Toy Story

It's a long coil of steel that winds and wiggles and makes sounds like chink and chunk and even flips and flops and walks down stairs. It's Slinky. A toy that's so low-tech it's timeless. Slinky has wiggled in and out of fashion for the last 50 years, wedging its way firmly into the American fabric. And now, Slinky's gone Hollywood. There's a stunning scene of Slinky on the stairs in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls that rivals Scarlett O'Hara's tumble down Tara's staircase in Gone With the Wind.

Some kids make it easy. The five Hiller children of Olney had carefully checked the catalogs and the toy supplements. They knew exactly what they wanted before they descended on the Gallery in Center City the day after Thanksgiving. Mother Linda Hiller knew the list by heart: Noel, 16, wanted a video camera; Caitlin, 10, wanted a bike; Dana, 9, a cowboy jacket; Sean, 8, a toy Jeep; and Kevin, 7, wanted Super Nintendo games. Others kids are a little more cagey. "I don't care; I told Santa to pick," said 5-year-old Katelyn Oetzer of Wallingford, as she checked out the possibilities at the Springfield Mall in Delaware County.

It would much easier to dismiss Disney as the greedy, soulless, evil Death Star of commercial entertainment if it didn't keep cranking out wonderful children's movies like "Toy Story. " It's true that every time you see an ad for a Disney movie, you feel as if somebody is reaching for your wallet. And it's true the holiday release of this toy-laden movie is a merchandising event. On the other hand, it's also true that with "Toy Story," the company has found another way to expand the boundaries of animation art. And another way to tell a charming story that transcends the advanced technology.

"OK everybody, the coast is clear!" calls Woody, a talking toy cowboy, uprighting his tangle of limbs after his human owner - a 6-year-old named Andy - slams the door. And so it is, in the amazing early minutes of Toy Story, that all the playthings in Andy's room - the plastic tyrannosaurus, the Mr. Potato Head, the Slinky-bodied dachshund - spring miraculously to life. It's just as children, and a few sage adults, have long suspected: Left to their own devices, those haphazard piles of bears and dolls and superhero action-figures really can walk and talk and feel.