Pixar Theory Explains Lightyear's Failure Was Revealed In Toy Story

screenrant.com:

Based on one theory, Toy Story 2 accidentally predicted that Lightyear would not perform well at the box office. Based on the popular Buzz Lightyear toy and character from the Toy Story franchise, Lightyear is Pixar’s latest animated film. The spinoff serves as a movie within a movie, meant to be the film that Andy saw that made him want a Buzz Lightyear action figure. Despite its connection to Toy Story, Lightyear underperformed at the box office, earning only $51 million during its opening weekend. This may have been due to Lightyear’s somewhat confusing premise or parents growing accustomed to Disney releasing animated movies on Disney+ instead, such as Turning Red and Luca.

In contrast, Lightyear seemed to be very popular within the Toy Story universe. At the beginning of Toy Story, Andy was excited to receive a Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday and later themed his entire bedroom around the space ranger. In Toy Story 2, Andy’s toys traveled to Al’s Toy Barn to try to rescue Woody. While there, Buzz found an aisle filled solely with Buzz Lightyear toys, suggesting that many children wanted the action figure.

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However, one theory (via Twitter) states that Al’s Toy Barn had a different reason for having so many Buzz Lightyear action figure toys in stock. Instead of Lightyear being wildly popular in Andy’s world, the animated film still did not perform as well as the studio expected. Due to this, not many children wanted toys from the movie, resulting in Al’s Toy Barn having a surplus of Buzz action figures. Andy was one of the few children who did love Lightyear, so he was uniquely excited to receive a Buzz Lightyear toy. In this way, Toy Story