Tom Hanks conceived Woody catchphrase ‘there’s a snake in my boot’ in Toy Story

A group of the original film’s creators were celebrating 30 years of the Disney classic during a panel at D23.

Tom Hanks conceived Woody catchphrase ‘there’s a snake in my boot’ in Toy Story (Ian West/PA) (PA Archive)

Toy Story star Tom Hanks conjured up Woody’s celebrated catchphrase “there’s a snake in my boot” during his first Toy Story voice session, the film’s creators said.

A group of the original film’s creators including Pete Docter, the now-chief creative officer at Pixar, were celebrating 30 years of the Disney classic during a panel at D23, the Disney fan event, in California.

Since the original film was released in November 1995, Toy Story has become a celebrated franchise with three sequel films and a fourth slated for 2026.

However, the original film began life as a “half-baked idea about a ventriloquist dummy and Tinny from Tin Toy having a road trip together”, Pixar’s creative vice president Andrew Stanton said.

He said Disney picked the idea over two others – James And The Giant Peach and Bob the Dinosaur.

Toy Story, an animated comedy about a group of toys, features Tim Allen as superhero action figure Buzz Lightyear and Hanks as a pull-string cowboy doll named Woody.

Bonnie Arnold, who produced the original film, said the actors “weren’t our first choices but we did get there”.

The team pitched to Hanks first who they said had lost a lot of weight as he was filming Philadelphia at the time – which later won him the Oscar for best actor.

During the panel, the audience were shown a printed list titled “ideas for Woody’s pull-string dialogue lines” dated February 3 1993, which had three handwritten phrases at the bottom.

Mr Stanton said: “Those were scripted lines that we gave Tom (Hanks) to read from, pull-string recordings from Woody but that is my handwriting on the bottom, those were ones he made up.

“That is me writing them down what he had said and they’re now law. This was from his first session, he kept going.”

Meanwhile Ms Arnold said Disney had “grossly underestimated” how much it would cost to make the original Toy Story film, joking “we were counting the paperclips”.

“It is the cheapest movie we ever made,” Mr Stanton said.

The pair recalled how staff would make food at home and bring it in for staff working overtime, as well as bringing in their own chairs for the cinema room to watch drafts of the film.