There Is No Pixar Short Playing With ‘Toy Story 4’ In the 1980s and 1990s, before Pixar released Toy Story , the studio was known for producing animated shorts and commercials that led to the popularity of computer animation. The reason why shorts and ads were the preferred space for Pixar was that the animation was cutting edge at the time and many of the short projects were produced as experiments to push the technology forward. Animated shorts put Pixar on the map. When Toy Story was released in 1995, it stood on its own, with no short playing before it. That is something that may go overlooked now, though, as audiences have come to expect a creative new Pixar short before each of the studio’s films. When A Bug’s Life made its way into theaters, it was preceded by the short Geri’s Game , a short that featured a senior citizen playing chess. That short started a tradition that has mostly continued to this day. Since Geri’s Ga...