PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY : ‘Toy Story,’ ‘Babe’ Charm in Different Ways
It seems you can’t go to a fast-food restaurant or department store these days without tripping over movie-related merchandise. And it’s beginning to be true in the personal computer software market and on the World Wide Web as well. The latest entry is Disney Interactive’s “Toy Story Animated Story Book” ($35), which follows earlier CD-ROMs of similar nature tied to “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.”
Sound Source Interactive ([800] 877-4778), an independent Westlake Village multimedia development company, last year released a CD-ROM version of the surprise hit movie “Babe” ($19.95). The company also offers adult titles based on “The Terminator” and “Star Wars” and is working on CDs for “Babylon 5,” “I Love Lucy,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Star Trek: Voyager.”
From a technology standpoint, Disney’s “Toy Story” CD is a breakthrough product. It’s based on the first animated movie created entirely on computer, and the CD’s graphics, 3-D animation and sound are a cut above what I’ve come to expect from multimedia CDs. The CD, like the movie, was created for Disney by Pixar, a computer animation studio based in Point Richmond, Calif.
The storybook is hosted by Hamm, an animated piggy bank with the voice of John Ratzenberger. It also features the vocal talents of Don Rickles (Mr. Potato Head), Annie Potts (Bo Peep), Wallace Shawn (Rex the Dinosaur) and Jim Varney (Slinky Dog). The voices, which are generally familiar and particularly endearing to anyone who enjoyed the movie, add a lot to the program.
I showed the product to several kids and adults who had also seen the movie, and everyone was impressed as soon as Hamm started to explain the story line and how the game works. Seconds later, you’re whisked to Andy’s Room, where Woody (whose voice is supplied by Tom Hanks’ brother Jim) informed the rest of the toys that “Andy’s birthday party has been moved to today.” Anyone who’s seen the movie knows what that means. Woody will soon have a toy rival for Andy’s affection.
The disc runs through the basic story line of the movie, with the text appearing on screen while actors read it aloud. That gives the child a chance to read along, but there is only one sentence for each of the 15 screens. That may be OK for very small children, but it wears thin pretty quickly once children reach reading age.
At every page, kids can click on characters and other objects to elicit surprise animations, many of which are delightful. There are also numerous games that children can play, though other than the use of “Toy Story” characters, none of the games struck me as particularly unusual.
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Overall, the program gets my nod as a positive experience, especially for kids 5 and younger, but, like other computer games, don’t expect it to be very enduring. Kids will play it, tire of it and move on--which is probably exactly what Disney Interactive is counting on. CDs based on upcoming movies, including “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and the remake of “101 Dalmatians,” will be out later this year.
“Babe: A Little Pig Goes a Long Way” takes a somewhat different approach. It, too, features a read-along story based on the movie, but there is a great deal more text. Instead of using the characters’ voices, the text is read by a narrator with a very soothing voice. Interspersed throughout the text are about 20 minutes of video clips directly from the movie.
The clips play automatically and then return you to the narrated text. Activities that support the story and help build cognitive skills are available as the story plays out. Don’t expect high-tech computer animation: The graphics are based on more traditional types of children’s book art, which, for this disc, is a real plus. “Soothing” and “cute” are the adjectives that most apply to both the program and the movie.
Like “Toy Story,” “Babe” is pretty much aimed at the 4-to-8-year-old set, though this adult reviewer found it charming.
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“Babe” is one of several movie-related products from Sound Source, which specializes in recycling movie property. The company also has a series of products it calls entertainment utilities: “The Terminator 2 Limited Edition Entertainment Utility,” for example, is a CD that comes with a set of still-image screen savers, animated screen savers and video-based screen savers, along with some jigsaw puzzles and sound bytes. Videos and sounds can be assigned to various computer functions, so when you exit Windows you can hear Arnold Schwarzenegger say--you guessed it--”Hasta la vista, baby.”
* Lawrence J. Magid can be reached via e-mail at magid@latimes.com. His World Wide Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com
