Woody's Bald Spot Drew A Lot of Attention in the First Trailer for 'Toy Story 5'

Woody the Cowboy has been part of the movie landscape for decades at this point. Toy Story was released all the way back in 1995, and more than 30 years later, we're now getting ready for Toy Story 5. The trailer for that new installment debuted in mid-February and introduced us to the villain of this new film, a tablet that distracts Bonnie from the toys that she inherited from Andy in Toy Story 3.

Anyone who remembers the end of Toy Story 4 knows that Woody actually left Bonnie behind, but it seems that he's decided to help out his former friends in their hour of need. One thing that's notable in the trailer, though, is that Woody appears to be going bald now. Here's what we know.

Woody appears to have a bald spot on the back of his head in Toy Story 5. If you're particularly sharp, though, you might not that Woody is actually made of plastic and doesn't have any actual hair to lose. So he's not balding in the way that an actual man might. Instead, it's likely that something happened to the back of his head that led to the erosion of the paint and plastic from that section.

The filmmakers likely chose to represent Woody's aging as a bald spot, a reminder that although toys don't age in the same way that humans do, that doesn't mean that they stay brand new forever.

Tom Hanks, who voices Woody, has definitely aged in the 30 years since the original film was released, and you can tell by the difference in how he voices Woody even in the trailer for this new installment.

Toy Story 5 is about the threat technology might pose to the imaginations and attention of a young girl who is used to mostly playing with toys. We don't know exactly how Toy Story will approach the screen time debate, but it is undeniably one of the foundational questions that parents of young children face today.

Over the course of its years on screens, Toy Story has tackled everything from concerns about being replaced to worries about our own obsolescence, but this new plot feels like a real pivot for the franchise.

It's easy to imagine the movie being too pro or anti-technology, and that's certainly a possibility, but the minds at Pixar will hopefully treat this with the appropriate level of nuance.

Woody's bald spot is a reminder that times change. One of the hard truths at the center of Toy Story is that kids grow up, and their interests shift as they do. A toy's purpose is to be played with, and that's a purpose that's constantly under threat. Given how largely successful the franchise has been to date, Toy Story 5 will hopefully know exactly what to tell both kids and adults about what it means to live with technology.