Far cry from Vezzini?

Wallace Shawn, who played Vezzini in The Princess Bride (see "Why, what in the world..."), also lent his voice to the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Toy Story. Interestingly, although the character in the film was made by Mattel (http://www.mattel.com/ ), the actual "actor" is copyrighted by Hasbro http://www.hasbro.com/.

Ironically, the Hasbro web site doesn't show Rex under their products, but an alternative "dinosaur" (actually a Transformer) named Repugnus seems to be available http://www.hasbro.com/default.cfm?page=ps_results&product_id=17570.

I would not like to be named "Repugnus," personally, but I suppose that robots have different sensibilities.

...but I digress...

Personally, I always found the scene in which Buzz Light Year glosses over the corporate affiliations of the various toys in Andy's room quite amusing, particularly the bit where Rex explains that he was actually made by a smaller company acquired in a leveraged buy-out.

Jean Baudrillard noted that we now live in a world full of copies, a world in which fakes actually set the rules for reality. That's kind of distressing, until you consider that you could possibly be a neurotic plastic dinosaur from Mattel...Hasbro...er, someplace.