Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios might not be the most expensive land, or the
most technologically advanced, or the most impressive, or even the most shaded, apparently.
However it’s still a pretty solid land that sticks to Disney’s history of giving everything
they build a backstory.
The backstory of Toy Story Land is that it’s a little toy amusement park that Andy built
in his backyard using his toys.
Today I want to take a look at what it cost to build.
Not what it cost Disney to build, but what it cost Andy to build.
Just how many toys does Andy own, and how many were needed to build his backyard amusement park?
To find out I went to Toy Story Land and I counted… and counted… and then I cursed
Disney Dan’s name for giving me this video idea and then I counted some more.
It turns out Andy has a ton of toys, and his little backyard project was worth around $1,511
To lay some ground rules, I priced everything I could find off of the internet using today’s prices.
Now could I have gone and done endless digging to try and find the 1990's prices for all of these toys?
No.
I would have lost my mind.
Besides, Disney just put Forky into Toy Story Land, so now it’s canon that the backyard
exists whenever Toy Story 4 takes place.
Does that itself make any sense since Andy gave away his toys in Toy Story 3?
No but don’t think about it too hard.
Just go see Toy Story 4 featuring Forky in theaters this Friday.
There were also instances where I needed to make a best guess at a price.
While the land is full of classic games and toys many of us grew up with, there are also
a number of games and toys that were made up for the land.
So in those instances I tried to find the closest real-life example.
There’s also going to be a little 4th wall breaking time loop action, but we’ll cross
that bridge when we get to it.
If we want to jump into the higher numbers first, Andy apparently loved K’nex.
Personally I think LEGO is better, but I think for obvious reasons Andy, uh, "decided"
to prefer K’nex.
He used them mostly for fences and lamp posts, but I counted over 1700 pieces.
The Imagine 25th Anniversary Ultimatebuilder's Case Building Kit comes with 750 pieces, so
at $25 each, three of those kits would cover Andy’s needs.
I’d imagine my parents would have drawn a line at the first or even second kit, but
apparently Andy gets what Andy wants.
Second to the K’nex, Andy really leaned on these basic wooden building blocks as a
crutch when he was constructing his backyard amusement park.
I counted just over 600 of them between the land itself and within Toy Story Mania.
Need to prop up a ceiling?
Building blocks.
Need a wall?
Building blocks.
Just want to fill an empty space?
Sprinkle a few building blocks.
Way to put in the effort, Andy.
I found a set of 100 building blocks for $18.
If Andy put seven of those on his birthday list, like a psycho, he’d have all the blocks
he would need for $126.
The last of the big three were the Tinker Toys.
Andy really stretched his abstract art muscles with these, as the land is peppered with giant
tinker toy sculptures.
I counted nearly 600 of these pieces.
Tinkertoy sells a 100 piece essentials value set for $24.49, putting the Tinkertoy budget
at $146.94.
What really gets me is that the majority of the Tinkertoy monoliths serve no functional purpose.
They’re pure eye candy, and stand as a tribute to just how much power Andy holds over his
mother when it comes to getting the toys he wants.
Now for the most part after that, things get more reasonable.
A board game here or there.
Some crayons, some chalk.
Nothing too over the top.
There are a few exceptions however that I need to point out:
I counted 123 wooden alphabet blocks and 118 dominoes across the land.
Neither comes close in price to the other stuff so far.
They’re both pretty cheap at $15 for 50 blocks and $6 for 55 Dominoes.
But like… what’s up Andy?
How do you end up with 100 alphabet blocks and go “No no no, this does not satiate me.
I need more blocks.”
The dominoes I can understand.
It’s not like he’s playing dominoes.
You set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, so the more the merrier.
I also counted 41 checkers pieces, meaning he needed two sets of checkers.
Why? Good question!
He also has 26 monkeys, which means he either owns three barrels of monkeys, or managed
to find some kind of bulk set at Costco that I didn't know about.
Oh, and he owns two Etch-a-Sketches.
Who owns more than one Etch-a-Sketch?
Now the rides at Toy Story Land is where this all gets a little tricky.
There is no real-life toy version of Toy Story Mania, Slinky Dog Dash, or Alien Swirling Saucers.
So I had to get creative.
Toy Story Mania was the toughest.
Even doing this fun “what-if”, it’s hard to imagine a world where Andy built all
of these functional midway games complete with shattering dinner plates and popping balloons.
I know they visually look like that’s the case, but the complexity is just a touch too far.
As an alternative, I’d suggest the Midway Mania Playstation 3 game.
It’s essentially the same mini game, just played with a move controller, and while a
video game doesn’t make much sense in a backyard, Toy Story Mania does take place in
Andy’s bedroom.
Plus this kid apparently has every toy he’s ever wanted, so it’s not like a video
game is really a stretch.
There is another video game version of Toy Story Mania that includes a controller made to look
like the controller from the ride and plugs right into the TV, but look at this.
You think the kid who has gotten everything he's wanted so far is going to settle for graphics like that?
One of the details I actually really love about Toy Story Land is that Slinky Dog Dash
is a product of Andy’s creation.
The story the details of the queue tells us is that he combined a fictional Dash and Dodge
Mega Coaster Kit, an expansion pack, a launcher, and his own Slinky Dog to create the one attraction.
Since there is no actual Dash and Dodge Mega Coaster Kit, I had to look for other toy roller
coaster sets.
The two common mediums for such a build were LEGO and K’nex.
I opted for K’nex because Andy clearly already has an obsession with K’nex and, let’s
be honest, it’s LEGO.
If we picked LEGO the budget for this whole park would instantly triple.
To match the general length of the coaster I went with two $28 sets.
As for the launcher, that’s actually a toy that Disney subsequently produced and started to sell.
That runs for $20
And that actually leads me to Alien Swirling Saucers, which is where things get strange.
You see, there is no alien themed toy set like Alien Swirling Saucer.
However, since the opening of Toy Story Land, Disney has begun to sell the Swirling Saucer
ride vehicles as toys.
They cost $10 each.
There are 11 vehicles to a side, and there are two sides to the ride.
So with 22 vehicles in total, that’s a cost of $220.
Yup, those are Disney prices alright.
Of course we need to ignore the fact that the toys only exist because the land exists.
So really Andy wouldn’t have been able to buy the toys to begin with to build the land,
meaning the toy wouldn’t exist and so- listen, don’t think about it too much.
All in all I counted out over 65 different types of toys and objects that amounted to
over 3,500 items in the land to make up the Toy Story wonderland in Andy’s backyard.
It turns out Andy is a toy hoarder and probably spoiled. And it turns out that that was a good thing.
Because while the land is probably not going to leave as much of a mark as, say, Galaxy’s Edge,
it’s still a pretty fun place to visit.