With Toy Story 5 in theaters and the whole franchise back in the cultural bloodstream, it is a good moment to remember the Toy Story 3 we never got. Not the beloved 2010 one. The other one, the version Disney developed in the mid-2000s without Pixar at all. It is a genuinely strange piece of buried film history, and tucked inside it is a moment that would never make it onto a screen today.
The Toy Story 3 that almost was
Rewind to 2004. Disney and Pixar were close to splitting up, and because Disney owned the characters, the studio spun up its own animation house, Circle 7, named after the street it sat on, to crank out sequels to Pixar’s biggest films without Pixar. One of those was Toy Story 3.
One of its drafts, credited to Meet the Parents writer Jim Herzfeld (with Jared Stern), sent a malfunctioning Buzz back to the factory where he was built, run by a Taiwanese toy company called Wocka-Wocka. When Woody and the gang learn that every Buzz on earth is being recalled and run through a recycling unit that Buzz himself dubs the Toy Smasher, they ship themselves overseas to mount a rescue. Structurally, it echoes Toy Story 2, the toys staging a rescue after one of their own is taken into a much bigger toy-world system. But the structure is not the part that has aged the worst.
The moment that would never fly today
Partway through, the toys arrive in Taiwan and meet locals who, per the script, converse excitedly in Chinese. Woody, lost and unable to follow, fumbles for English, then does what the screenplay—which you can read here—itself calls the lamest thing a tourist can do. He puts on a bad accent and says: “So solly! Me no speeky Taiwaneesey!”
It is exactly as rough as it reads. The gag is built on tired mock-Asian stereotypes, the “so solly” and “no speeky” shorthand that lazy comedy leaned on for decades, and it puts that bit in the mouth of one of the most beloved characters in American animation. It is not an isolated slip, either. The whole Taiwan stretch is filtered through a broad foreign-factory lens, right down to a company called Wocka-Wocka. The joke is not punching up or sideways. It is a cheap laugh at the expense of the people whose country the heroes are visiting.
To be fair to the writers, this was a different era of mainstream studio comedy, and the bit reflects the casual norms of 2000s screenwriting more than any personal malice. But naming it plainly still matters, because the contrast is the whole point.
Why this is worth remembering now
Here is what makes it land. For all its problems, the Circle 7 script is a fascinating what-if, the clearest picture we have of the Toy Story that Disney was prepared to make on its own. And reading it is the best argument imaginable for what Pixar’s stewardship actually protected.
When Disney bought Pixar in 2006, the studio shut down Circle 7, and Toy Story 3 was rebuilt from scratch by Pixar under its own leadership, with John Lasseter and Ed Catmull now running Disney’s animation. What they made instead, the 2010 film, is widely considered one of the greatest threequels ever, an emotional gut-punch about growing up that ends with Andy handing his toys to a new kid. We did not just dodge a weaker movie. We dodged a movie willing to stop for a punchline like that one.
The next time someone tells you sequels are just easy money, point them to this script. The difference between a cheap cash-grab and Toy Story 3 is the difference between a studio that would print “so solly, me no speeky” and one that knew better. That joke, thankfully, stayed in the drawer where it belongs.
