I was just thinking today, and I realized some interesting things. Toys seem to be hurt selectively if you will. If ripped at a seam, Woody doesn’t appear to feel physical pain, just shock. However, when he is ripped somewhere a seam doesn’t exist he does appear to feel pain. It seems all toys fell pain if burned. So I am curious, what do you think causes toys physical pain?
pain wile getting burned? How do you figure? At the end of the first movie woody just stares at his hand as it sizzles.
But if you recall earlier when Sid burns that little circle on his forehead he is clearly in pain. I think in the end scene it just hadn’t burned enough to be very painful.
Maybe, but Im not so sure. usually if theres enough burning to create smoke and a sound its enough to feel it.
True enough. I think that it mostly depends on the extent of the burns. Sometimes they cause pain, sometimes they don’t.
Being tossed around by hyperactive toddlers. 
Pain has never been consistent in the trilogy. For instance, in the first movie, Woody yells in pain when Buzz’s helmet is closed on his fingers; the mutant toys are threatened by Buzz’s karate arm, implying that they would be hurt by the impact of Buzz’s hand; Slinky is clearly in pain after being stretched in the movie’s climax; and Woody winces when Scud chews the alien, which implies to me that the alien is in pain and Woody is feeling for it.
However, in the same movie, both Woody and Buzz fall considerable distances without ill effects, Woody barely notices his hand getting burned, dolls can function normally without heads, and Buzz loses an arm without apparent pain.
I believe that pain for the toys is just something that works to better the story, and has no hard and fast rules in the TS universe.
This is sort of an unrelated thing, but something else I was thinking about in the original Toy Story is when Rex supposedly vomits off screen after seeing Woody holding Buzz’s arm. How can a toy made entirely of hard plastic and with no stuffing or internal organs be capable of vomiting?
And yeah, the pain thing is something that never seems too consistent or that we think about too much. I mean, Woody was able to take having a bowling ball fall on his head after coming out of Sid’s closet and still be okay.
Flik-E: Well, there’s a lot of unusual functions by toys in the movies. They CAN eat, and have gaseous functons as well. I guess it’s possible for Rex to vomit. The one toy function that seems suspicious now is sleeping. What if they get caught sleeping? It might just have something to do with the instinct that a toy freezes once seen by a human, regardless of if the toy can see them.
And about toys feeling pain, it seems like losing limbs doesn’t have much of an effect when it comes to pain, but burning and being tossed around does. Woody’s hand being burned isn’t really a good example since it was only there for a couple seconds, and seemed unfocused.
Maybe if you see Toy Story 3 trailer, you see Jessie and Rex and all that get thrown and huged and yelled alot, so thats what I think.
In Toy Story Woody got hit with a bowling ball and he was fine. I was thinking to myself Wednesday when I was watching it “How can he endure that?”
Well, he was definately shaken a bit. [spoil]A similar thing happens in Toy Story 3 to him.[/spoil] I guess it also depends on how durable it is, and what the toy was meant for.
I cause toys pain!
I think one reason why the physical pain isn’t questioned in the films too much is because it’s the emotional pain of the characters that’s really the more important thing. Toy Story 3 makes it clear though that the greatest physical pain (as in death) that a toy can endure is the incinerator. All the themes of fear and uncertainty with the fate of a toy really led up to that final climax of being taken to where every toy fears to go. Probably the closest thing before that was Sid’s rocket strapped to Buzz, but with that you could at least think that a toy might survive somehow if it just breaks into pieces. With the incinerator however a toy would be vaporized and just cease to exist.