Grown But Not Forgotten

**Grown But Not Forgotten** is the third episode of *Toy Town.*

## Synopsis

Homer, Blossom and the whole gang are back. As their owner Jeff prepares to depart for college, his loyal toys find themselves in daycare where untamed tots with their sticky little fingers do not play nice. So, it's all for one and one for all as they join some new friends and face off a manipulative purple dinosaur called Barney to plan their great escape.

## Plot

*Grown But Not Forgotten* is set after *Spy Kidding*. The story opens shortly after the latter, with an action sequence in the Rocky Mountains, in which Daffy and his new girlfriend Tina Duck (acting as the Doom Duck and Malice Mallard) are committing a train robbery until Homer appears to stop the crime. Homer is knocked off the train by Malice, only to be caught by Cartman riding Maximus. Then, Doom and Malice set off explosives that destroy a bridge and make their escape in their car driven by the minions. Homer tries to save the orphans (stag beetles), but the train falls off the bridge with Homer still inside. Suddenly, the entire train is lifted high into the air and saved by Blossom. Blossom then disintegrated Doom and Malice's getaway car with her laser. This leads to a standoff between Homer, Blossom, and Cartman against the ducks and the minions, made more fierce when Doom releases Oblina (playing the Cootie Monster), and Homer responds by releasing Mushu (playing the Dragon who eats Cootie Monsters). Suddenly, Pumbaa (playing the Evil Rat Hog), flies into view in his airship and he picks up the duck couple and their associates and presses a button labeled "Death by Ants". A huge army of ants are released, and they quickly swarm and take down Mushu before capturing Homer, Blossom, and Cartman and holding them down. Just as Doom Duck is about to press the "Death" button to kill the heroes, the sequence ends and goes into Jeff's room, revealing that it was all simply the imagination of a child. A series of home video clips of Jeff is then screened, showing him growing up and playing with his toys through the years.

The film then arrives in its present setting, roughly about 10 years since the events of *Spy Kidding*. Jeff is now a 17-year old, having graduated from high school and is now just three days away from heading off to college. Many of his old toys (notably mentioned by Homer are Snoopy, the Penguins and Mrs. Brisby) have been sold in the time that Jeff was growing up, and now just Homer, Blossom, Cartman, Maximus, Daffy and Tina Duck, Mushu, Pumbaa, Oblina, and some minions remain having spent the majority of their time in a toy chest. After a failed long-shot attempt to make Jeff notice them and possibly play with them one last time, the toys worry about their fate... they could be taken to college, given away, stored in the attic or even thrown away. The toys are reluctant but commit to Homer's idea of them being stored in the basement, though the penguins quickly abandon them, believing they will get thrown away into the trash instead. Jeff, however, plans to take Homer to college with him and put the others in the basement, but after helping his sister Emily (who is now a pre-teen) with a box of toys (which includes her Gosalyn Mallard doll) to be donated, he leaves the bag containing his toys in the hallway and his father accidentally takes them to the curb, thinking it's trash.

Homer goes to save his friends (trying to have the cat Curacao help, but he cannot due to the fact that he is very old), but it turns out that the toys escaped and are hiding in the back of the Carlin car, thinking Jeff doesn't want them anymore. Cartman soon finds the box of Emily's toys to be donated to Safari Daycare and convinces them to be donated there. Homer finds them and tries to explain to the toys that they were accidentally thrown away, but before he can finish the explanation, Jeff's dad closes the back door and drives to Safari.

The gang arrives at Safari just as the children leave for recess. The Safari toys welcome Jeff's toys with open arms, including the leader of the daycare, Barney the Dinosaur, his butler Max and a smooth-talking Darkwing Duck toy, who amazingly has fallen in love with Gosalyn who returns his feelings. Homer is treated to a donut, and Cartman craves some cheesy poofs. The toys are keen on starting a new life at the daycare, except for Homer, who thinks that the toys shouldn't turn their back on Jeff so quickly.

The toys think Homer should stay with them at Safari, but Homer reluctantly leaves without them to find Jeff. He escapes from Safari using a kite but ends up losing his donut and getting stuck in a tree. Homer is found and taken home by a little girl from the daycare named Julie Denton who takes him to meet her own toys: Gloria the Hippo, Sebastian the Crab, Kessie the Bluebird, C3PO, and Kermit the Frog. Homer spends the rest of the day being played with by Julie, who takes good care of her toys and plays imaginative games. Meanwhile, the rest of the toys are placed in the Cub Scout Room at the daycare and are looking forward to getting played with. However, while Jeff's toys place themselves at points around the room where they'll be easily noticed, Blossom realizes that the toys already in the nursery are hiding. Blossom starts to get worried, and her fears turn out to be well founded as the Cub Scout Room is suddenly filled with young toddlers who have no sense of good behavior and play with the toys very roughly (*with Cartman used as a mallet, Blossom used as a paintbrush and the minions used by one child to bounce on, among others*).

Although Homer enjoys playtime with Julie, he still wants to go home to Jeff so Julie's toys start up the computer for Homer to find the direction from Julie's house to Jeff's house, which, to his joy, turns out to be "right around the corner." As he tells Julie's toys that if they get donated to (or at least visit) Safari that they tell Jeff's other toys that he made it home, Julie's toys become surprised to see that he has come from the daycare and want to know how he escaped. When Homer asks them what they meant, Sebastian warns Homer that Safari, ruled by Barney, is a "place of ruin and despair." Homer then asks why, and Julie's toys direct him to 3PO, who explains that he, along Barney and Max, once belonged to a sweet girl named Brita, who accidentally left them in a park. Barney, 3PO, and Max eventually made their way back to Brita, only to find that Brita had replaced Barney with another toy dinosaur, turning the poor purple dinosaur bitter and ruthless, and when 3PO tried to reason with him and explain, Barney just lashed the poor droid out. By means of a Totally 80s Pizza truck, they found Safari, and Barney and Max rose to power quickly, turning the daycare into a toy prison, while 3PO had been taken home by Julie. 3PO describes the dinosaur as a "source of saccharine beyond all imagination" as he finishes his story. Homer then realizes he has to go back to Safari to save his imprisoned friends, before they are at the mercy of Barney, as Julie's toys wish him luck, because the fate of toy-kind rests in his hands.

At the same time Blossom, Cartman and the gang learn the truth about Barney the hard way: After the children have gone home, the toys are left dirty, bent out of shape and quite despondent. Next door, the children's song "This Old Man" is heard, to Blossom's annoyance. Daffy gets tempted to sing along; she tries to shush him, but he refuses; Tina tells him not to sass the girl, because it's rude, and to do as he is told, but Daffy berates Tina for lecturing him and defending Blossom, and claims that he only takes orders from himself. Tina then scolds him that his self absorption will get him into trouble one day. Daffy realizes his girlfriend is taking sides and dumps her. Mushu calls the duck immature, and Pumbaa is tired of them being difficult. Blossom tells them to break it up, Daffy sarcastically apologizes, and Cartman retaliates saying that it's the girl's fault him and the others are in that mess. Blossom realizes that the boy doesn't how to pick his fights and starts belittling him. To add insult to injury, she reveals that she hated his cheesy poofs. Cartman then begins to break down in tears. Mushu accuses Blossom of having dishonor. The supergirl gets fed up with the group refusing to obey her, so she tries to leave Safari like Homer, but is ambushed by some villain toys. Blossom tries to flee the thugs but is eventually captured by them. The scuffle ends when Barney intervenes. Blossom is initially relieved to see him and begs for his help but is soon surprised by Barney's casual behavior towards the heroine's situation and realizes that he leads the thugs. When asked why there were some bodyguards of his, Barney pretends to apologize to the rude welcome, but then reveals to her his plan to capture her friends and keep them in the cub scout room, for he and his followers couldn't bear the kids' roughness. Barney and his henchmen therefore resort to resetting Blossom into her original, deluded Powerpuff Girl character (after revealing that they have a library full of toy instruction manuals). Meanwhile, Tina, through one of her contact lenses at Jeff's house, discovers that Jeff is actively searching for the toys and did not mean to throw them away. As they prepare to leave and return to Jeff, they are captured and imprisoned by Barney and his gang, including the reset Blossom. In order to make sure Jeff's toys follow his many rules, Barney tosses Homer's donut that he had left behind to them and makes them think he somehow killed Homer. He and his henchman then return to their room, taking Blossom with them. Now that they are prisoners, the toys feel ashamed for the horrible mistake they made and they only wished now they hadn't left Jeff's home or disrespected Homer or Blossom in the first place. They also blame themselves for Homer's absence and Blossom's brainwashed state.

The following morning, Homer returns to Safari inside Julie's backpack to recuse his friends. He sneakily reaches them and they happily greet him, glad to see him alive and well, and then tell him of Blossom's spell. They reconcile and quickly formulate an escape plan with the help of Inspector Gadget. That night, Homer and Oblina sneak through Safari to the main office, where Gadget informed them that a cymbal-banging ape known as King Louie monitors the security system throughout the entire daycare to prevent toys from escaping. A brief fight ensues, ending with Louie scared silly. Oblina signals to the other toys, still locked up by Barney, and while Daffy provides a diversion, they make their escape. During the escape, the reset Blossom is captured and held down by the toys. They attempt to fix her, but accidentally reset her into a deluded Chinese mode.

They make their way out onto the playground, and after several close-calls (*including Gosalyn blowing Max away on a balloon*), manage to reach the garbage chute. Here, Gadget tells them, is where broken toys are sent, and is the only way out of Safari. However, as the toys prepare to leap to freedom, they are confronted by Barney, who had "broken" Gadget into informing him of the escape plan, along with several of his henchmen and offers the toys a place in his 'family' on the condition that they agree to remain in the Cub Scout Room, however they refuse to be part of any family that Barney runs. Darkwing comes to the side of Homer and the others (due to his love of Gosalyn), telling the other toys that Barney transformed Safari from a haven for toys into a prison and put himself in charge. When Barney tells him that no kid has ever really loved a toy, Homer brings up the subject of Brita and reminds Barney that she didn't throw him out but lost him. Barney is infuriated by this and tells the stubborn toys that a toy is nothing but trash waiting to be thrown away in hopes of getting it through their heads once and for all. This finally makes Blossom see Barney for his evil, bitter self and uses her ice breath to trip him in the dumpster. However, when the garbage truck arrives, Barney drags Homer into the dumpster with him, and the rest of Jeff's toys refuse to abandon him and also jump in while Gosalyn and Darkwing are forced to remain behind. Having been thrown into the rear of the truck, a small TV falls on Blossom, resetting her to her normal self with no memory of what happened to her.

The toys find themselves at the Denver City Dump where the minions notice a large crane in the distance, reciting one of their catchphrases, "The Claw!", and proceed to venture off toward it. The rest of the toys, meanwhile, are dumped onto a long conveyor belt of garbage heading towards a set of shredders. Thanks to the magnetic ceiling over them, They manage to avoid the shredders. The conveyor belt then moves upwards, however, sending them toward the central incinerator. Although Homer pushes his friends to safety, he gets stuck, and Blossom snatches him from the trash, and they found themselves on a ledge overlooking a fiery shaft in which the trash cascades in a sheer drop, hundreds of feet down, into a lake of lava. Barney confronts them, engaging in an intense final battle. When Homer knocks the dinosaur to the ground, he tries to retreat towards Blossom, Barney grabs him by the leg,and both of them slip and dangle over the side! Homer, enraged that Barney is losing his only chance of safety, tells him to let go, or they'll both die, but Barney knows all too well that his time is coming, and vows to take Homer with him. Blossom tries to rescue her friend, but Barney strikes her to the wall.  Having had enough, Homer kicks Barney in the head until Barney loses his grip and falls to his death in the lava below. Homer then pulls himself out of his fiery grave and sees the limp Blossom, and scoops her in grief. Just then, however, the minions use the crane's claw to pull them to safety.

Outside, he and the other toys are very sad at the apparent loss of the girl, especially Homer, who has then grown a conscience and decided that his best friend is more important than college, and then offers to give up ten attics to have Blossom here, to which the others agree. Eventually, their tears bring her back to life, to their delight. Homer leads the way home with his signature song, "We Do" and Blossom also sings "Love Makes the World Go Round." Deciding that the attic isn't such a bad place to be sent *(when compared to where they've just been*), the toys manage to return to Jeff's room undetected, where they pack themselves into a box labeled "attic" and say goodbye to Homer wishing him a good time at college with Jeff. However Homer watches through a hole in the college box as Jeff's father and sister Emily make their emotional farewell as they let go of Jeff so he can move on with his life. Homer, who has struggled to accept the fact that his role in Jeff's life as his toy was coming to an end throughout the movie, finally realizes that he was wrong about staying with Jeff forever and that he too must let go of Jeff and move on with his own existence as a toy, as he can't spend the rest of his life in college and holding onto Jeff. Homer decides he can't allow his friends to be sent to the attic and gets an idea, writing Jeff a note suggesting that he gives the toys to Julie who he knows will play with and take good care of them. Jeff discovers the box, and finds the note Homer left on the top.

He drives the toys to Julie's house, where he pulls them from the box and passes them on to her one by one, explaining their names, personalities, and other traits. Finally, Julie looks into the bottom of the box and sees Homer, who (having decided he didn't want to be separated from his friends) had jumped into the box before leaving the note and leaving Jeff confused about how he'd gotten in there. Jeff picks Homer up before Julie can, but then sees the surprised look on her face as well as all of his other old toys lined up together with her. In one last symbolic gesture, he gives Homer to Julie, telling her that they've been through a lot together and he means a lot to him, so she's got to take good care of him. Julie gladly accepts, and Jeff joins her in playing with what are now her toys one last time. Soon, it's time for Jeff to leave, and as he sits in his car and prepares to pull away, he looks back to see Julie waving Homer's hand at him. He smiles, thanks to his toys for a great life together before. When Julie goes inside with her mother, the toys watch Jeff drive away as they all wish him a final goodbye while Blossom tells Homer that he is a good man, as they accept their new life together.

## Trivia

### Early concept

Originally, the episode didn't plan to use Daffy & Tina's argument scene.  It was only through the scene of Daffy sassing Blossom that it was included.

### Connections

* After he and Blossom sing "We Do" and "Love Makes the World Go Round," the *Toy Town* Homer states, "I feel like MJ, with Spider-Man finally accepted her as his girlfriend."  He is, in fact, confusing Michael Jackson the King of Pop with Mary Jane Watson of the Spider-Man franchise.  This is extremely similar to the real-life *Simpsons* episode *Mathlete's Feat ,* in which after singing the Waldorf School Song, the real Homer states, "I feel like Beethoven, when Charles Grodin finally accepted him as his dog."  He was back then confusing Beethoven the musician with Beethoven the dog .
* Voice actors Jim Cummings, Christine Cavanaugh, Tim Curry and Dan Castellaneta have all co-starred in the main *Darkwing Duck* continuity.
* Cummings voiced both Darkwing and Fuzzy Lumpkins in the main *Powerpuff Girls* continuity. Plus, Cavanaugh voiced Bunny and Tara Strong voiced Bubbles in said continuity.
* Cummings guest starred in the *Simpsons* episode, *Saddlesore Galactica.*
* Curry also starred in another Muppet-related project, *Muppet Treasure Island*.
* The *Toy Town* Barney is cast as a villain in this story, because Wikipedia mentioned a huge amount of "Anti-Barney Humor," which describes the main *Barney & Friends* continuity as "saccharine", "boring", "annoying", "sugary", "dangerous" or "uneducational," and therefore a target for parody and negative attacks by children of various ages, adolescents, and adults in the United States and elsewhere.
* Blossom lists infractions that will cause a toy to "spend a night in the box," as referenced in Cool Hand Luke, and the actual *Toy Story 3.*
* In the main *Simpsons* continuity, the real Homer has a drunk friend also named Barney.
* In the main *Barney and Friends* continuity, the usual good Barney has a child friend also named Tina.
* The main *Star Wars* & *Sesame Street* continuities had been longtime allies.
* Universal Orlando Resort has two attractions: *The Simpsons Ride* and *A Day in the Park with Barney*.
* There have been Barney appearances in the *Simpsons* episode "The Joy of Sect," and the *Powerpuff Girls* episode "Child Fearing."
* The real Max appears in *Cats Don't Dance,* a film which is also released by Warner Bros., and also has a song of believing, *I Do Believe.*
* 1998 was the same year both *The Powerpuff Girls* and *Barney's Great Adventure* were released.

## Characters present

HomerBlossomCartmanMushuPumbaaDaffy DuckOblinaGosalynTinaDarkwing DuckBarneyMaxKing LouieJafarCruellaHadesCarfaceOscarGadgetSebastianGloriaKermitKessieC-3POBritaJulieJeffMr. CarlinEmilyMinionsRick Zieff as the Narrator

## Poses

### Songs:

* Teamwork
* This Old Man
* We Do
* Love Makes the World Go Round
* Believe in You

## Presenters

20th Century FoxWarner Bros.JAM ProductionsCorporation for Public BroadcastingYouTube