Animation hasn't been the same since Toy Story

There are so many ways of measuring the success of Toy Story that you can take your pick.

- Maya Phillips

The box office numbers, a then-and still-staggering $400 million. The rare Special Achievement Academy Award it received. (Only one has been handed out since.) The start of not just a successful franchise but also an industry-changing studio (Pixar) with high-grossing films that regularly reduce multi-generational audiences to tears.

But the most significant lasting effect of Toy Story, released 30 years ago, has to do with its animation.

We can consider our age of digital entertainment as preand post-Woody and Buzz Lightyear, those toys (voiced by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen) that come to life when their owner, 6-year-old Andy, wasn't around. Before Toy Story, animated cinema was hand-drawn, and dominated by Disney ever since its 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs first introduced audiences to a full-length animated film.