As all the leading press explained, the Pixar film light year follows that “real” Buzz Lightyear – meaning a film version of the character that inspired the toy from Pixar’s Toy Story franchise. Buzz is an adult space ranger on a hairy mission to save his fellow rangers from a dangerous world, so there are no toys in the film. However, there’s one character that’s heavily inspired by real-world toys: Sox the robot cat, Buzz Lightyear’s personal companion.
Spoken by The good dinosaur Director Peter Sohn is assigned to Sox Buzz as a therapeutic aid after Buzz returns from a harrowing mission in space. The robotic cat can perform complex math calculations and hack computers, but also enjoys chasing lasers and rubbing up against Buzz’s leg. Director Angus MacLane tells Polygon that the design of Sox was intentionally simple, more like a Robot toys from the 1990s than any high-tech futuristic sci-fi Android companion.
“Sox is like a toy, a simple animatronic toy,” says MacLane. “It’s not a very convincing animal. But it’s doing the best it can. It’s the only toy in the film. It’s like a fancy action figure. I find [its] The limited movement is really fun as an animator and contrasts nicely with everything else in the film.”
Another toy-like trait of Sox? Its texture. Sox is not made of metal or plastic. He is flocked, similar to calico creature or certain types of Breyer horses. As MacLane describes it, Sox’s texture is a kind of glue that’s sprayed onto vinyl that has some fluffy fabric attached to it.
“Flocking is fun. It’s really entertaining to see those seam lines,” laughs producer Galyn Susman. But as it turns out, that flocked texture also adds an interesting perk to an alien-filled sci-fi world. “It’s a fire retardant material because people put them to bed with kids and you don’t want anything flammable!”
As for Sox being a cat and not one of the other possible animal companions, the answer is pretty simple: MacLane is a big cat person.
“I thought a helpful cat was funny because they’re not usually very helpful,” he says.
light year is now available on Disney Plus.
