Knick Knack

On a bookshelf filled with vacation-themed souvenirs, a lonely and grumpy knick-knack snowman named Knick, who resides in a "Nome Sweet Nome, Alaska" snow globe, wants to reach a female "Sunny Miami" knick-knack that shows an attractive blonde and tanned pool-lounger, wearing a blue bikini and sunglasses. Knick tries several unsuccessful methods to break out of the globe: ramming the glass with the snow globe's igloo backdrop, using his carrot nose and a hammer to chisel through the glass, using a jackhammer (which causes his facial features to fall off), trying to cut the glass using a blowtorch and an igniter, and detonating TNT explosives. The latter causes the globe to fall over the edge. Knick notices an emergency exit in the base and frees himself just before he and the globe fall into a fishbowl, where Knick sees a mermaid souvenir from "Sunny Atlantis" identical to the Miami souvenir and starts gawking at her, only for the globe to settle to the bottom and trap him again, much to his annoyance. == Background ==

In 1988, Pixar's third short film, Tin Toy, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the first computer-animated film to claim the Academy Award. It was also the first win for the hardware company, which was still struggling to sell its main product: the Pixar Image Computer. The key animator and director behind Tin Toy, John Lasseter, had once worked at Disney several years prior but was fired by unknowingly stepping on his superiors' toes with his support for computer animation. Now, Disney took notice of the Oscar win for Tin Toy and began a campaign to win Lasseter back. Lasseter turned the studio's offer for a directorial position down, remarking to Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, "I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history." Jeffrey Katzenberg, the then-head of Walt Disney Studios, had a reputation for being difficult and controlling. In contrast, Lasseter received complete creative freedom at Pixar's small animation division and was highly respected by his colleagues. In addition to capturing Disney's interest, Pixar owner Steve Jobs' interest in the animation group was invigorated, and he approved production of another short. == Production ==

After the headaches of animating Billy the baby in Tin Toy, Lasseter backed away from depicting human characters. The team all agreed to do something simpler that would not "drive us all crazy," according to producer Ralph Guggenheim. In a discussion with the group, Lasseter brought up famed Warner Bros. and MGM director Tex Avery, noting that his cartoons were wild and exuberant, yet not necessarily very complex. Lasseter collected snow globes and also enjoyed souvenirs from distant places; from those elements, Knick Knack—the only pure comedy among Lasseter's early short films at Pixar—began to fall into place. A skeleton on the shelf in the short was a 3D model from an Ohio State University skeleton data set called George, though the Pixar team stretched George's arms for comic effect. Also distorted were the two female characters—the bikini-attired woman and a mermaid—whose breasts were ultra-exaggerated thanks to a technical director who was a pinup enthusiast. The singer Bobby McFerrin created the musical soundtrack and a cappella vocal jazz track which he improvised while watching a rough cut of the film. As the rough cut ended, the placeholder credits read blah-blah-blah-blah, so he sang those words and it remained in the film's score. McFerrin did the score for free out of a belief that the film was cool to be involved with. Gary Rydstrom of Lucasfilm created the sound effects for the short. == Release and re-releases ==

Knick Knack debuted at the 1989 SIGGRAPH in Boston. It was one of the last pieces of animation that Lasseter would animate personally during Pixar's years as an independent company. After Knick Knack, Pixar took a break from animated shorts and re-focused on animating television commercials to build income and hire new animators. The film has been released in two versions, and each of these has been shown in both 3-D and 2-D. The original version was shown in 3-D in 1989 at the SIGGRAPH program, This updated version is preceded with the message "In 1989, six years before Toy Story, Pixar Animation Studios made this short film." This version was first made available with the Finding Nemo DVD & VHS. This version is subsequently on Nemos Blu-ray, the Pixar Short Films Collection – Volume 1 DVD and Blu-ray, and on digital services that feature Pixar's shorts including Disney+. A 3-D version of the new edition played to the public as a short attached to the 2006 Disney Digital 3-D release of The Nightmare Before Christmas. == References to Knick Knack in other media ==

In the Toy Story franchise, a book titled Knick Knack is often seen on a bookshelf along with other books named after Pixar shorts. Knick and his snow globe appear in Toy Story That Time Forgot. Clips from the short can be seen on the TV when Hamm is flickering through the channels in Toy Story 2. Sunny Atlantis is seen on the shipwreck in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo. Knick is seen in the snowglobe in Lizzie's Curios Shop in Cars. Sunny Miami appears on a passport in Up when Carl buys plane tickets. Knick's snow globe appears in the antique store in Toy Story 4. During 2007–2008, a series of commercials released in the United Kingdom for Bupa featured the Knick Knack theme tune as their soundtrack. A store at Pixar Pier at Disney California Adventure references this short film. The name of the store is Knick's Knacks. The sign at the front of the store displays Knick the snowman in his snow globe. == Notes ==