Cars introduced the short-film series Cars Toons.
Cars Toons, also called Mater’s Tall Tales, is a series of animated shorts centered mainly on Mater. The first short, Mater the Greater, premiered in 2008 and expanded the world created by Pixar’s 2006 feature Cars.
The shorts use a recurring joke: Mater tells extraordinary stories about his past, while Lightning McQueen reacts as though the events really happened. Each story places Mater in a different genre or setting, including stunt performance, detective fiction, and rescue adventures.
Cars 2 did not introduce the series, although several Cars Toons characters and ideas connect to the feature films. The shorts were distributed through television, home video, and other Disney platforms, making Mater one of Pixar’s most prominent short-form characters.