Toy Story Almost Featured Lotso the Bear Years Before Toy Story 3

Lotso the Bear was actually supposed to show up in the very first Toy Story movie, long before he became the villain of Toy Story 3. That detail changes how fans might look at one of the earliest scenes in the original 1995 film.

This matters because Lotso is one of Pixar's most memorable villains, and finding out he was almost part of the Toy Story universe from the start gives fans a new way to appreciate the character's history.

Woody's Staff Meeting Scene Hides an Early Version of Lotso

Early in the movie, when Woody is having his staff meeting, he looks up at a desk and asks if a bunch of toys can hear him. Sitting up on that desk is a teddy bear visible for only a split second, and that bear was actually meant to be Lotso. According to the claim, Lotso was originally going to have a bigger part in the movie, serving as that very bear on the desk.

Pink Fur Was the Problem That Kept Lotso Out

Animators could not find a way to put Lotso into the movie because of his pink fur. The reasoning given is that it would have looked way too weird having Lotso be that bear, simply because the animation technology was not there yet at the time.

Monsters Inc Finally Solved Pixar's Fur Animation Problem

It was not until six years later, when Monsters Inc came out in 2001, that Pixar animators could actually animate fur properly. For that movie, Sulley was given over 2.3 million individually animated hairs, a leap in animation technology that simply was not available when the original Toy Story was being made.

If Pixar's animation technology had been ready in 1995, do you think Lotso would have become a fan favorite years earlier?