if you want to live." Yeah, a Sarah Connor reference. In the process of writing her out John and the story team realized that she would have been deus ex machina and that Woody needed to be in charge. That's when the whole complicated "wind the frog" sequence was born. I can remember our producer, Ralph Guggenheim, updating us by saying, "I just got off the phone with Mr. Potatohead's lawyer." There really was (probably still is) a lawyer dedicated to Mr. Potatohead licensing. It was touch and go for a while, but we landed him. To the best of my recollection we didn't pay cash for any clearances, but did offer credit at the end of the film. By the time we made the sequels it was much, much easier to convince people it was a good idea to let their toys appear in the movie. In all fairness they had no particular reason to think so when we were making the first one. Oren Jacob stated: [note: this is not an area of the studio that I'm particularly familiar with, so I'm sure others will have more details/anecdotes to share than I will.] I don't know nor remember the specifics of each of the deals you are asking about, but each of the deals was unique.  If memory serves, sometimes the owners of the trademarks and copyrights in question granted Pixar permission to use the characters, maybe we paid a small amount for others (although probably not) and