The Mystery of Woody’s Past

What was Woody doing for four decades before Andy?

So at this point I’ve seen the Toy Story movies probably 100 times (my daughter would watch them every day if she could). I think together they form the most solid movie trilogy, and are some of my favorite movies. But I just realized a major gap in the story: why doesn’t Woody remember or talk about being a toy before Andy?

In Toy Story 2 we learn that Woody is part of a set of toys from the 1950s based on a popular kids TV show. So that would mean he is old enough to have been owned or played with by at least 3–4 generations of kids. But within the TS series, Woody knew nothing about his reputation as a collectible toy and has only known or been owned by Andy since the 90s. In TS2 Woody didn’t recognize his horse, Jessie, or the Prospector — everything about his origin as the hero among this set of vintage cowboy toys was new information to him. Yet they all knew who he was. Jessie even tells him: “Everyone know your name, Woody!”

“Why, you don’t know who you are, do you?”

That quote from the Prospector after Woody first meets the Roundup Gang toys might be the most darkly poignant line of the entire series. It’s like when Christian Shepherd asks his son Jack in the finale of Lost: “How are you here?” Such a simple question that reveals a massive breach of continuity in our hero’s world. A bombshell. However TS2 guides us to only look at the “celebrity” aspect of Woody’s decades-long history with a montage of vintage memorabilia and archived episodes of the TV show, completely glossing over his personal past. Almost ironically the key drama in TS2 is Woody having to decide to embrace his newfound identity as a valuable collectible or to stay true to the life he knows as Andy’s toy. Until now i never realized that his life in Andy’s Room isn’t the whole story.

Jessie the cowgirl toy is revealed in TS2 to have been owned by a girl named Emily who outgrew and abandoned her. We can deduce from the psychedelic music posters that replaced the horses and cowboy toys in her room that Emily grew up in the 1950s–60s. Jessie eventually ended up as a collectible toy kept in storage. We don’t know if she had any other owners after Emily, but I think we’re led to believe she did not. Similarly, the Prospector’s backstory is that he sat on store shelves, passed by for other toys, and was never bought and played with — eventually ending up in the possession of a collector, still in his box.

So we the audience know the backstory of both Jessie and the Prospector, and they the characters are aware of their own histories within the Toy Story universe. Why not Woody? How does Woody not know that he’s part of the Roundup Gang, when out of the box Buzz at least knows where he’s from and what his mission is and who the villain is in his universe? Even Rex knows he’s from Mattel. Strangely, Woody is well aware that he is a toy, he is just oblivious about his past.

A couple theories:

1. Woody is a replica or later edition, not originally from the 50s. This is pretty easily disproven because when Al the collector villain finds Woody in the yard sale in TS2, he recognizes his unique characteristics (pull string voice, hand-painted, stitching, hat, etc). I think it’s safe to say a toy expert would know the difference (especially if he plans to sell the set of original toys to a museum). And perhaps there were no toys produced after the originals. Andy’s mom also explains that Woody is an old family toy, so we can assume he was around before Andy.
2. Woody wasn’t “woke” to his toy existence until Andy was his owner. In TS1, Buzz believes he is the space ranger known as Buzz Lightyear. Not until he sees a TV commercial for Buzz Lightyear toys just like him does he finally accept the reality that he’s “just a toy”. And in TS2 a random Buzz Lightyear toy joins the mix, behaving under the same delusion that he is actually a space ranger (TS3 plays the joke again with Buzz being reset to his pre-woke consciousness). So if somehow this was the case for Woody, maybe he gained self-awareness and realized he was a toy once Andy started playing with him. But why would he still not remember anything from his past if he believed that he was the actual Woody from the TV show before? Toys don’t start from zero – they all have a backstory (Buzz laments his broken spaceship upon arrival to Andy’s room). This could have been a point of empathy in TS1 when Buzz was going through his awakening. Instead Woody teases and ridicules Buzz the entire time, which to me says that Woody never felt these emotions of his world being turned upside down. Buzz literally has a psychotic breakdown because of this paradigm shift. This explanation also feels less plausible when you consider that Woody is clearly the smartest toy in the room — i feel like he would have put the pieces together.
3. Woody was in storage or otherwise sheltered from the world until Andy. This still betrays the fact that he isn’t aware of his origin from the TV show. And he would still be conscious of the fact that he was in storage. Jessie in TS2 is so traumatized from being in storage she cries, “I can’t do storage again, I just cant!” Or maybe toys don’t “come alive” until they are opened from their packaging or played with, which would mark the beginning of their memories. I also think this is false because the Prospector is fully sentient and self-aware inside his box for all these years, and was never played with.
4. The only remaining possibility is that Woody somehow lost his memory, or is blocking out memories of his past.

The core theme of the Toy Story series is that the purpose of toys is to be there for children. This really hits home in TS3 when Andy gives all his toys to a young girl, because he realizes that his toys deserve to be with a child who will love and play with them — fulfilling their purpose, despite any of his own selfish attachments. It seems like this passing of toys to the next generation would be an obvious and recurring event in the life of toys (hand-me-downs, used toys, lost toys, etc). Some of the other toys like Mr. Potato Head also come from decades before Andy. You’d expect that many of these toys would have stories from their previous owners. But in the Toy Story world we only first see this portrayed in a positive light at the end of the trilogy almost as if it was the first time this occurred. If we believe that Woody has been passed down in Andy’s family, why does he not seem to be aware of it or ever mention it? At the end of TS3 it would have been a perfect “everything’s going to be ok, guys” moment of comfort from the leader of this bunch of toys being given away because presumably he’d been passed down to Andy and that turned out great. This changing of owners is a crucial gap in Woody’s story. What was Woody doing for four decades before Andy came along?

Am I missing something, or over-complicating this? What do you guys think is the explanation?