody, Jessie, and Buzz Lightyear-themed Starlight hospital gowns.

10. Now THIS is a Red Carpet

In addition, Disney incorporated a first-ever red carpet moment into the Los Angeles premiere of Toy Story 5 on June 9, 2026, with a never-before-seen pop-up immersive experience for young patients at select children’s hospitals. It began with the “Star Command Message Transmission,” an interactive digital installation in which attendees, including the film’s stars, were able to write heartfelt messages for the children. On June 16, messages from the red carpet were transmitted to patients and families at Children’s National in Washington, D.C., as part of an immersive, interactive Toy Story 5-themed experience. The Toy Story Imagination Station featured a life-size interactive Lilypad activation, character meet-and-greets with Woody and Jessie, toy giveaways, drawing sessions with Pixar animators, and an exclusive screening of Toy Story 5. Now that’s Pixar magic at its best!