If Toy Story messed you up, brace yourself for Lost Ollie on Netflix

polygon.com:

“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real,” says the Skin Horse, the oldest, wisest toy in Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, a children’s book that turned 100 this year.

Stories about toys being real and having feelings are a staple of children’s media, and for good reason. There is a special connection between a child and their favorite toy, and stories like The Velveteen Rabbit, Toy Story, Calvin and Hobbes, Winnie the Pooh, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane all illustrate that bond in different ways.

Netflix’s Lost Ollie is the latest take on this genre. From creator Shannon Tindle, a character designer on Kubo and the Two Strings and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Lost Ollie is a loose adaptation of William Joyce’s children’s book Ollie’s Odyssey. While Lost Ollie touches on familiar beats of toy-focused stories, it also plunges further into some of the darker implications of a world where toys are alive and fleshes out the child’s point of view. By doing so, Lost Ollie reminds us just how evocative that well-worn story can be when given enough care and detail.

[Ed. note: This review contains setup spoilers for Lost Ollie.]

Lost Ollie follows the titular stuffed rabbit (voiced by Jonathan Groff), who awakens in a thrift store with no recollection of how he got there. All Ollie knows is that he needs to get back to Billy (Kesler Talbot), the boy he belongs to. Ollie can only remember a few things about Billy and how he got lost, but he teams up with Zozo (voiced by Tim Blake Nelson), a toy clown who’s also looking for someone he lost. After they escape the shop,