Toy Story

The toys end up at an upper-middle class preschool. We get that plot point from the playtime baskets and bins, and the brightly colored plastic chew rings that fill the shelves. So why are the innocent and wide-eyed faces of Woody and the gang filled with fear and loathing? Because the first "Toy Story" was 15 years ago, and these toys can't handle today's kids - who call ripping Rex's head off and shoving it down Mrs. Potato Head's eye socket playtime. I'm not a grumpy old man who walked five miles in the snow to get to school.

As the holidays wind down, the last things you probably want to see are more toys. But here they are. And they're skating, too, at the CoreStates Center in a snazzy show through Jan. 5. It's a major deal, from the outsized title - Walt Disney's World on Ice: Toy Story - to the production itself: 43 skaters, 18 mutant toys, 24 Martians and 25 Green Army men (complete with "plastic" stands), a 34-by-70-foot stage, a 14-foot-high remote-control car, and an 18-foot-high Martian rocket ship.

When Pixar released its first computer-animated feature 15 years ago - the modestly titled Toy Story - it shook the world of movie cartooning to its core. Here was this vivid, color-saturated, dimensional piece of animation. The contrast between its brilliant, textured digital images and the tried-and-true 'toons audiences were accustomed to was profound. (That year's traditionally drawn entries: A Goofy Movie and Pocahontas .) Toy Story went on to earn kabillions, and made Pixar a household brand.

YOU HAVE these choices in the DVD planet this week: "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story 3," or "Toy Story 3. " The Disney-Pixar smash finds Woody trying to rescue his pals from a prisonlike day care center, and arrives in several configurations this week, including a basic DVD copy that includes featurettes about the vocal talent, the new (and old) toy characters, and an informational piece about the international space station (hosted by Buzz Lightyear). The theatrical release is now the highest grossing animated movie ever, and it may play even better on DVD. The movie was shown in 3-D in theaters, where the version I saw had problems.

"You never forget kids like Emily or Andy," warns Jessie, a vintage '50s cowgirl doll who's about to be shipped off to a toy museum in Japan. "They just forget you. " Emily was the girl who used to play with - and love - Jessie. Andy is the kid who owns Woody the cowboy, along with a certain jut-jawed space hero by the name of Buzz. In Toy Story 2, a worthy, wonderfully comic successor to the 1995 computer-animated megahit, the courtly cowpoke who vied for Andy's affections against his "To infinity and beyond!"

"Toy Story 3" continues Pixar's unique tradition of sending grown men out of the theater pretending they're not crying. Pixar is the only big-time animator that routinely tells stories about melancholy and loss, and "TS3" (3-D) has those elements - likely to inspire misty yearnings for lost youth, lost toys or a lost culture that encouraged children to play with toys rather than electronics. Yet there is also something a little un-Pixarlike about "TS3" 3-D, starting with the recurring number "three.

This hammy little piggy has a beef. If a toy Babe had been on store shelves at Christmastime - the way Pocahontas dolls, Lion King plush toys and Batman action figures were - he, too, might have been taken home. In a world where the characters in a movie are usually in the stores even before the movie opens, this absence of buyable Babes was unusual. "It wasn't that a toy Babe didn't exist last year," says John Dumbacher, vice president of licensing for MCA/Universal.

In the crowd of excited kids spilling out of Disney's smash hit Toy Story, Art Sill came out with a smile and a look of how'd-they-do that? amazement on his face. But in his well-worn Eagles cap and jacket, the burly, bearded 31-year-old salesman from South Philadelphia looked like a guy you'd expect to find in the R-rated upper tiers of Veterans Stadium, not at a G-rated Disney movie. "I had a great time," said Sill, outside the United Artists RiverView on Columbus Boulevard.

TOY STORY Toy designer and illustrator Emilio Garcia heads from Barcelona to Philly to discuss the growing subculture of designing collectible toys. Garcia's oft-trippy designs use squiggly brain patterns to create whimsical toys. Stein Auditorium, 3215 Market St., 6:30 p.m., Monday, free, 215-895-1029, drexel.edu/westphal . PUPPET ARMY ATTACKS Eighty puppets, 60 comedians— 100 percent uncensored. That's the vow of "Stuffed and Unstrung," an adult puppet show produced by Henson Alternative, the grown-up wing of the Jim Henson Co. For ages 18+ only!

TOLEDO, Ohio - Pushed to the bottom of the toy box by video games and other high-tech gadgets, Etch A Sketch is suddenly drawing lots of attention, thanks to a gaffe that has shaken up the race for the White House. Ohio Art Co., maker of the classic baby-boomer toy, is sending a big box of Etch A Sketches to the presidential campaigns to say thanks for the publicity and a boost in sales. It all started when Mitt Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom was asked Wednesday about the candidate's politics now vs. this fall, and he likened the campaign to an Etch A Sketch, saying, "You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.

Ho, ho, whoa - what's that? Another toy store? And actual toy displays among the Black Friday standbys at department stores? Don't worry, Santa shopper, you're not losing it. It is beginning to look a lot like old-school Christmas, as once-vanquished purveyors of playthings get back in the holiday game in big numbers, after years of being thumped by the low-priced likes of Wal-Mart and Target. This year, several big players have opened hundreds of stores or reintroduced full-fledged toy departments.

YOU HAVE these choices in the DVD planet this week: "Toy Story 3," "Toy Story 3," or "Toy Story 3. " The Disney-Pixar smash finds Woody trying to rescue his pals from a prisonlike day care center, and arrives in several configurations this week, including a basic DVD copy that includes featurettes about the vocal talent, the new (and old) toy characters, and an informational piece about the international space station (hosted by Buzz Lightyear). The theatrical release is now the highest grossing animated movie ever, and it may play even better on DVD. The movie was shown in 3-D in theaters, where the version I saw had problems.

GIMME FIVE "How to Train Your Dragon" was a sleeper hit this spring, easily earning a spot on the year's top five animated releases. 1. "Toy Story 3," $412 million. 2. "Despicable Me," $246 million. 3. "Shrek Forever After," $238 million. 4. "How to Train Your Dragon," $217 million. 5. "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole," $40 million.

Toy Story 3 . Publisher: Disney Interactive System: Sony PlayStation 3, also for Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation Portable Price: $49.99 ($29.99 to $49.99 for other versions) Age rating: 10 and older Toy Story 3 does a smart thing: It rolls two games into one. First, it has the expected adventure roughly following the events of this summer's Pixar movie, with Sheriff Woody, Jessie the cowgirl, and Buzz Lightyear the space ranger heading out on a number of levels, starting with their owner's home and moving on to Sunnyside Daycare and points beyond.

I Am Love Swoony, swanky melodrama starring Tilda Swinton as an upscale Sleeping Beauty awakened by an earthy chef, an attraction that has devastating consequences for her aristocratic family. R Stonewall Uprising Witnesses offer their accounts of what happened on June 28, 1969 when homosexual revelers at Stonewall, a West Village bar, resisted police during a routine raid, a seminal event of the Gay Pride movement. No MPAA rating Toy Story 3 Andy, the kid whose toys Buzz and Woody started it all, is off to college.

Andy may have outgrown his toys, but movie audiences haven't. Toy Story 3 , the latest entry in Pixar's pioneering cinema series about toys that come to life, took the top spot in the box-office derby on its debut weekend with a gate of $109 million. It was the best debut ever for a Disney Pixar Animation picture, soaring past the $70.5 million that The Incredibles earned its first weekend. All 11 of Pixar's films have opened at No. 1. Toy Story 3 also continued Hollywood's streak of 3-D hits.

AS MOST young people end school for the summer, there's big school news coming out of England. Michael Jackson 's mother, Katherine , has reportedly told Britain's Mail on Sunday that the late pop star's children will attend school for the first time in September. Yes, it will be a private school, but there will be other earthlings there. Prince , 13, Paris , 12, and Blanket , 8, have had private lessons up until now. "Toy Story 3" may be about toys who come to life but the movie's opening brought summer box office back to life with a huge $109 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates yesterday.

WE KNOW from 1 Corinthians that while as children we speak and think as children, there is a time to put away childish things. And we know from Pixar that the time to put these things away is, like, never. The "Toy Story" franchise is built around the idea that in our modern culture, we find it very difficult to surrender the part of ourselves that spent languid afternoons with G.I. Joe or Barbie. (Or G.I. Joe and Barbie. You know who you are.) Actually, it's not just an idea.