The pink bear with the beguiling fruit scent reveals himself to be the unquestioned Fuehrer of the daycare, a psychotic bully with a ghoulish assemblage of henchmen and flunkies, including the viscerally unsettling Big Baby, a beaten-up sentient baby doll that is pure nightmare fuel, fashion icon Ken (Michael Keaton, having a blast) and the ironically named Chuckles, a sad-faced clown.
When the PTSD-addled toys complain that they’re stuck in a room full of pint-sized sadists whose conception of rough-housing looks an awful lot like torture from the outside, Lotso’s facade of gentleness and kindness dissipates. He tricks them into thinking that they’d escaped hell and found paradise when they really just went from a bad situation to an even worse one.
Lotso assures the toys that they will soon receive the attention and validation that they desperately crave from children overjoyed to be playing with them. Being an evil sonofabitch, Lotso deludes the anxiety-ridden, lonely and confused toys into thinking that they had essentially died and gone to toy heaven. The toys end up at Sunnyside, a crowded and noisy daycare that Lotso presides over with honey-dripping Southern charm masking a cold heart. What value do they have if they’re not being played with? Will Andy ever return? Have their days of happy, joyous play ended prematurely and permanently? What does it mean to face obsolescence, irrelevance, and the cruelty of age and time when you’re a sentient Mr. This of course sends his toys into a terrifying existential crisis. The shatteringly emotional plot finds Andy, the owner of the toys from the first two films, growing up and going to college.
Even before this pleasant-smelling, cuddly, huggable figure of rage and resentment enters the equation Toy Story 3 is already bracingly dark. In true Pixar fashion, he is a gently soiled anthropomorphic pink teddy bear who uses a cane yet is nevertheless infinitely more human and complex than the vast majority of human cinematic protagonists. Lotso is so intent on never allowing himself to get hurt the way he did when his owner abandoned him that he hardens his heart, ignores the dictates of his conscience, and commits himself to the blind pursuit and cold-hearted display of power. The distraught bear that smells of strawberries and innocent childhood dreams eventually finds his owner only to discover that he has been replaced with an identical but newer model. Then life happened and Lotso was left behind.
Once upon a time Lotso was the favorite toy of a little girl named Daisy who loved him as much as it is possible for a girl to love a toy and vice versa.