So, the guy being played by Newman is clearly a huge douchebag, but really, what he's doing isn't THAT BAD when you consider the fact he isn't aware that the toys are sentient.
Some nerd swipes a rare toy at a yard sale and tries to sell it to a Japanese museum, okay dick move but also not something I'd argue he deserves to have his entire career destroyed over. Yet we're supposed to root for his downfall because he actually kidnapped a sapient being, but HE DIDN'T KNOW THAT!
Same thing with Sid in the first movie. Yeah his propensity for mangling his toys perhaps suggests some mental health problems that should be addressed, but they are from his perspective inanimate objects. The Toy Story movies ask you to pass moral judgement on humans for injustices they inflict on thing that are inanimate from their perspective, only because we the audience are aware that secretly they are in fact living being with wills of their own. But that fact is something the toys intentionally keep hidden from humans, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT'S WRONG TO THROW AWAY MY RATTY OLD TEDDY BEAR IF I'M NOT AWARE IT HAS A SOUL!?!?!?!?
It's to plant the idea that we should have emotional connections to inanimate objects.
Consoooooom!
Eh, I think it had the opposite effect on me as a child. I wanted to keep my out of style action figures because I felt attached to it, also helped we were POOR
raises hand I have emotional connections to inanimate objects
Incidentally this makes me the kind of consumer that companies hate, and make me hate them back. I still remember when some Apple exec got up on stage and said "we expect our customers to be buying a new computer every 3-4 years" (and that's why we won't build robust computers that are affordable to repair and maintain at home and can be basically bricked by a speck of dust). Fuck that. Today I'm still using my 13-year-old apple laptop every day for all my main tasks and I refuse to buy a new computer because I am heavily emotionally bonded with it. And yes, it's old, components do have finite lifespans.
Key mechanism breaks? Oh no, you poor thing, I'll replace the scissor switch for a component that costs less than a dollar.
Fan breaks? Oh no, my poor little friend, you're sick! I will get you a new fan for $15 bucks and do the surgery to swap out the broken fan.
Battery fails? You poor thing, I'll get you a good quality replacement (pricier, but still markedly cheaper than a new machine. They glue the batteries into the new machines and make it difficult to replace them! But on my model, it's just a few screws to replace it).
Hard drive dies? Well, it was probably time to graduate you to an SSD anyway, and SSDs have gotten cheap.
This also means I refuse to buy a new computer from Apple ever until they start making robust and repairable computers again (they will never) because I simply cannot afford to bond to a machine whose keyboard can become ruined by a speck of dust getting into it and then needing $800 worth of repairs.
I'm careful what I buy, because I don't want to bond with something and then be stuck with it. Only the worthy get to win their way into my heart.
I feel like having an emotional connection to inanimate objects make you want to consume less. Litteraly the reason I installed Linux on my old laptop
I could see that being true for minimalists but your average treatlerite must have all the Funko pops. The "adopt me" eyes they put on all toys is too strong