I think we underestimate the cost of the Roundup Gang. I mean, collecting Woody’s Roundup merchandise was his pastime, but for the right price, he’ll sell anything.
Wow, so that’s “You’re welcome” in Japanese?
Just because someone can have alot of money doesn’t mean they’ll pay any price for some things.
My Uncle’s Dad had a knack for buying stuff on the cheap and managing to turn it around and get a bigger price out of it. His son attempted to do the same, but just didn’t have the same luck that his Dad did.
Even some of the big moneymakers live cheaply. Some manage to keep their wealth in check.
One has to wonder if he could have attempted to sue the airline for losing the 4 main toys in the collection. As well, he took a huge loss from all that overnight shipping on the rest of the merchandise.
Yeah, in the early draft of Toy Story 3 the toys come across HAl’s Toy Barn on their way back to Andy’s (It literally had just an “H” added to it).
They break in and steal an RC Jeep, RC Plane, and RC Motorcyle w/ sidecar to drive home.
Haha, cool. I was actually thinking on the right track, I can still totally see the same sign with just the “H” tacked on to it.
They wouldn’t have even needed to do anything like that for the final, like with Pizza Planet, they could have had a TV ad in the background or something. But come to think of it, there really wasn’t any TVs in TS3. It would still be interesting to see more of what happened when Al got the case back. I can see him getting the case and not thinkig to open it to make sure the toys are still in there, and getting all the way to the museum to show off them. But owning a toy store chain isn’t all proft, but he was going to get 100,000 or something for the whole set of collectables, as long as the dolls were there.
The Museum owner said he’d pay anything, since he would make that money back anyways when he puts the toys up for display.
Yes. Al says “How about we add another zero to the price?” and the Museum Owner says “Yes, Yes! I’ll pay anything you want!”, I was just making a fair suggestion as to what the zero was added on to. Oh, and I noticed that Al trys to repeat a Japanese phrase, before he gives up and says “Don’t touch my moustache”. Still pretty funny. I still haven’t quite figured out why he agreed to film a commercial while he was depressed.
What’s also weird is this. On one day, he’s on a long flight to Japan and on the very next day, he’s back in America again, filming a commercial. There’s no way he could fly to Japan then back to America in that time. 
Is that just speculation? Cause it doesn’t say that specifically in the art book, but you could probably decipher that from the images.
If anyone really wants it I’ll scan the Hal’s Toy Barn image later.
I know he owns some big toy stores in the area, but Al never came across as remotely rich to me. The fact that he had to dress up in a chicken costume to film his own advertisements makes me think that he didn’t have much money at all, and maybe was even in debt. Maybe he borrowed a whole wadge of money to set up his business and needed the cash from the Woody’s Roundup toys to get in the green?
Or maybe he is sort of comfortable and reasonably well-off but isn’t satisfied with that, and wants to be rich, really rich. After all, he seems to be renting an apartment/office in a swanky building just opposite from where he works- that can’t have come cheap. And his car seems quite nice too, a classic.
And Geoff’s got a good point, it’s unlikely, if not impossible, that Al would have been able to get back to America in time to make a new advertisement. But I guess the timing of that is something Pixar decided to ignore.
If I recall correctly, the TS2 commentary on the DVD points out that while it’s not very probable that Al would have a new commercial filmed and aired the day after he flies to Japan, the contrast with the earlier commercial was so satisfying that they decided to ignore that fact and do it anyway.
Yeah, good point. Either he wants money off the Roundup Gang because he’s in debt, or just very greedy that he’s never satisfied until he’s as rich as he can possibly be.
Al lives in a luxurious penthouse, and owns a chain of successful toy stores. I don’t think he’s in debt.
Hey, The Chicken Man, did you create the opening sequence with the words using Star Wars’ new Crawl Creator game? 
Pretty dark, but funny.
I think what happened is due to Woody and Jessie’s actions in the plane someone detected a disterbance and made an emergency landing. They found the open suitcase and told Al, who made a call to the Museum telling what happened and they ended the deal.
Do you think Al ever went on eBay? lol
Dinoco- What you’re saying does make sense, but it’s surprising how people who can appear to have lots of money sometimes don’t. Al may have squandered a lot of money away, perhaps the business suddenly isn’t doing so well, the rent on his flat might have increased, and all those little things can lead to debt. I mean, there must be a reason why he was so desperate to get the money from the Woody’s Roundup toys, and it’s either that he actually needs the money, or he’s just plain greedy. Probably the latter, saying that. 
i once had this idea where Al, desperate for money, buys whatever he can from Andy’s, seeing as he got rare woody there. But upon seeing it’s not worthy of a museum, donates it to sunnyside.