The rise of artificial intelligence in our media and entertainment industries has raised many concerns about programs like Open Al’s text-to-video converter Sora replacing the artistic efforts and aspirations of humans. If these AI movies are anything like the brand new movie about the origin story of toy store chain Toys ‘R’ Us, the only thing we have to fear is watching them.
WHP Global, the current owner of Toys ‘R’ Us, worked with Emmy-nominated creative agency Native Foreign to create a short brand film. The origin of Toys ‘R’ Us Using Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video creator. The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and is currently available to watch here. toy retail site.
The origin of Toys ‘R’ Us though it’s only a little over a minute long, it’s a mix of confusing and scary. The film features a younger version of toy store chain founder Charles Lazarus and his giraffe mascot Geoffrey as they come up with a retail idea, but pretty much everything takes place in some kind of cosmic fever dream. It’s like someone tried to take M3GAN’s loose demeanor and dress him up like Opie Taylor. The Andy Griffith Show and drop it in the remains of an exploding toy store on the edge of the universe.
In the movie, Mini-Charles is a starry-eyed kid who hangs out at his dad’s bike shop, looking like a cross between Billy Eichner and John Denver. Little Charlie falls asleep and becomes a sort of Dr., where every kind of generic toy you can imagine sits on the shelves and hovers over his head. Seuss has a strange dream about a planetarium. This magical place, she meets Geoffrey the giraffe, the store’s iconic mascot, which Sona apparently used a different artificial intelligence to create.
The movie leaves out the part where Lazarus wakes up in the emergency room after accidentally doing “all the mushrooms” that led to his retail fever dream.
Sora is a generative artificial intelligence model that creates “real and imaginary scenes from text instructions.” OpenAI website. OpenAI introduced a video generation model in February. Sora can create videos about a minute long from text requests. Not yet available to the public.
The current state of Toys ‘R’ Us is not as rosy as its brand film makes it seem. The toy store chain went bankrupt in 2018, closing all its stores at once. Buyout firm WHP Global took over the brand’s parent company Tru Kids Inc. in 2021. Two years later, the firm announced plans to expand its toy store brand with new locations in airports and cruise ships. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and department store chain locations Macy’s.
