5. Toy Story (1995)
It's Incredibly Similar To... The Christmas Toy (1975)
Toy Story seems like the kind of genius-level idea that only those guys over at Pixar could have come up with, but then you remember the premise of this article and all thoughts of that notion are instantly erased. Because when you look back through time and at a movie called
The Christmas Toy (directed by a man you'll be familiar with called Jim Henson), the similarity train clearly takes a large and unwieldily stop in Plagarismtown. Toy Story is, I'm afraid to report, incredibly similar to
The Christmas Toy, and I think justice needs to be done. "Come on," you're probably thinking. "How similar can these movies be, really?" Buckle up, buddy. First let's take Toy Story's premise, which is based around toys who come to life when their owners aren't around. A feature in
The Christmas Toy. "Well, okay, but that's a pretty basic idea," you're thinking now. "It's possible that such an idea could've been thought up twice." You're not wrong. What about the idea that an old favourite toy feeling threatens when a new toy - a flashy, space toy that
doesn't realise it's a toy - arrives on the scene? Oh, no. But oh yes, unfortunately. That genuinely is the plot of Henson's
A Christmas Story, which was first released on TV in 1975, 20 years before
Toy Story. In this case, the Buzz Lightyear character is called Meteora, Queen of the Asteroids, and just like Buzz, she's obsessed with tracking down her arch-nemesis. I don't know about you, but I felt a little put off finding out that
Toy Story had so much in common with this VHS oddity. I'm not saying
Toy Story ripped its premise from this movie or anything, but... well, I guess I am saying that.