toy story 3 When Walt Disney (DIS) releases Cars 2 on June 24, the audience will get a six-minute bonus. Buzz Lightyear, Woody, and other stars of Toy Story 3, another film made by Disney's Pixar animation studio, will romp and joke about Ken and Barbie's failed attempts to hitch a ride to Hawaii inside their owner Andy's book bag. It's more than a warm-up act: The short is intended to help keep sales humming for merchandise based on the Toy Story franchise, which already rivals Disney's Mickey, Minnie, and Winnie the Pooh lines in sales. While movie studios have long run animated shorts before the main attraction in theaters, Toy Story: Hawaiian Vacation marks a bold effort by Disney to capitalize on Americans' habit of accumulating toys, lunchboxes, and other consumer goods tied to movies. "Showing those shorts is a super-smart strategy for Disney.
says Albie Hecht, former president of Nickelodeon Film & Television Entertainment and founder of Worldwide Biggies, a digital studio that produces films and TV shows for young adults. "It's a way to extend the characters and the brand without its fans waiting two or three years for a new movie." The Toy Story "Toon," as Disney calls it, was created in the 20,000-square-foot DisneyToon Studios that Pixar opened in Vancouver, B.C., in 2010 to make short flicks based on its movies. Disney started making Cars Toons in 2007, running them online, on its cable channels, and occasionally before a feature. That's one reason, says Evercore Partners analyst Alan Gould, that Disney's revenue from Cars merchandise rose 11 percent, to $240 million, in fiscal 2010—four years after the initial Cars movie left theaters. Last year, Disney also packaged the shorts and sold them as a DVD. But the Toy Story franchise is much larger and more financially important to the company.
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