Tin Toy was the first Pixar short film to win an Academy Award.
Directed by John Lasseter, Tin Toy won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989. The film follows a small wind-up toy trying to avoid a destructive baby named Billy. Its humor and expressive computer animation helped demonstrate that digitally created characters could support a clear, entertaining story.
The award was an important milestone for Pixar before the company made feature films. Steve Jobs had purchased the computer graphics division that became Pixar in 1986, and the studio used short films both as artistic experiments and as demonstrations of its technology.
Tin Toy is sometimes confused with Luxo Jr., another famous Pixar short. Luxo Jr. introduced the desk-lamp characters later used in Pixar branding, but Tin Toy was the Oscar-winning breakthrough.