Toy Story 5 Toys Are Landing: What's Actually Worth It for a Toddler (and What Can Wait)

If you grew up rewinding Toy Story on VHS, June 19 is a big day: Toy Story 5 hits theaters, and the merchandise wave is already rolling onto shelves. Disney and Mattel renewed their global licensing deal specifically around this movie, which is corporate-speak for there will be Buzz Lightyear products in every aisle of every store you enter until 2027.

Here's the thing nobody tells you in the toy aisle: most movie merch is designed to be bought, not played with. So before your cart fills itself, here's the toddler-development read on the wave.

The actually-good-for-toddlers pick: Little People × Toy Story

Mattel is folding Woody, Buzz, Jessie and friends into the Little People line — the chunky, palm-sized figures aimed at ages 1 to 5.

This is quietly the best news in the whole merch wave, because Little People figures are everything early-childhood researchers like in a toy:

• Open-ended. No batteries, no script, no "right way" to play. Your kid decides whether Buzz lives in the dollhouse, the truck, or the dog's water bowl. Open-ended toys consistently beat electronic ones for language and imaginative play.
• Built for tiny hands. Chunky figures = graspable at 18 months, throwable without casualties (see our post on why they throw everything).
• No screens attached. A character toy that doesn't light up, talk over your child, or demand an app. Increasingly rare.

Rule of thumb from child development research: the less a toy does, the more your kid's brain does. A figure that just stands there is a blank cheque for imagination.

The nostalgia trap (it's you, not them)

Let's be honest about something. That collector-grade Woody with the pull-string? The Adidas × Toy Story 5 sneaker drop? That's not for your toddler. That's for 1996 you.

And that's fine! Buy yourself the sneakers. You survived dial-up and a Tamagotchi; you've earned them. Just don't file it under "things my child needed."

A useful filter before any movie-merch purchase:

1. Would my kid play with this if they'd never seen the movie? (They haven't. They're two.)
2. Does it do less than 50% of the playing by itself?
3. Will it survive being thrown down the stairs?

If you get three yeses, it's a toy. Otherwise it's memorabilia.

Meanwhile, the 90s called: Elefun is back

In peak millennial-parent news, Elefun — the butterfly-blasting elephant from your own childhood — is returning to shelves this year. Butterflies launch out of the trunk, kids scramble to catch them with nets, chaos ensues.

Unironically a great toddler pick: it's gross-motor practice (running, tracking, hand-eye coordination), it teaches turn-taking, and it contains the single greatest toddler feature of all — it ends, so you can put it away.

One more for the diaper bag: PlayTab Go

The PlayTab modular sensory board — already a travel-toy favorite — now has a compact PlayTab Go version with mix-and-match tiles. Quiet, screen-free, fits in the bag you already can't close. Flights and restaurant waits just got 20% more survivable.

The takeaway

• Buy: Little People Toy Story figures (ages 1–5), Elefun, PlayTab Go for travel.
• Skip (for the toddler): anything collector-grade, app-connected, or that talks more than they do.
• Buy for yourself, guilt-free: the nostalgia stuff. Just own who it's for.

And when the post-movie meltdown happens because you wouldn't buy the $60 talking Buzz? That's a developmentally normal tantrum, and we have an app for that.