Can Science Explain Why The Toys In ‘Toy Story’ Are So Physically Strong?

Cassidy Ward, writing for SyFy Wire:

Woody is up to the task at every turn, hefting enough emotional weight to reduce a grown man to weeping and equally heavy physical ones. He carries a doll several times his size, one-handed, while he zip-lines over a carnival. He lifts an RC car while suspended from Slinky.

And Woody’s not the only one.

These toys exhibit feats of strength more impressive than any Strong Man at the carnival. Which causes us to wonder: How exactly do they do it?

It turns out toys have a couple of advantages over humans and other animals.

This entire piece is an absolute blast of a read. Ward dives into the scientific explanations behind muscle fatigue and why the toys could be vessels of virtually unlimited power, similar to the Androids of DragonBall Z. This is truly nerdy content, and I’m so happy it exists.

With bodies constructed of cotton and fabric or plastic, they have their own biological constraints to deal with (constraints we can’t begin to understand. Like, how do they convert energy into movement at all?) but muscle fatigue isn’t one of them. Once a toy initiates a movement, via whatever processes they use to accomplish that, they could feasibly keep it up indefinitely.

You can read the entire article here (I highly recommend it).

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