Toy Story 5 is stuffed with legends. Tom Hanks. Tim Allen. Joan Cusack finally getting her spotlight as Jessie. And yet one of the characters critics keep singling out is a grumpy roll of toilet paper. Meet Smarty Pants, and meet the merch push Disney has built around him.
If you have wandered through a Disney Store or a Target lately, you have probably already seen him. Smarty Pants is showing up across the Toy Story 5 merchandise rollout: figures, plush, Funko, interactive toys, and apparel alongside Atlas and Snappy. Disney clearly built him into the merchandise plan early, and for once the merch machine read the room correctly.
So who is he?
Smarty Pants is a potty-training tech toy, shaped like a roll of toilet paper. He belongs to Blaze, the farm girl Jessie and Bullseye stumble onto, and he has spent years stuck in sleep mode in a forgotten toy shed. When the plot pulls him back into action with a fresh set of batteries, he joins Jessie’s ragtag crew of obsolete gadgets, a GPS named Atlas and a camera named Snappy.
He is voiced by Conan O’Brien, and the casting is perfect in the most Conan way possible. Director Andrew Stanton wanted him for the part and, per Entertainment Weekly, sent him a tongue-in-cheek offer letter. Conan said yes right away, later joking that he agreed “only if I can play a potty-training device called Smarty Pants.” The rest is toilet humor history.
Why he is the breakout
Here is the thing. Smarty Pants is not just a gag. He is the best new character in the movie, and the critics noticed immediately.
USA Today said the film has something really special in Smarty Pants. Dexerto flat-out called him a true scene-stealer. O’Brien gives him a full arc, from his frantic begging for battery juice to a genuinely moving crisis when he realizes Blaze has outgrown her potty-training days and no longer needs him. That ache, an old toy facing its own obsolescence, is the exact emotional engine the whole franchise runs on. His potty humor is also probably part of why Toy Story 5 landed the franchise’s first PG rating, which the MPA handed out for thematic elements and rude humor.
In other words, he is the new Forky. Pixar has a long, lucrative history of side characters who steal one movie and then move a mountain of plush, and Smarty Pants checks every box: weird design, instant catchphrase energy, a poignant streak, and a famous comedian fans already love.
The toilet paper Disney built into the toy aisle
That combination is merch gold, and the Disney Parks merchandise rollout leans into it. Smarty Pants gets his own figures and his own Funko, appears on apparel, and rides shotgun on the “Double A Team” sets alongside Atlas and Snappy. He even got the motion-activated, light-up toy treatment, which is a funny thing to say about a character who is, again, a sentient roll of toilet paper.
There is something perfect about it, too. Toy Story 5 is a movie about toys being shoved aside by sleeker technology, and one of its standouts is a piece of outdated tech with feelings, a gadget nobody thought they needed until he showed up and stole the show. He spends the film terrified of being forgotten. Out here in the real world, Disney is already treating him like one of the movie’s merch-ready scene-stealers.
