Living Toys - TV Tropes

Woody: [furious, to Buzz] You! Are! A! Toy! You aren't the real Buzz Lightyear, you're—oh, you're an action figure! You are a child's plaything!
[Beat]
Buzz: You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity. [gives a Vulcan salute] Farewell!

— Toy Story

Behold, Living Toys, your brand-new companions! They walk, they talk, they cook, they clean, they dance, they drive, they almost don't need you! We say "almost" because they often come alive when you're not around, respecting an official or unofficial Masquerade. Other times, they're created because Love Imbues Life. Still, nothing says Fun for the Whole Family like Living Toys!

NOTICE TO CONSUMERS. Living Toys are powered by two (2) AA batteries, by talismans, or by curses, and contain small parts which are unsuitable for children under six (6). Cool accessories are not included with Living Toys. Handle Living Toys with care, especially if they are My Little Panzer. Disastrous incidents have occurred in the past. Do not give Living Toys to characters from Horror movies and their parodies, as they may turn creepy, or even evil. Should you hand over Living Toys anyway, you are advised to set their Morality Dial to "good" to reduce the likelihood of chaotic rampages. It is possible that when discarded, Living Toys will turn into Vengeful Abandoned Toys. If the aforementioned negative circumstances occur, Trope Co. shall not be held liable for associated damages, including deaths. Injuries to Living Toys caused by a Troubled Toybreaker shall not be covered under the one-year warranty.

Good examples

open/close all folders

Advertising

These three Ikea commercials.
An old Goody's Burger House commercial for its ArGOODaki charity campaign uses that trope.
Gatorade's Bring Your Game to Life commercial where action figures of athletes beat foosballers and robots at the end.
In the 1998 ad for Hostess cupcakes, a boy torments a doll by fake-feeding it a cupcake toy. The doll angrily comes to life demanding to get a cupcake with a creamy filling.
This J2O commercial features a bunch of living inflatable pool toys having a pool party.
One Oreo commercial from 2020 features carnival prizes of a donkey and an elephant sharing milk and cookies with a plush cat.
This advertisement for chicken pox vaccinations from the early 2000s began by revealing that many children die each year from complications brought on by chicken pox, and it features several toys, a jack-in-the-box, a teddy bear, a ragdoll, a rubber ducky, and more, all quietly weeping over the deaths of their owners.

Anime & Manga

Pucchan of Best Student Council at first appears to be a toy/Imaginary Friend of protagonist Rino. But when the other characters lock the puppet away (thinking Rino was trying to use Pucchan as an excuse for pranking) the puppet vanishes on its own, causes more havoc, and speaks independently of and controls the hand of whoever else he winds up on.
Kon from Bleach is probably a vague example of this, since although he's just a Mod Soul (e.g. fake), most of the time he inhabits a toy lion, and generally doesn't let the rest of Ichigo's family (except Papagami/Issun, who has known what Ichigo's been doing) know that he's "alive."
A few Digimon look like toys, mainly of the Puppet type, such as Puppetmon (Pinochimon, a Pinocchio Expy), Monzaemon (a Teddy Bear) and ToyAgumon (a small dinosaur made of plastic blocks).
A lot of Doraemon's gadgets can bring toys to life, in various ways. The most famous one is probably the wind-up key that serves as the focus for Doraemon: Nobita and the Spiral City, that permanently gives life to any object shaped like a living creature that has the key placed on its back and turned. The heroes use it to populate a planet with various adorable living dolls, but one monkey doll steals it and brings to life a biology lab skeleton, a "peeing boy" fountain, and a panda mascot. All three of them use their unique skills/appearances to help defeat the villains in the climax.
During the Key of the Starry Skies Arc of Fairy Tail, Neo-Oracion Seis member Imitatia is revealed to have been a doll named Gonzalez, brought to life by Midnight, who had promised her that she'd be reunited with her "big sister" and original owner, Lucy, if she joined their cause.
The manga Haikou Dolls has a girl named Himeri who has the ability to bring toys to life. She mainly does so to ease her loneliness since her guardians isolate her from her peers and force her to live in an abandoned school building. So when the opportunity came, she drags another girl into her shenanigans by shrinking her into the size of a doll.
Happy Jozy has Bocchi, a stuffed koala that was delivered to a boy named Onigiri Nikumaki.
Pokota, a stuffed lion, from Hime-chan's Ribbon was brought alive by magic and serves as the animal sidekick.
In I'm Gonna Be an Angel! Dispell, Eros and Muse are just dolls made alive by Silky's power as a respite from boredom and loneliness.
In the first episode of Jewelpet Twinkle☆, Ruby casts a magic spell on a plush cat in Akari's house to bring it to life and dances with it, all to cheer up Akari after her school day doesn't go well.
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Narancia's Stand, Aerosmith, takes the form of a toy plane, with a functional radar and real bullets.
Frigitta from Kero Kero Chime appears to be a living toy, despite denying it in her first appearance. Additionally, in her debut she's a villainess who turns people into toys which she can make follow her orders. After this, though, she's just a minor recurring Stalker with a Crush who's generally on the side of the heroes as much as her minor role allows.
Vivio's Intelligent Device Sacred Heart in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid takes the form of a floating plush bunny that communicates through charades, though technically speaking the toy is simply an outer casing for the actual device and is animated by magic. A chapter of the spin-off ViVid Life also had the devices of the three Aces and the Wolkenritter placed inside Vita's collection of stuffed bunnies.
One of the main mascots of Maho Girls PreCure! is main character Mirai's teddy bear, Mofurun, who is magically given sentience when Mirai becomes a Pretty Cure. In the series' movie, Mofurun gets to become a Cure herself, taking on a humanoid form as a result (though per Word of God, Cure Mofurun is still filled with stuffing, essentially making her a human-sized living toy).
In Naruto, Sasori turned himself into one of these, by transforming himself into a puppet. Once he dies, he's used by Kankuro.
The manga Nui! plays this trope straight. Not only are dolls who're loved alive, they actually go all out to protect their owner and do their owner's bidding.
Among the first things visitors to the One Piece kingdom of Dressrosa see are its spicy Latin ladies and Living Toys living together with normal humans. Among those seen are a doll chasing a dog because it ripped its arm off, a toy soldier marionette that's also a town guard, and a toy robot in a baby stroller being pushed by a human woman. They were once human before falling victim to one of Doflamingo's Devil Fruit users, Sugar.
Citrus Town on Ponkickies 21 depicts the daily lives of toys living inside the eponymous toy box.
In one story arc of Ranma ½, which was later adapted into an OVA, Akane's consciousness is trapped within a doll, whose spirit inhabits her body to get revenge on Ranma.
The titular characters of Rozen Maiden are dolls that come alive once they are wound up.
Many Sanrio characters, like Hello Kitty and My Melody, are treated as living toys instead of animals in their anime series.
At least one of Keroro's invasion plans in Sgt. Frog involved bringing plastic models to life.
Leo and Yuki from Shounen Dolls can turn into humans and protect their master, Ageha. They can also communicate with her even in doll form.
Lots of examples from Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Starting in Battle City, Jonouchi used Swordsman of Landstar, a cute, toy soldier, and later added several more Landstar monsters to his deck.
- Roughly half of Yugi's deck that he uses when Yami isn't helping him is made up of monsters like this, such as Toy Magician and the Gadgets. The other half are heroic Warriors that children idolize, like Silent Swordsman.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Judai used many toy-like monsters (which, ironically, were far more popular than his Heroes when made into Real Life versions for the card game) like Spell Striker and Card Trooper.
- Most of Sho's Vehicroids resemble funny toy robots.
- Finally, Napoleon uses a deck with Toy Soldiers resembling infantry men from The French Revolution, his ace monster being Toy Emperor, which is based on Napoléon Bonaparte.
- Moving on to Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Leo's deck used Morphatronics, which are more or less cute toy Transforming Mechas.
In Zatch Bell!, mamonos are pretty much demons who have taken the form of dolls. Zatch himself is a decent sort, but many others clearly are not.

Asian Animation

Ah Fu's Virtuous Journey: In episode 6, Ah Fu gives Rongzi a sticker which can make toys come alive. He uses it on his toy tank and Haoming's toy robot, but they attack each other until Ah Fu takes the stickers from them. Then it is revealed that Rongzi brought Haoming's toy robot home without his notice or permission so that the robot would attack him first, so Rongzi '''decides to give Haoming back his toy robot.
Season 5 of Kung Fu Pork Choppers takes place in a world of building blocks inhabited by life-sized, minifigure-esque people.
Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The toys in the Joys of Seasons episode "Toy Story" come to life to save Tibbie.
The inhabitants of Tickety Town, a town that exists behind a clock face in Tickety Toc.
Woz Woz And Bott Bott, an Egyptian ripoff of VeggieTales, substitutes the Anthropomorphic Food from the original show with wooden dolls who are said to have been brought to life by a magic hand.
YoYo Man features the Yoyo Supermen, brought to life by a serum that was created by Dr. Lu. Dr. Lu invented seven, but three of them were corrupted by chips installed in them by Baron Rose, turning them into the other four Yoyo Supermen's enemies.

Comic Books

Adventures In Oz: Knotboy in The Secret Island of Oz is a living wooden doll who was created to provide Princess Trinkarinkarina with a playmate.
Amulet (Kazu Kibuishi): Miskin appears to be a living pink plush rabbit, but he's actually a robot. Somehow.
The Beano: General Jumbo was a boy with an army of toy soldiers that he controlled with a wrist-mounted device. He also had a toy navy when he briefly became Admiral Jumbo in the 1970s. In one annual, one of his toy soldiers named Pike gained sentience and turned evil after being outfitted with a new form of AI.
Be Kind, My Neighbor: Mr. Neighbor is a life-sized, living, breathing ragdoll man that nobody ever seems to register as a doll. This is likely a result of Mr. Neighbor's pact with the god Lady Trudy, as the only other person we see whose body changed as a result of a pact with her also has nobody commenting on his supernatural appearance.
The House of Dolmann: Dolmann, a quirky inventor, had a small robot doll for every occasion, though it was never very clear whether they legitimately possessed minds of their own or Dolmann was using his skills as a ventriloquist to pretend he had some company. Even so, they seemed to act of their own volition.
Dolltopia: The inhabitants of Dolltopia are all living toys who came to the titular city to live their own lives rather than what humans dictate for them.
Jack Staff: General Jumbo was parodied somewhat with General Tubbs, an autistic boy who mobilized his toy army with his psychic powers; the control panel keyboard glove thing was just so he'd have something to do with his hands.
The Lost Boy: Plenty of residents of The Kingdom in the woods are living toys. The most prominent one in the book is Tom Button the doll, one of Nate's allies.
Nightmares & Fairy Tales: Annabelle is sentient but unable to communicate with any of her owners (except for her current one, Gwen, and nobody knows why).
Roy's Toys: The comic first appeared in the short-lived comic Nipper before a lengthy run in Buster. Roy's parents were always on at him to slim down his huge toy collection, and he often came up with a reason to dispose of a toy. As soon as he left the room, however, the toys woke up and came up with a plan to persuade Roy to spare their comrade.
Rune (2024): The Shadow King's minions look like clockwork toys, such as a drum-banging monkey. He creates them by inserting a key into people's backs and winding it three times.
Shazam!:
- In The Power of Shazam!, the incarnation of Mister Talky Tawny was a plush tiger belonging to Mary Batson, which was animated by a pooka to become her Spirit Advisor.
- Hoppy the Marvel Bunny: In #2 "Danger in Gameland", go through a portal door and enter Gameland, a magical land inhabited by human-sized, living -and tyrannical- toys: domino pieces, bowling pins, checkers...
The Stuff of Legend: The comic has this as its premise, being about a group of toys fighting their way through a fantasy world (in which they become what they were toys of) in order to rescue their owner, who has been kidnapped by the Boogeyman.
Top 10: Toybox has a boxful of animated toys which she can command, inherited from her father Colonel Lilliput, a pastiche of General Jumbo.

Comic Strips

Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes might be an animated stuffed tiger, or it could be all in Calvin's imagination. Calvin, though, doesn't think that Hobbes is a living toy; he thinks he's a real (anthropomorphic) tiger. (Albeit a real tiger that gets put through the washing machine whenever Calvin's mom deems it necessary.) The comic is deliberately ambiguous about Hobbes' true nature.
Garfield implies that the titular fat cat's teddy bear Pooky could be alive. Pooky (off-screen) jumped through a hoop that Garfield only pretended to set up for him or rollerskate on his own. Also, in the 1987 storyline when Garfield had amnesia from a bonk to his head, Jon tries to restore his memory by showing him Pooky. The amnesiac Garfield dismissed Pooky stating he's an adult cat who doesn't need a teddy bear. In the very next panel, Pooky is shedding a single tear alongside Jon and Odie.

Eastern Animation

In the Soviet New Year cartoon When The New Year Trees Light Up, all the toys in Grandfather Frost's home are fully living and sapient — and very enthusiastic to be given to children.

Fan Works

There are many Calvin and Hobbes fanfics that take the interpretation that Hobbes is real and not just in Calvin's mind:
- In Pouncing Mistake, he's real but can shapeshift into a toy, and he injures Calvin.
- In A Special Place to Meet, Hobbes is inanimate but can talk.
- In Frankie and Hobbes, Hobbes teaches Calvin's daughter Frankie about the games he and Calvin used to play.
- In Can You Here Me? [sic], Hobbes can talk, but humans can't hear him.
The Devil Wears Prada fic “A Doll’s Life” sees Andy being briefly turned into one by a curse; reduced to a Barbie-like doll, she can move when nobody is in the same room as her, even able to send messages on a phone, but the moment someone else is in her presence Andy becomes a standard doll, unaware of anything else around her.
The Fluffy Folio: The Yarnling is a living doll that is able to mimic other small creatures, in the goal of experiencing or observing emotions. Sadly, they all have a curse that causes ones that stay in one form for too long to turn into the Marble-Eye, another living doll that causes damage to everything around it.
Heirlooms, a Super Smash Bros. fic takes that specific trope and runs with it to create an origin story of sorts for Master Hand and Crazy Hand.
More like "display models" but the whole premise of the Heroes of the Storm fanfic Heroes of the Desk is that someone 3D-printed characters from the game, and they came to life The Indian in the Cupboard style (thus reaching "Real and Living to Everyone" on the scale).
The Nightmare House is about the nightmares of the kids from The Loud House and Luan dreams her ventriloquist's dummy has come to life, while Lisa dreams about an evil teddy bear who spanks her and thinks she's a baby.
And here we have the beginnings of a story with the same thing done to the cast of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
This fanfic for Pirates of the Caribbean transports Jack's soul into an action figure owned by a modern day fan. Hilarity Ensues.The unfinished sequel brings Will Turner into the mix. Both represent the most lifelike extreme on the Sliding Scale of Living Toys.
Vickies Pet Zoo:
- The Trinkets are small, colorful cats born from a child's wish for their plushie to come to life.
- One of the more unusual dog breeds are literal pet rocks.
The Zero Context Series: Taking Out the Trash gives us Mini-Lina, a foot-sized doll modeled in the likeness of Slayers' Lina Inverse that likes playing video games, relaxing in her best friend's jacket pocket, and—like her namesake—disintegrating anything she aims her magic at.
ToyHammer applies the concept to Warhammer 40,000 figures.

Films — Animation

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue features a sentient Winnie the Pooh doll among other representations of cartoon characters.
In DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, Webby uses one of her genie wishes to make her dolls come to life, which as it turns out was a really bad idea. While not evil, they did end up causing a lot of havoc.
The Emoji Movie has an example similar to Wreck-it Ralph below where digital characters such as emojis, characters from applications are sentient until the phone's user starts turning on the phone, in which the emojis get into position in the message app.
Gnomeo & Juliet is about garden gnomes that come alive.
The LEGO Movie is full of sentient LEGO figures.
The Made-for-TV Movie Lucky Duck stars a rubber duck named Lucky, who falls off a cargo ship during a storm and ends up teaming up with a few other bath toys that suffered the same fate.
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, with Pooh and his friends (sans Owl and Rabbit, who are real animals). Then there's the winking Pooh doll at the end after the book closes.
The Mouse and His Child combines this with a Mouse World, where toys and small animals live together.
The toys in The Night Before Christmas (1994) come alive on Christmas Eve for a song and dance party.
Pinocchio (1940): Pinocchio is animated by the Blue Fairy, but it's strongly implied in the Disney version that Gepetto's love for Pinocchio is what causes the Blue Fairy to make him come alive. The story it was based on may well be the Trope Codifier.
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure has, among other examples, Raggedy Ann and Andy themselves, as well as Babette and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees.
Steven Universe: The Movie: Spinel, like all Gems, was created with a specific purpose to fulfill due to Homeworld's rigid caste system. In her case, she was created to be a friend to Pink Diamond, with her essentially being a living toy that can play forever. She is depectied a lot more cartoony than most other Gems, with squeaky shoes and googly eyes making her look like a doll. Pearl introducing her via a song also has the feel of a toy commercial jingle. Unfortunately, when Pink got her own colony, she abandoned Spinel in the garden they played in together, tricking her into standing still for 6,000 years. When Spinel finally realized she'd been abandoned and Pink Diamond was long dead, she becomes a Vengeful Abandoned Toy who tries to take revenge on her son and all of her other friends who replaced her, until she has a Heel Realization that she is hurting people who had nothing to do with her pain and all she really wants is to be a friend to someone. Thankfully, she quickly finds herself being adopted by the other Diamonds.
Toy Story: Even the lawn gnomes are alive! Christmas Decorations too, which only raises further questions. And apparently, even hokey arts and crafts projects can also come alive. (Warning: May cause Existential Horror.) Except in the presence of humans (but not Sid).
UglyDolls has the Uglydolls and Perfection dolls. The Uglydolls are defective stuffed animals that were rejected from the construction line and live in their own misfit world. Meanwhile, the Perfection dolls are yarn-haired humanoid dolls that are instructed to be the perfect toy, where they then graduate into the "real world" and become a doll for a child. The plot starts up when a group of Uglydolls stumble into Perfection.
The shared universe of Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns is home to the couple Baron Humbert von Gikkingen and Baroness Luisa, humanoid cat figurines possibly from Germany, possibly from another world. They were made by a doll maker's apprentice, who put his heart and soul into his creations, which is why they're alive. Whisper of the Heart generally treats the two as regular dolls, but there are two hints they're alive outside of Shizuku's imagination. For one, Shizuku learns about Luisa's existence from her conversation with the Baron, which is information she couldn't have gotten elsewhere. For the other, how the Baron holds his hat changes every scene he's in yet no one is ever depicted as repositioning him. That all said, the Baron is unambiguously alive in The Cat Returns, where he takes an active role as the leader of the Cat Bureau. His colleagues are the cat Muta and the gargoyle Toto. They save the human Haru from a forced marriage into cat royalty.
Wreck-It Ralph is the electronic version of this trope, featuring video game characters that come to life when their games are not being played. Similar to Toy Story, there seems to be a Masquerade in effect.
The 2000 Short Film The Tangerine Bear is about a male teddy bear whose mouth gets accidentally sewed upside down causing his mouth to permanently form a frowning expression. After he doesn't get chosen by children at a department store during the Christmas season, he gets taken to a small toy store in the middle of town. Throughout the film, he befriends living toys such as a jack-in-the-box who's afraid of darkness and a tiny ballerina figurine on a music box.

Films — Live-Action

Teddy the robot teddy bear in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. "I'm not a toy."
J. F. Sebastian spends his lonely days retrofitting toys as robot companions in Blade Runner.
In The Christmas Toy, all toys are animate but will lose their magic if caught out of position. While they are usually a carefree bunch who spend all their free time playing, the central conflict is the jealousy of last year's Christmas toy when a new model is about to arrive.
Winnie the Pooh and his friends in Christopher Robin are all living stuffed animals.
Gooby: The titular bear used to be a normal teddy bear owned by Willy, but due to unexplained events he became a real bear. It's implied that he was alive even before he became a real bear, since he knew about Willy drawing Hoonies.
In Onryō! Azawarau Ningyō, Junichiro is killed because he's got evidence of a huge case of fraud by a colleague of his, Kitahara, who incidentally also is a former rival over Kumi, Junichiro's wife. The only thing of Junichiro that makes it back home is a doll he bought for his daughter Yukari. Said doll becomes a vessel for Junichiro's spirit, enabling him to protect his family from Kitahara and obtain justice for his murder. It kills Kitahara in an act of defending Kumi and Yukari when Kitahara's scheme comes to light. Thereafter, the doll returns to normal.
Killer Under the Bed: The Voodoo Doll that Kilee finds in the tool shed. Though it doesn't start moving onscreen until some time into the movie.
The Gorgonites in Small Soldiers. Justified by the fact they are in essence miniature androids. Although, the company that sells them promoted them as the bad guys.
Tales from the Hood 2: In "Good Golly", a golliwog comes to life (and grows to human size) to teach some racially insensitive teenagers a lesson.
The title character of Ted is a stuffed bear who gained sentience after his owner made a wish. 27 years later, he's still around but has since become much cruder.
Space Warriors 2000 has an Ultraman toy who came to life and narrates the past adventures of the Ultras to an unwitting child.
A rare example of a living toy in a horror film who is not evil: Rex, the stuffed dinosaur from Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Or at least, he's implied to be. Dylan insists that he keeps the Freddy-entity at bay, and the entity seems to think so too because he takes the time to slash the toy up upon finally breaching our reality. ^note
In The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, the elves from The Cobbler And The Elves are wooden figures the Cobbler carves for orphans' Christmas presents, which come to life on Christmas Eve to fix his clients' shoes.

Literature

The Adventures of Pinocchio is about a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy so he can grow up.
In Alien in a Small Town, the android Barney Estragon is eventually revealed to have started his life a hundred years ago as a storytelling toy duck, essentially a rich kid's Teddy Ruxpin. And then the kid grew up, and he was abandoned in a world where, tiny as he was, and having no legal rights at all, he spent years living literally as vermin. The passage of the Velveteen Act finally granted robots their freedom. He'd gone mad by then. But he got better.
The Amelia Jane series, one of the early works of Enid Blyton, which revolves around a bunch of living, sentient toys who have to constantly deal with the antics of the titular character, a mischievious ragdoll always up to no good.
The world of Richard Roberts's A Rag Doll's Guide to Here and There is populated by various animated toys including marionettes, rag dolls, china dolls, and rocking horse steeds. Their status as toys is a point of contention between the two girls transported to the world as one sees them as living creatures that are also toys while the other sees them as automatons to be played with and broken as she pleases.
The Bear That Nobody Wanted by Allan Ahlberg tells the rather tragic story of a teddy bear who goes through a major Break the Haughty phase and longs for a child who wants him. Along the way, he meets with many other toys, all of whom can talk amongst themselves but can't actually communicate with people. This leads to an incredibly sad scene where the bear is forced to watch as his current owner leaves him behind to go to the countryside during World War II and, later, as the boy's mother leaves. Both times, he silently begs to be taken along but can't be heard.
Beyond The Midnight Mountains: When Kipper's toys become sentient, Kipper becomes the same size as them, and they go on adventures together.
The Castle in the Attic: Initially it seems the story will play out this way, a la The Indian in the Cupboard, but once William devises the idea to shrink Mrs. Phillips, and then follow her, this is quickly dispensed with in favor of a fantasy quest.
Corduroy comes to life and goes on an adventure after the store closes. He seems to be the only toy in the store capable of doing it, though.
The Corrupted Chronicles of Coco Claramisa: Fester the Clown is a clown doll Coco got from her first victim who comes to life with a desire to help Coco.
In Jean S O'Connell's The Dollhouse Caper, the dollhouse dolls can come to life when humans aren't watching them, but are supposed to return to their original positions to begin the day in order to keep the secret. This is mildly frustrating for the doll family since one kid always shoves the father-doll's head into the dollhouse toilet, so that's where he has to go back to.
The dolls that have taken the Oath in The Doll People can move around so long as they don't get caught by the humans.
In The Dolls From Doll Street, the main characters are a group of sentient dolls. Strangely, though, when they receive dolls of their own for Christmas, those ones are inanimate.
In Dougal The Garbage Dump Bear, Dougal and his toy friends aren't only alive, but they can get drunk (on ginger beer, no less).
The illustrated stories of the Fairy Tails toys depict the Fairy Tails as toys coming to life at night to help their owners.
One of the many lands in The Faraway Tree is the Land of Toys, which is populated by... well, living toys, although they're the same size as humans. For a straighter example, at the end of the first book, Frannie gets a living doll for herself after having a slice of wishing cake. But said doll somehow disappears in subsequent books.
The Forty First Wink: The main character is assisted by a pirate crew composed of his childhood stuffed toys. It Makes Sense in Context.
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years is the memoir of a wooden doll named Hitty and the misadventures she has with her many different owners over the years. While Hitty can bend her arms and legs, she's not articulated enough to walk and never moves in front of humans.
The Indian in the Cupboard is a children's series about a boy who discovers how to magically transform a plastic Indian figure to life in his cabinet. Specifically, putting it in the cabinet and turning the key summons a random guy from the past, turning him toy-sized. The magic only works on plastic, and summons people from other time periods who resemble any affected toy, as well as sometimes sending the modern characters back in time.
I Need a Wee!: The characters are all sentient toys that live independently of humans.
The characters in La Carona And The Tin Frog by Russell Hoban and Nicola Bailey are Living Ornaments, although some, like the eponymous frog (who is clockwork) and the evil monkey (a puzzle whose eyes need shaken into place) also qualify as toys.
Manifestation: Tock's babies are stuffed toys she animated with her magic.
In The Midnight Folk, the young orphan Kay learns that his beloved toys, which were packed away after his parents died, came alive when nobody was looking and went on a quest to make things better for Kay.
The Night After Christmas by James Stevenson is about an old teddy bear and ragdoll who are thrown out with the trash after their children have received new toys for Christmas, and then have to find a way to get by in the outside world. Was animated in Britain as The Forgotten Toys and a number of sequels, starring Bob Hoskins as the gruff voice of Teddy.
The toy soldiers in the Night Shift (1978) short story "Battleground". Despite being murderous, they're actually the heroes of the story, exacting vengeance against the Villain Protagonist — a hitman who just killed a toymaker.
Enid Blyton's Noddy series takes place in a land called Toytown, which is inhabited by sentient toys. Humans are also implied to exist in this world in the first book, as Noddy mentions running away from the woodcutter who made him when he made a wooden lion which Noddy was frightened of.
No Flying in the House has a rather unusual example with Gloria and, later, Belinda. Both look like small wind-up toy animals, but they insist they're "real" and communicate with regular people perfectly well (in fact, Gloria gives performances for guests). On the other hand, Belinda seems to look a lot like a gold wind-up cat with emerald eyes that Anabelle's guardian used to own and Gloria later turns into a gold wind-up toy dog that can perform all the tricks she used to do, but no longer is alive. Since both of them are fairies, it's entirely possible they were possessing the toys in order to interact with the human characters.
Besides the titular character of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the nighttime battle that Marie witnesses involves her brother's toy soldiers joining the fray. Later, the nutcracker takes Marie to the doll kingdom to be their queen, after she promises to love him no matter how he looks.
Jane Hissey's Old Bear And Friends stories, also adapted into a television series. They involve a bunch of sentient plush toys who share memories.
In Ollie's Odyssey, all toys and everything in the junk yard and abandoned amusement park are alive, and every kid's favorite toy is able to interact with their child.
Otto: Autobiography of a Teddy Bear: the ordeal of a teddy bear in Germany and the USA during and after World War II. He's very much alive and has feelings, though humans don't seem to perceive him as such.
"The Paper Menagerie": The paper animals folded by Jack's mother to entertain him seemingly come alive and play around his room. After her death, they lay inert, and he wonders if it was her life that kept them alive.
"Softies" from 13 More Tales of Horror takes place in an alternative universe in which each human has a living toy friend called a 'companion'. The problem is, the companions are angry and secretly planning an uprising against their owners.
The Raggedy Ann books center around Marcella's toys, who come to life when she's not around (though they can communicate with animals just fine). The leaders are the titular Raggedy Ann and her brother, Andy, but there are quite a few dolls mentioned as reocurring characters.
J. R. R. Tolkien's children's book Roverandom tells about a small toy dog, which used to be a real dog before a sorcerer cursed him. His quest to regain his dogginess takes him under the sea and up to the moon.
Many of Rumer Godden's children's books, generally with dolls. Generally speaking, her dolls are conscious and can talk to each other, but are otherwise immobile and can only affect humans by wishing very hard. Some examples:
- The Dolls' House (also know as Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House after its animated adaptation) - a family of mismatched dolls wish for a doll's house to live in. Well-known for its Sudden Downer Ending.
- Candyfloss: a doll who lives on a coconut shy at the fair is kidnapped by a vain, greedy little girl.
- Impunity Jane: The Story of a Pocket Doll: a boy steals a small doll from a friend and keeps her as he grows up.
- The Story of Holly and Ivy stars a Christmas-themed doll named Holly, who wishes for a little girl to play with her (while a lonely orphan called Ivy wishes for a doll to play with).
- Miss Happiness and Miss Flower: a story about two Japanese dolls and the house built for them.
- Little Plum: a sequel to the above, about a Japanese doll living in the window of the house next door.
Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: In these stories from Garth Nix, Mister Fitz is a sentient wooden doll sorcerer who has been mentor and caretaker for the artillerist/knight Sir Hereward, the first and only male child of witches, since he was 4. Most people don't mind Mister Fitz, thinking he's a self-willed entertainer doll that was once very common. He's not, he's something far more dangerous.
In Spectral Stalkers, there is a toy clown living in a sphere that comes to life after his master gets captured and tied up, who frees his master before going back into the sphere.
In "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", the toys come alive when humans are asleep, and play their own games.
In Tales from the Wyrd Museum there is Ted, a talking teddy bear who travels back in time to World War II with the protagonist, Neil. The reason for the toy being alive is that it is inhabited by the soul of an American GI who wants to change the past.
All the characters of Teddy And Co are living toys.
In the short story Teddy Bear Tears, a living teddy bear is sent to the rubbish dump and cries. A fairy takes the tears and rubs them on the bear's owner's face so that she'll dream about him being at the dump.
Threadbare: While Greater Golems can take many forms, including the Animated Armor of Emmet, Threadbare and his crew are animated toys. One of the major benefits of this is that it seems that a doll of a race, when animated, gains that race template.
Toy Academy: All toys in this world are alive, and this even extends to objects that remotely resemble toys, such as Salt and Pepper, who are salt and pepper shakers resembling porcelain figures of children.
Toys Go Out and its sequels Toy Dance Party and Toys Come Home, by Emily Jenkins.
The titular character of Uppo Nalle is a sentient teddy bear living with a human family, who don't think him being alive is that odd. They also have a talking dog.
Urpo And Turpo is about two toy bears who have adventures in the playroom when the humans aren't looking.
Vasilissa the Beautiful: The doll Vasilissa's dying mother gave her is alive and sentient to a degree. While capable of speaking and fulfilling all of Vasilissa's Impossible Tasks for her by itself, it'll only come alive when alone with Vasilissa and given food, drink, and a tale of the current problem befalling its owner.
The Velveteen Rabbit tells the story of a crudely-made stuffed rabbit toy who tries to become a real rabbit because the wind-up toys mock him, saying that they are real because they can move. In this book all toys are sentient and animate, and it's a "skin horse" who tells the rabbit how to become Real.
In Who Loves Mr Tubbs?, a girl owns two toys: a teddy bear named Mr. Tubbs and a doll named Suki, who are both sentient. Tubbs is jealous of Suki since the girl seems to love her more.
Winnie the Pooh does it with stuffed animals, who live in the Hundred Acre Wood and go on numerous adventures to places like the North Pole. However, in the stories they're treated like anthropomorphic animals, not living toys.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the heroes discover a town inhabited by tiny little china dolls. The townsfolk are justifiably afraid of running or otherwise exerting themselves, for fear of breaking; they can be fixed, but the cracks such accidents cause never fade.
In Brazilian book series Yellow Woodpecker Farm, Emília is Narizinho's talkative and living ragdoll, who manages to speak after taking a pill from a magical underwater kingdom in the first book, becoming one of the main characters. Similarly, Visconde de Sabugosa is a housemade doll made from a corn cob who becomes the scholar and thinker of the farm after living in the house's library.

Live-Action TV

Referenced on 30 Rock when Tracy says "My genius has come alive, like toys when your back is turned."
Andy Pandy provides a truly strange example. Andy plays with his best friend Teddy, a living teddy bear, all the time. Yet Looby Loo, Andy's rag doll, is played with as a toy by the other two and only comes to life when they're away. Averted with the remake, however, where she's as active as the rest of them
Invoked in Bewitched, where the baby witch Tabitha sometimes brings her toys to life. She can't make them able to talk though.
The Big Comfy Couch has Molly the Dolly, Loonette's best friend. She's a puppet who can't talk and instead expresses herself in word bubbles, which Loonette can easily understand. Their relationship borders on sisterly—many episodes open with Loonette mentioning a topic, Molly not understanding it, and the former proceeding to explain how it works.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In one episode, an animated ventriloquist dummy turns out to be a good (if lecherous) demon hunter who was killed in battle. (Not every demon on the show is evil, but the one in question was stealing people's bodily organs.)
Charmed (1998): Prue and Phoebe cast a spell to heal Piper from a virus-induced coma using a ninja doll as a poppet. A side effect of the spell is that the doll comes to life and starts spreading the virus throughout the hospital. Piper orders her sisters to undo the spell to stop the spread, which causes the ninja doll to become inanimate again.
Chiquititas (2013): When Maria gets the doll Laurinha (who was originally just a regular doll owned by Dani), she wishes for a shooting star to turn her into a real girl. The wish is conceded and Laurinha assumes the form of a real human girl, but can turn back into a regular doll at will or when another person is around. Laurinha still keeps full sentience and awareness of her surroundings when she's in doll form, though.
One episode of Hi-Five involves a girl dreaming about her toys coming to life while taking a nap directly after playing with him.
Australian children's show Johnson and Friends, depicting the adventures of Johnson the toy elephant and his friends McDuff the concertina, Diesel the truck and Alfred the hot water bottle.
Philippine anthology series One Day Isang Araw has an episode, “Johnny and his Toys”, about a spoiled boy who gets trapped in a toy store overnight; the toys promptly come to life and teach him a lesson.
The eponymous Shoebox Zoo give their owner, Marnie, a bit of a surprise when they actually respond to her instruction to "Awake, for I am your Master!"
The Toy Castle (based on The Steadfast Tin Soldier) is about a group of toys who come to life and dance while their owners, a brother and sister, are asleep. They are aware that they are toys, as they run back into position when the children wake up, and some episodes (ex. "Itsy Bitsy Spider") focus on issues that specifically pertain to being a toy (such as that the Rag Doll doesn't have opposable fingers).
The Twilight Zone (1959): The twist ending of "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" involves the characters finding out that they are toys.
Worzel Gummidge has the recurring character Aunt Sally— a lifesized, pompous, sentient wooden doll who Worzel the living scarecrow wants to marry. She also has a wooden doll doppelganger in one episode.

Manhua

Puppet: Bole makes living toys, but protagonist Leaves is the only one who has a soul. This is because he is the only one created with some sort of black magic that requires human sacrifices.

Music

"Raggedy Rag Doll Friend" from Even More Baby Songs has a girl dream about shrinking down to the size of her Captain Ersatz Raggedy Ann, which then comes to life and begins playing with her.
In Doctor Steel's music video for "Childhood Don't A-Go-Go", Steel breathes on his creeptastic dolls... which begin to come to life and follow him about his laboratory.
Gayla Peevey wrote a song called "Are My Ears On Straight?", sung from the perspective of a doll in a store window.
The music video for *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me" portrays the band as marionettes who fought with other toys for the attention of a pretty girl, reverting to their toy state when she turned around. They become real at the end of the video when she buys them.
The Preschool Popstars music video for "Daycare Dance Party" features a toy dinosaur, a toy robot, and a teddy bear dancing.

Mythology & Religion

Japanese Mythology: Any non-electronic item can become a Tsukumogami if it's cared for and becomes old enough, which are Animate Inanimate Objects. This can also happen to toys, giving rise to this.

Pinball

Aerosmith has a living jack-in-the-box named Jacky.
Rudy the living ventriloquist dummy from FunHouse (1990). Not so much "good" as "not overtly evil Jerkass".

Podcasts

Hero Club: Alpha Team Tinsel from Santa's Little Helpers all qualify, consisting of a toy robot, a teddy bear, a marionette, and a toy soldier. They all talk and are sentient, children and animals can hear them speak and see them move, and they have to pretend to not be alive when adults are around. Their special nature comes from being made in Santa's workshop, as gifts for children.

Professional Wrestling

Dragon Dragon of Chikara is plush toy brought to life...a gigantic plush toy at that.

Puppet Shows

Stitches (voiced by Mario Lopez) from The Chica Show is a stuffed doll in the live-action segments, but comes to life as a cartoon after The Costume Coop closes.
Jim Henson's holiday special The Christmas Toy is effectively a proto-Toy Story. It later had a short-lived spin-off series, The Secret Life of Toys.
The Noddy Shop tells the story of a group of toys and a pet lobster who come to life when humans aren't around. In the second season, the toys could talk to the kids.
The title characters of the British children's show Rosie & Jim are ragdolls that come to life.
Scoop and Doozie is a Canadian show about three toy construction vehicles and the antics they get up to in the backyard of their kid owner.
Tweenies: In one episode, the protagonists imagine some living toys: Milo imagines an action figure and a talking toy plane, Jake imagines a clown doll, Bella imagines some performing toy mice, and Fizz imagines a singing fashion doll who doesn't want to be sold.

Tabletop Games

Changeling: The Lost: The Mannekins are based around this, though it can be anything from a stuffed doll to a clockwork dancer and so on.
Fuzzy Heroes is a miniature wargame-style game about armies of toys fighting each other while the kids aren't around. It uses real stuffed animals and toys that the players have lying around as units.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Magazine:
- #228: "Dragon's Bestiary": An an April Fools' Day issue focused on about absurd golem types, this includes the plush golem, which takes the form of a plush animal and will come to life to protect the child it belongs to. They can be any kind of animal, but ones in the shape of a small orange tiger tend to encourage their owners to get into mischief, while ones shaped like a large purple dinosaur cause inexplicable dread in any adults who see them.
- #299: "Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Wizard's Toy Box" includes a number of enchanted toys created by the wizard Pentaglio, several of which are living constructs, including Charger the Toy Pony, Splinter the Toy Sword (which isn't animate, but does lecture the wielder about acting virtuously) and Golden the Clockwork Cat, which is actually imbued with the spirit of Pentaglio's late familiar.
GURPS:
- The page quote was parodied when they offered a line of stuffed animal Cthulhu toys. The ad text read in part: "tonight's the night the teddy bears summon Cthulhu!"
- "Active figures" in GURPS Technomancer are small plastic golems in the form of popular heroes from children's media.
German game Plüsch, Power & Plunder is about living plushies.
Savage Worlds: The Toy Troopers setting combines this with weird war setting.
The Strange: Happy Island is a place where humanoid toys can move, talk and live in an eclectic society where they attempt to govern themselves.
Yu-Gi-Oh! examples:
- Close inspection on the limbs of the Madolche artworks in the (particularly the Beasts, including the horse that Madolche Chouxvalier rides) shows what appear to be sewing seams, implying they are all plushies or dolls. This is further evidenced by Mewfeuille and Tiaramisu's artwork, which have much smaller animals in them that look relatively normal, if a bit oddly-colored. The Trap Card Madolche Nights eventually confirmed this, where they are shown as toys in a child's bedroom at night.
- Ghostrick Doll is based on a Bisque Doll, a doll made mostly or entirely of bisque porcelain and characterized by their highly realistic features and skin-like texture. These dolls were at their most popular in the late 1800's, and are now considered highly valuable among collectors. In addition, due to their eerie wide-eyed stares and historical nature these dolls have recently become pop culture fixtures in horror movies– often related to the ghosts of young girls.

Theatre

French musical "Le Soldat rose"◊ ("Pink Soldier").They say toys's moves are Invisible to Adults.
In Mary Poppins, the song "Playing the Game" involves Mary Poppins bringing the kids' toys to life. The toys aren't evil, but they do get very angry with their owners for playing rough with them. An earlier version of this was the very scary song "Temper temper", in which the toys put the children on trial.
The titular prince in the world-famous The Nutcracker ballet.
Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka is about three puppets who come to life.

Video Games

ANNO: Mutationem: Alluded to in the game where it mentions that Sigrid once used her Reality Warping ability to bring several of her own toys to life, and they now work in The Consortium's department.
The Army Men series is about a continual war between those little plastic soldiers, green and tan. (And sometimes, blue and yellow)
Kid Ultra from Battleborn was originally designed as a toy robot but in a similar vein to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, thinks he's an actual superhero. Specifically, he was originally designed by Phoebe to be a childcare providing robot, a thing that came about from the lack of a proper playmate in the rich heiress' parental affection deficient childhood. During Kid Ultra's initial startup sequence however, the connection to the Magna Carta was severed leaving him no external reference or personality data banks to draw from. He thus instead drew info from the only other available source, the marketing-approved entertainment holo library pre-loaded into his memory which contained over 60,000 cartoons, comics, movies, and video games intended for placating and educating children. As a result, he thinks he's an actual superhero in a cartoon universe.
In A Bear's Night Out, you play as an animate teddy bear.
Bear With Me: Most of the characters aside from Amber, her family, and the Red Man seem to be this.
- The toys seem to fall into either "imaginary friend" or "I've got no Strings" on the Sliding Scale of Living Toys. Ted seemed very reluctant for Amber to go to her parents for help, and all of the stuffed animals hold Amber in the highest regard so it's unlikely they interact with anyone other than her and each other. There's also the line at the end of Episode One between Amber and Ted. Ted states that his old partner "grew up".
- At the same time, it's still clear the toys have complex inner lives without Amber, and there are even sections of the game where you play as Ted without Amber being present at all.
The Run-and-Gun game, Biomechanical Toy, where the hero is a living action figure named Ignuz who spends the whole level shooting hostile toys.
Build-A-Bear Workshop: A Friend Fur All Seasons:
- Your furry friend is a Build-A-Bear animal you craft and then bring to life as a player character.
- One game on the winter island is to wind up a music box which contains a wooden bunny ballerina who dances as long as you keep a musical note along a stream of music score. In the post-game animation, a bunch of wooden ballerinas are shown dancing together outside of their boxes.
Living toys make up the bulk of the supporting cast in every Chibi-Robo! game. The original game provides an explanation for why its toys are alive (they were given life by aliens) but whether this applies to the ones seen in the sequels is never stated.
The short-lived Sega series Clockwork Knight. In this series, the player controlled a toy knight who went through the various rooms of a house to fight evil toys and save the Damsel in Distress, a princess named Chelsea.
In The Darkest Tales you're a teddy bear brought to life... and must fight monsters brought to life by his owner's nightmares.
Disney Infinity, another crossover game, takes this concept even further - the characters actually are animate toys that even break apart upon defeat. (Coincidentally, both Smash and Infinity have respective lines of NFC figures that can be used to summon the characters in-game.) Bonus points in that some of the Toy Story characters are playable - essentially living toy versions of living toys.
Figure Fantasy is a gacha game built around this premise. The characters you "summon" are actually action figures of characters from a Show Within a Show, which includes the Crossover characters, and "summoning" is the player avatar buying them with his/her In-Universe money.
Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden: Due to the animating power of magical organs, a boy's doll is made alive.
Guardian's Crusade actually has living toys whom you can find and collect for use in battle. There's 70 of those bastards. Good luck.
The Gotcha Borgs, from Gotcha Force, although they're technically small alien robots. They're still obviously meant to resemble toys though.
In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and Another Wonderful Life, your child's stuffed bear will occasionally come alive when no NPC is in the room.
Holo vs Robo: The premise of the game is that a bunch of the hololive figurines have come to life through the power of fans cheers, and they serve as your units to defend against the robots which resemble hololive members.
It Takes Two (2021)
- May and Cody themselves spend most of the game as these, being a wooden figure and a clay doll respectively.
- Upon reaching Rose’s room, the bickering couple see that all of Rose’s toys have come to life- including Cutie, a stuffed elephant who sadly needs to be… ahem, “defeated” in order for the game to progress.
The Katamari Damacy games will frequently have inanimate objects moving around on their own volition, often including toys.
Keep Out is set in a world where toys are alive, and the world is deadly to them.
Familiars in Kingdom of Loathing include teddy bears and toy soldiers.
The Toy Box skin line in League of Legends are composed mostly of toys owned by Dino Gnar. Some examples are Renektoy Rekenton (an action figure that had high demand back in 1996) and Moo Moo Alistar (a limited edition figurine).
The 2019 remake for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Switch seems to imply this. The tops of trees, the grass and buildings have a glossy sheen to them that looks like it is all made out of porcelain or plasticine material; the overall layout of the world and design all looks like it takes place within a diorama box model (there's even the effect to tilt and shift it and zoom in and out, making it seem it takes place within a world of toys secured in a box), and the characters inhibiting it are all done up to look like little Fisher-Price toys with their Black Bead Eyes and simplified, cutesy, chibified designs that makes it look different from other Zelda games. Link, just like everyone else in this game's artstyle, looks like a tiny figurine. People even nickname this version of Link "Toy Link."
Sack-people in LittleBigPlanet are supposedly hand-stitched dolls.
Jasmin from Lost Smile and Strange Circus is a living doll.
There's an area in MapleStory called Ludibrium that has Good and Evil examples.
- Ludibrum itself is a city built atop two towers that has a massive basement that includes a toy factory and a clock tower, the bottom of which might even be in another dimension. The ordinary citizens of the city and the workers below are toys, and they're benign. The monsters in either tower and in the factory are also toys, and within the clock tower there are two paths with different monsters. They're a lot nastier.
- The Warped Path of Time takes you through Monster Clowns, Ghost Pirates (and Vikings), and finally a giant boss called the Gatekeeper.
- On the other side, the Forgotten Path of Time, there are teddy bears possessed by their own souls, animated clocks with More Teeth than the Osmond Family, teddy bears possessed by creepier ghosts, and ghosts chained to pocketwatches. And the boss of THAT side just happens to be Thanatos.
- At the end of both paths is a great pavilion with an area only accessible by someone with a particular quest. This area has Papulatus Clock, a boss that looks like a ghostly little blue thing with a curly sprout atop its head sitting in a flying Time Machine designed like a toy clock with giant robot hands. He's a challenge, and fairly sinister in his own right if you read his backstory.
The Mini-Marios in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games are Living Toys. That, or at least they have very good AI.
Melted Valor is a homage to the Army Men series of games, with the characters being animated toy soldiers locked in combat.
HAVE Online / MicroVolts is a Korean Online Multiplayer THIRD-person-shooter (not even class-based) that uses anime figurines or those figure-posing... figures that artists use to assist in drawing positions as the characters.
One of the stages in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2 has the Ouendan helping a stuffed monkey and a toy soldier who were thrown away by accident get home.
Pacify: The creepy dolls scattered around the Haunted House sometimes come to life.
Persona: Igor is a rare good example of this trope in a story not aimed at children, not that you'd know it without looking at the official guidebook. He's a doll or puppet who was brought to life, explaining his Perpetual Smiler tendencies and cartoonish, Pinocchio-esque appearance.
Pilot Kids is a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter with toys, where the player(s) assume the role of a doll in an RC plane shooting various toy-themed enemies.
Pokémon
- Claydol, according to the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl/Platinum Pokedex, is "An ancient clay figurine that came to life as a Pokémon from exposure to a mysterious ray of light." By extension, this also applies to its unevolved form, Baltoy.
- Banette is a living toy out seeking for the owner who threw it away...
- Sun/Moon gives us Stufful, an adorable stuffed bear Pokemon that Hates Being Touched. There's even a little tag on its rear end!
Power Pete is set in a toy store full of living toys. The Mooks made of cheap plastic are not so resilient.
Re-Volt's Excuse Plot has you racing animated radio control cars.
Scooby-Doo! First Frights: The rag dolls and toy soldiers in the appropriately named Toy Town.
Sleep Tight (2021): There are two living teddy bears in the game. The first one informs you of what to expect each night, and the other walks around on the bed.
Sophie's Guardian: The Player Character is a dual gun-wielding Teddy Bear, and the enemies are Creepy Dolls.
Geno from Super Mario RPG, sort of. Technically, he's a benign spirit from the Star Road who takes possession of an ordinary toy doll and enlarges it to human-size to use as a body.
Super Smash Bros. plays with this trope (no pun intended). The fighters aren't animate toys per se, but have been shown or confirmed to be plush dolls^noteSmash 64 only or trophies in the "real world", and become living fighters in the "world of imagination" where the games take place. The level of "toy-ness" that is shown or implied varies from game to game (becoming more and more downplayed in the last two installments), but given the various bits of Canon Welding with some of the characters' home franchises, this doesn't preclude the fighters from being tangible living characters on some level of existence, and said "world of imagination" from being a functioning fictional universe in its own right.
Taiko no Tatsujin: The Kabuki kids are a group of living teddy bears consisting of a dark teal teddy bear wearing a kitsune mask, a brown teddy bear wearing an Okame mask, and a green one wearing a Hyottoko mask.
Team Fortress 2:
- Several popular maps place the players in this position - it is very odd playing an FPS from an action figure's point of view.
- Assist Kill accessories show up on the killfeed as getting assists to players in Pyroland, indicating they at least THINK they're alive. All of them are a stuffed animal of some kind, except the Medic's very real pet bird, Archimedes.
Teddy Together is a Virtual Pet game that has you liking after a living teddy bear.
TinkerQuarry: The Dollhouse is a world inhabited by living toy animals. Most, if not all, are implied to have previously belonged to the protagonist, a little girl who somehow ends up in the Dollhouse.
Touhou Project has Medicine Melancholy, who (ironically enough, considering her name) controls poison. She's one of the creepier characters in the series, playfully talking about how wonderful poison is, how it paralyzes its victims, how they die a painful death...
The Japan-exclusive ToPoLo, in which you are a bunch of knockoff-LEGO bricks taking on a sentient shape, and goes on adventures in your kid's playroom.
Toy Fighter, as its name implies, is a Fighting Game where sentient toys fight each other in battles, with the player in control of GI-Joe knockoffs, streetfighting Barbies, a huge stuffed bunny, a wrestler toy, a Lizard Folk warrior dressed like a samurai and assorted characters to duke it out.
The Player Character of Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found is a living toy exploring a randomly-generated house.
Toy Pop features two dolls named Pino and Acha who travel through 44 "boxes" of malevolent living toys in order to reach and defeat an evil witch.
Toy Soldiers, an Xbox Strategy game, focuses on two sides of a WW1 tin soldier toy set, Germans vs. the British/French, who carry out large, full scale battles inside a diorama which stands on a small table (just to give the audience an idea of the proportions). The player's main goal is to defend his "toy box" against the infantry, cavalry, tanks, and biplanes of the foe, using their own tanks, cannons, machine guns, AA-guns, howitzers, and aeroplanes, while (only in Multiplayer) trying to take over the foe's toy box by sending their own soldiers. Great idea and great theme. The player will surely enjoy the toffee apples flying around, while having a pozzy on japan, with some nice gunfire.
In Umineko: When They Cry, Sakutarou is a variation on this. After Maria places a soul in him, he can talk with her and play with her, although he no longer looks like a stuffed animal to her. Instead, he looks like a little, half-human, half-animal boy. However, no one else can see him talk, and if he talks to Maria, anyone else sees it as Maria speaking in a funny voice, and he always looks like a stuffed animal to them. However, this is implied to all be in Maria's head; from a mundane perspective, Sakutaro is really just a Companion Cube and Maria only pretends he's alive to cope with her loneliness.
The eponymous Hundred Knight from The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 was originally a doll that Milm received from her sister Amalie for good luck for her surgery to cure her of her Witch Disease. When the surgery fails and Milm transforms into the witch Chelka, Chelka uses her powers to animate her doll to act as her servant. While Chelka did animate him, it is ultimately loyal to the more heroic Amalie.

Web Animation

Nikiciy: Shirokuma's return of favor tells the story of a woman who picks up and cleans a discarded toy. The next day, the toy comes to life as a full-sized polar bear man in order to thank her for it. In the end it seems that the whole thing was just a dream, but then we see that the toy is now wearing the necklace she bought for him.
Clara and the Below: Chompers is a toy wooden nutcracker that was brought to life.

Web Comics

Achewood features several living stuffed animals (although nowadays, the comic focuses more on the adventures of talking house cats).
Broccoli from Broccoli Soup is a living toy both figuratively and literally.
The rag dolls of Yarn Kingdom in Cirque Royale (who were first created by giant Queen Purl) are living yarn dolls; each of the first ones were knit and brought to life by her. They can live forever as long as their hearts aren't destroyed.
Wendy weasel from Cwen's Quest, who was given life to help a young Cwen escape from a library. Wendy can read, Cwen could not.
Ennui GO! has Min, who is directly acknowledged in-universe as being similar to Hobbes, in that she appears real from Max's perspective but just appears to be an ordinary doll to everyone else. This is eventually subverted when it turns out that the "living" Min that Max is seeing isn't the doll at all, but rather the ghost of his twin sister Minerva who has been bound to him ever since she died in utero. While there does appear to be some sort of connection between her and the doll (as it getting damaged and later repaired gets reflected on her own appearance), there is nothing to suggest that the doll itself is actually alive.
Fuzzy Knights focuses on stuffed toys who also happen to play Tabletop Games.
Reynardine in Gunnerkrigg Court is a fox-spirit who gained the ability to possess anything with eyes, but didn't realise this would kill them when he left. He currently inhabits a plush wolf belonging to Antimony, which the Rules say means he also belongs to Antimony.
Hinges is a webcomic where the whole premise is about living toys that have created their own society entirely without humans.
Tigre, Lotto, Morado and Monito from Cun-Cun & Santi.
Kid Radd is about video game characters, but they follow similar rules as traditional Living Toys, coming to life when not being played and eventually escaping their games to form a secret society on the Internet.
Nixvir: The World Oak has a species of sentient marionette residing within it. Unlike the Pinocchio example, they can extend their own noses at will in order to use them as weapons.
Trish Tales takes place in a world where living action figures have been created and are sold as pets.
Adrian Ramos's The Wisdom Of Moo revolves around this concept: one of the main human characters is a teenager who tries to be more "adult-like" and gets frequently harassed by her old toys, and another is a local toy doctor.

Web Original

Arby 'n' the Chief and its predecessor Master Chief Sucks At Halo is a long running series about two Halo action figures that come to life and play video games and do hilarious things around the house. The fifth season even deconstructs the entire concept of Living Toys, with Arbiter trying to give his life meaning. Although this technically goes under good examples, Chief is one mean little bastard of a troll.
Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse portrays Barbie and her crew as dolls that can talk and move by themselves.
DSBT InsaniT: Bear is a living teddy bear, and Duck is a living wooden toy duck on wheels.
The action figures of I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC, though only Deadpool (who else?) is truly aware that he is a toy.
Many of the main characters in JM Kit games are living toys, such as the stuffed "Bunny Buddies" Jinx and Minx, who were abandoned due to them both missing an eye.
Kid Time Storytime: All of the characters portrayed by toys are referred to as "puppets" in-universe (even those played by plushies or action figures), suggesting that they're living toys, even though in-universe they can do things like eat and reproduce.
Neopets:
- The Plushie paint brush makes a Neopet look like a living stuffed toy.
- The Toy paint brush makes the Neopet look like a windup toy.
SCP Foundation: SCP-2295 is a teddy bear that can make replacement organs and tissue out of fabric and successfully transplant them in any near human who needs them (i.e. it can sew new kidneys for someone whose own kidneys are failing). The cloth organs and tissue work perfectly, exactly the same as real ones would. The only limit is that it can't do anything about brain tissue. It got very sad and scared when it couldn't figure out how to fix a patient's cerebral hemorrhage, resorting to giving the patient a candy bar and a hug while crying.
The entire premise of The Secret Life of Dolls. Nearly all of Cleolinda's dolls are alive (there are a few exceptions mentioned in passing, but those ones aren't spoken of very much). Cleo constantly interacts with the dolls, treating them like roommates and often being called in to mediate their various dramas, and notes that while they all carry over the personalities of the fictional characters they're of (even ones that aren't officially licensed products, like Iorek the Webkinz polar bear), it's often unclear how much of their stories they know.
This little video, where two companion dolls are separated.

Western Animation

The Animal Shelf follows five walking, talking soft toys: Gumpa the bear, Little Mutt the dog, Woeful the monkey, Getup the giraffe, and Stripey the zebra.
Arthur: All toys are sentient and can understand Baby Language. They only move and talk around babies and non-anthropomorphic animals.
The Babaloos: Among the show's cast of Animate Inanimate Objects were a few sentient toys, including Teddy (a teddy bear) and Frisbee (guess).
Babar's episode during the 2000s reboot series "Land of Toys" the cast visits a country made of living sentient toys.
Betty Boop is one in her cartoon, "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers".
Several characters from Bump in the Night were living toys.
- Molly Coddle, a comfort doll with mismatched eyes and limbs who is one of Mr. Bumpy's two best friends.
- The Cute Dolls, a Girl Posse of Barbie-esque dolls.
- Destructo, a toy robot who is often on Mr. Bumpy's case whenever he breaks the rules.
The Cow and Chicken episode "Cow's Toys" reveals that Cow's toys Manure the Bear, Crabs the Warthog, and Piles the Beaver are actually alive. In the episode, Manure the Bear reads on his tag that he was "made in Hong Kong". The toys misinterpret this as indicating that their original owner was a woman named Maiden Hong Kong and go on a journey to find her.
The Crayon Box: The cast of the show are a bunch of living toys residing in a toy store.
The toys in Doc McStuffins are brought to life using Doc's stethoscope.
On The Fairly OddParents!, Timmy spends one episode shrunken down to toy size and playing with a Crimson Chin doll that Cosmo and Wanda brought to life.
The main characters of The Forgotten Toys are an ill-tempered teddy bear named Teddy, and an old rag doll named Annie.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. "Toys will be Toys" is Where Billy asks Grim to make his dinobonoid figures come alive and be their size, running out of time by then when Grim's magic lasts for it.
Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs: The dinosaurs are a bunch of living toys, that can even do things like eat and sneeze. Non-living toys also come to life whenever they go to Dino World.
Isadora Moon: Isadora's stuffed toy Pink Rabbit, brought to life by her fairy mother.
Jackie Chan Adventures: Jade's moose doll, Super Moose, was brought to life by the Rat Talisman in several episodes to act as an aide. There was also an evil puppet version of the Monkey King from Journey to the West who could come to life by switching places with a living being, which would then turn into a puppet in his stead while the Monkey King ran around causing trouble.
- Earlier than both of these examples, the Gnomekop doll powered from the Rat Talisman in the episode "Tough Break".
The Craig of the Creek spinoff Jessica's Big Little World has Small Uncle, Jessica's favorite toy.
In Lalaloopsy, the protagonists are living ragdolls and their pets are living plushies.
The Looney Tunes short "Those Beautiful Dames" has a bunch of sentient toys help out a destitute orphan girl by sprucing up her house, entertaining her and preparing a feast.
The Loud House:
- Zigzagged for Mr. Coconuts, Mrs. Appleblossom, and Colonel Crackers the ventriloquists' dummies. It's left ambiguous as to whether they're alive or if their owners are just that good.
- In the short "Robot Sitcom", there is a walking, talking teddy bear named Teddy Bear. No explanation is given for his sentience, but perhaps Lisa is to blame.
The Magic Key: The Patchworker (from the episode of the same name) is an animate, person-sized cloth doll.
In Monkey Dust, both Mr. Hoppy and Mr. Skatey fit. Psychopathic, murderous toys. Or Are They?
In ¡Mucha Lucha!, Rikochet owned a friendly living action figure named El Rey. In one episode, he discovered that El Rey was competing in a wrestling competition with other Living Toys (that occasionally became a Deadly Game, unfortunately).
Muppet Babies (1984) had living toys in the song "Calling All Toys" from the episode "Muppets in Toyland".
Oh Yeah! Cartoons:
- The short "A Kid's Life" and its sequel "A Kid's Life: Picture Perfect" were both narrated by a living plush rabbit named Fuzzy Bunny.
- "The Forgotten Toybox: Curse of the Werebaby" had a living ventriloquist dummy named Mr. Beasley as the short's Horror Host.
The toys in Power Players are awakened after they are activated by the Power Bandz.
The Raggy Dolls is about defective dolls who inhabit the reject bin in a toy factory. The series subverts the Tragic Abandoned Toy trope by the characters not wanting their own child owners, and children when they do appear are more often abusive destroyers than not.
In Rainbow Ruby, the various residents of Rainbow Village are sentient toys, such as the mayor being a stuffed elephant.
The Random! Cartoons short "Tiffany" is about a girl's doll coming to life and dragging her into misadventures.
ReBoot
- Parodied this with a GameCube, in the episode "Firewall". Experts believe that this is the only time this trope has ever been crossed with send-ups of James Bond and Wacky Races.
- This immediately followed an episode with a game starring Rocky the Rabbid Racoon.
- They did it again in a later episode, this time saturated with Star Wars references, and the return of the Rabbid Racoon.
Mr. Buns from Ruby Gloom is a strange example. The other characters treat him as if he's alive, and he seems to do things when he's not on-screen... but whenever he's on-screen, he's just a lifeless sock-bunny. In perhaps the most extreme case, he's fencing with Poe from just off-screen, only for the sword to drop the moment he's visible in the frame.
- Many people think that Ruby Gloom herself is, in fact, a Living Doll. This is supported by her hobby of sewing, pure white skin, and the stitches around her eyes.
The Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), sort of. Apparently, the idea is, they are like this because they're neglected and unwanted, which is why they qualify for this Trope. (The special suggests that all toys are Level 2 on the Sliding Scale of Living Toys.) In the 2001 Direct-to-DVD special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys, not only the titular Misfit Toys but appearantly every toy is alive as the film revolves around the mysterious Toy Taker who "kidnaps" toys all around the world. The Toy Maker is revealed to be a living toy himself; a teddy bear called Mr. Cuttles who wants to "rescue" his fellow toys from being abandoned by children as he was.
The Secret World of Benjamin Bear: In the world of this series, all Teddy Bears are alive (but forbid themselves from being seen moving by humans), and have their own secret world hidden in humanity's.
Silly Symphonies:
- In the Christmas shorts "Santa's Workshop" and "The Night Before Christmas," the toys that Santa is to deliver are alive. In the latter short, they are even eager to decorate a Christmas tree for the children in the house Santa visits.
- In the short "Broken Toys", the main characters are broken and abandoned living toys living in an unofficial dump.
Parodied in one of the Oxymoron Commercials in Sheep in the Big City which advertises a robot toy that's SO COOL, it can do anything: walk, talk (in both English and French), cook, hold down a good job, take out the garbage, and "party all night long." The trouble is that the robot is so incredibly awesome that it's inevitably better than any child who might own it, leading to the slogan: "IT'S COOLER THAN YOU!"
Although it's not overly emphasized, the main character of Special Agent Oso, is actually a plush toy bear. Sometimes when he appears to help a child, they'll shout "Special Agent Oso!" and he'll reply "In the plush!" It's not clear, but his cohorts in the organization U.N.I.Q.U.E. are all animals as well and therefore may also be toys.
Binoo of Toopy and Binoo is a sentient plush cat.

Evil examples

Anime & Manga

Mary from Ghost Stories/Gakkou no Kaidan, though she has no idea that she is causing harm...
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Devo's Ebony Devil lets him bring a doll to life by taking possession of it with said doll armed with a spear and a straight razor to attack Polnareff.
- Diamond is Unbreakable: Keicho's Bad Company takes the form of tiny, yet deadly, toy soldiers, complete with tanks and helicopters.
In Paranoia Agent, Tsuki's Maromi toy frequently comes to life, usually to comfort her and assure her she's not at fault for the things that happen. While he's not exactly evil, he's still played as being creepy and a lot of the things he does (keeping Chief Ikari in a Lotus-Eater Machine to fulfill Tsuki's escapist fantasy of having a loving father and preventing him from fighting Lil' Slugger, for example) don't help matters. Of course, it's also left in the air whether or not Tsuki's hallucinating any or all of it.
Evil Toys from Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Depends on your definition of "evil", but: In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, there was Alice, originally a doll with a spirit inside her that stood on a mantle of a faculty lounge in the school. After a student blamed a card for his poor dueling and tore it in half (it was an Obelisk student, big surprise), she grew to hate duelists, and wanted to punish them. She lured Judai into a Shadow Duel in an attempt to drive him to a Despair Event Horizon, using a deck full of monsters resembling evil dolls, but Judai's vibrant personality never wavered, and he convinced her to reject despair and accept hope. When last seen, she was back on the mantle again - smiling.
- A similar villain was Princess Cologne from the manga version of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, who worked for Dr. Faker because he gave her a soul a threatened to take it from her if she failed him. As it turned out, she had once been a doll who was thrown away by a rich girl who happened to be Cathy. Cathy realized her mistake and apologized, and despite failing her mission, she was saved from that grim punishment by her friend Grandpa Demetto, who gave her his soul to save her. (He may or may not have been a Living Toy as well, along with someone who could fix them; it wasn't clear exactly what he was.) (She also has an actual card in the game with her likeness, and that does seem to fit the overall Trope too, although she seems even less evil here, given the effect.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, roughly half of Sora Shiun'in's deck consists of monsters called Fluffal, cute, cuddly stuffed animals that better fit the Good examples above. However, by fusing them with Fiends called Edge Imps (the other half of his deck) he can summon his aces, Fusion Monsters called Frightfurs, which are demonic corruptions of the Fluffals covered with knives and blades.

Comic Books

In the "Cubs in Toyland" story arc of Fables, the toys aren't quite as evil as other examples, but they do trick Therese into coming to their kingdom to be their queen, attack Dare when he tries to save her, and seem more concerned with Therese using her queenly powers to heal them than the fact that she's starving to death. There's also the fact that they ended up in their present states because they killed their former child owners, albeit as Accidental Murder. Thankfully, everyone manages to get better.
In a true case of From Nobody to Nightmare, Ultra Force villain Lord Pumpkin started out as one. He was a living toy created by a wizard to be a playmate for a Spoiled Brat of a prince. However, the prince (who liked to torture animals, among other disturbing hobbies) sadistically tormented his playmate, until it rebelled, killed him, grew far more powerful, and took over the kingdom. Since then, Lord Pumpkin no longer fit the Trope at all (Evil Overlord is more appropriate), but that's where he started.

Films — Animated

Monster Mash (2000): One of the modern monsters is an evil wind-up doll named Chicky, the Doll of Destruction. She's a Captain Ersatz of Chucky, only differentiated by her green skin and other gender. She wears her hair in Girlish Pigtails, but one of the tails is the wind-up key. Her weapon of choice is a remote control with which she can change the environment around her.
The Toy Story film series itself has two, Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2, and Lotso in Toy Story 3. Believe it or not, Woody was like this too at one point; early-stage drafts of the first movie featured a Woody who was outright psychopathic, terrorizing the other toys into submission and in general abusing his position as Andy's favorite. All this was in response to demands from up the chain to make Woody "edgier", but eventually the movie reached its low point and the team had to go to their bosses and say, "We can't make this movie. This isn't our movie anymore." Fortunately, the execs relented.

Films — Live-Action

Asylum (1972 Horror): In "Mannikins of Horror", Dr. Byron has constructed a group of toy robots with human heads, and he declares his determination to bring them to life. He succeeds in animating one whose head is modeled after his own and sends it to murder Dr. Rutherford. When Dr. Martin crushes it beneath his foot, he discovers that it has real internal organs.
In the Child's Play films, "Chucky" is a doll possessed by a psychopathic criminal.
In Krampus the family is attacked by evil and violent toys.
The Commando Elite in Small Soldiers. Like the Gorgonites above, they are miniature androids and the company that sells them promoted them as the good guys.
A common trope in the 1980s and early '90s for horror movies. The toys where generally alive by the use of Black Magic or Demonic Possession. Examples of this are:
- The killer toys from Demonic Toys and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys.
- The killer Puppets from the Puppet Master movies. Though they can follow a good puppetmaster, they will do evil stuff to anyone who harasses or tries to harm said puppetmaster, especially Those Wacky Nazis.
- The tite characters of Devil Dolls.
Annabelle from The Conjuring and its sequels, though it's less "living" and more possessed by an evil spirit.
The Elf: The titular elf is a doll of a Christmas elf that was brought to life by an incantation that Nick read out loud. Afterwards, it proceeded to lurk about the house killing everyone on the list it can.

Literature

Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy from Goosebumps, who also appeared on the Live-Action TV Series. Also counts as an Artifact of Doom, which are common in the series.
Muddle Earth (Stewart): The "sinister" Dr Cuddles, in fact, turns out to be none other than Charlie Cuddles, Randalf's favourite childhood teddy bear, who was brought to life accidentally by him. When the wizards of Muddle Earth are freed from his grasp, Roger the Wrinkled performs a spell on him which returns him to a regular teddy bear, devoid of sentience.
In Diana Wynne Jones's The Ogre Downstairs the living Toffee bars aren't evil per se, just heinously troublesome with a bad habit of melting and causing a big, sticky mess. The living dolls are downright cold.

Live-Action TV

In The Amanda Show, Courtney had a doll replica of herself that could scream, "MA-HA!"
- The trope was parodied in a one-time sketch featuring Amanda as a little girl who was too scared to sleep during a thunderstorm. Her parents give her "Rockabye Ralph," a talking doll that spouts off cutesy catchphrases about bedtime ("I LOVE YOU! TIME TO GO SLEEPY!" et. al.). Amanda's pleased with the doll at first...until he refuses to stop chattering even as she tries to actually sleep. She tries everything she can think of to stop Ralph, but he won't quit bothering her: she pulls out his batteries and he keeps talking; she throws him out the window, and he flies right back in; she slams his head in a drawer, and he doesn't stop; and finally, she has her dog eat the doll, which seems to do the trick...until Ralph's voice starts coming from the pet's stomach.
In the season three episode of the original series of Fantasy Island "Jungle Man/Mary Ann and Miss Sophisticate" one of the 2 "fantasies" involves a female ventriloquist whose dummy is taking on a life of its own, at the ventriloquist's expense.
Several of the demonic objects that the characters in Friday the 13th: The Series have to catch are evil toys, including a doll and the three wise monkeys.
In the two-part special of The Haunting Hour "Really You", it's revealed that all dolls are alive, and naturally good, but it just so happens that this one is evil.
In the Night Gallery episode "The Doll", a British Army officer must deal with a murderous doll sent by an old enemy.
The replicators in Stargate SG-1 started out as children's toys, but turned evil and took over a galaxy before trying to get ours too.
The Twilight Zone (1959):
- Talky Tina from "Living Doll". You'd better be nice to her.^note Actually, seeing as Tina's victim Erich is pretty rotten himself (being abusive to his stepdaughter all because he was sterile), she may be considered more of a Knight Templar.
  "My name is Talky Tina, and I'm going to kill you."
- Two episodes ("The Dummy" and "Caesar and Me") feature evil ventriloquist's dummies.

Music

The cover illustration of Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic album depicts a rather sinister-looking group of these.
In Doctor Steel's music video for Childhood Don't a-Go-Go, Dr. Steel breathes on a creepy toy and brings it to life; it subsequently brings all the other creepy toys to life.
Jonathan Coulton: And there's a creepy doll...
yeule: More creepy than definitely evil, but the video for "ghosts" portrays yeule as a living, ball-jointed doll whose limbs are getting ripped off.

Puppet Shows

Otto, Leo's beloved toy otter in Rimini Riddle, who kidnaps him for child-eating beings called the Mommos.

Tabletop Games

The Ravenloft module The Created featured a villain named Maligno (an evil version of Pinnochio, more or less) and other evil toys called carrionettes. Even if the Player Characters succeeded and killed him, he later would return, the setting where the module took place (the town of Odiarre) becoming part of the mainstream Ravenloft setting with him as its Darklord.

Theme Parks

Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream event featured these in the Nightshade Toy Factory houses; the storyline being that the toys inside the abandoned factory came to life through some means and sought out revenge against those that abandoned them.
Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights 1996 had the house Toy Hell: Nightmare in the Scream Factory, which was set in a possessed toy factory where the toys would come to life and kill the workers.

Video Games

In Airfix Dogfighter, everyone is a bunch of seemingly alive WW2 scale models that wage war inside a human house.
The Big Bad from Alice: Madness Returns is the Dollmaker, likely one of the worst examples of this Trope. He not only is a Living Toy (a gigantic, horrible, hideous one) but he kidnaps the Insane Children in order to turn them into toys, in order to use them as fuel for the Infernal Train. (In effect, this is a parallel to his real-world counterpart, Dr. Bumby, the true villain, who kidnaps and hypnotizes his younger patients in order to prostitute them.)
In Dark Deception, Malak has a few of these among his ranks - the Murder Monkeys, the Dread Duckies, Mama Bear and her Trigger Teddies. Bonus points for the latter being creepy dolls as well.
The Frantic Factory level in Donkey Kong 64 had some of these.
Dreamkiller has the Toy Time nightmare, where every onscreen enemy is a hostile sentient toy, from Creepy Dolls who wants to devour you to gigantic clockwork chickens. It ends with you fighting a platoon of tin soldiers whose wooden guns fires real bullets as a Wolfpack Boss.
Tonbetty, Mira's advisor in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord is a small talking Tonberry plush.
In Fairytale Fights you fight animated toy soldiers, ceramic gnomes and sentient plushies - all of them as large as yourself - in the final stage.
Funtime with Buffy: The antagonist of the game is a murderous White Bunny doll with a mouth full of sharp teeth out to kill the Player Character.
If Toy Story falls under this trope, so must Kingdom Hearts III's "Toy Box" world, which is based on the gap between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. It's even been said by the developers to be canon to the film series, which is a rarity for the game series!
Perhaps calling them living isn't appropriate, since they're ghosts, but the Clockwork Soldiers of Luigi's Mansion are a trio of giant, ghostly wind-up soldier dolls who will attack Luigi with their cork guns when he activates all the clocks in their room of the mansion.
Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots (and humongous robots based on Nicktoon protagonists)
The Pokémon Shuppet and Bannette fall under the creepy toys category, being Ghost-types based off of puppets. Bannette's mega evolution just makes it look creepier.
The mascots in Poppy Playtime are an extremely DARK take on this trope. They also serve as a deconstruction of the concept of living toys in general: they used to be human beings who were transformed into toys by some unknown science for some unknown reason. Naturally, being subjected to this horrific experimentation didn't do them any favours, and it is no surprise that they eventually rebelled against the humans who experimented on them...
The antagonists of Toy Commander are a group of Vengeful Abandoned Toys who take control of their owner's house as payback for being discarded.
The main enemies in Witchkin are a trio of evil toys who constantly stalk you throughout the game.
Among the various monsters in the video game Zombies Ate My Neighbors are psychotic knife-wielding dolls.

Web Comics

DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Mars King robot and Blue Fairy plush X had a child become his giant attack bot and the arena keeper respectively. He also has a giant Killer Teddy Bear, Lego blocks, a simplified train, helicopter, and etc that can attack.
Hetty in Gunnerkrigg Court, a doll that is possessed by an animating spirit in the same manner as Reynardine. Unlike Reynadine, who may resent his situation sometimes, but is remorseful for his own actions that brought him there, she firmly believes that Murder Is the Best Solution to having an "owner".

Web Original

Boy and Dog: One strip shows Rowan in his playpen asking, "What are you in for?". One soft toy replies, "Murder".
James Rolfe tangles with Mr. Bucket, a very persistent little guy with an appetite for yer balls, in an episode of his Board James series.
Octavius Fong, leader of the Roaming Eye of Doom in the Metaverse.
Neopets has the MSPP paint brush, which will turn a Poogle into a Malevolent Sentient Poogle Plushie.
The Nostalgia Critic was tormented by a demonic Teddy Ruxpin in his Halloween episode.
- More recent episodes have given us Tickle Me Amy. If not evil, she's damned psychotic.
In Obelisk at one point in a surreal dream-like situation something takes the form of a monkey toy to communicate, likely related to the recurring themes of childhood experiences and memories being important. It's unclear if it's actually evil but whatever it's speaking for doesn't seem to have good intentions.
Many SCP Foundation entries, including a sentient teddy bear that can spawn homicidal copies of itself, a video game that decreases the intelligence of players older than 14, and a pinata that kills children.
The Tails Doll is an example of this. While not particularly evil in canon (though he was created by Dr. Ivo Robotnik), The Internet had other ideas...
The evil teddy bear from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.

Western Animation

In Aqua Teen Hunger Force a doll is delivered to the house. Through the whole episode it says "Kill!", while holding a knife, sometimes with Dramatic Thunder. At one point, it brings home some severed fingers. Frylock, Shake, and Meatwad decide to destroy it just because it wouldn't shut up. Turns out that the doll is immortal, and Carl (who's missing some fingers) got another doll that just says "Die".
- An earlier episode, "Dumber Dolls", had Happy Time Harry, who rather than being homicidal was just depressed, cynical, and bad-tempered. His depression did lead happier toy Jiggle Billy to attempt suicide, however.
In CatDog, the episode "The Collector" has a Mean Bob toy persuading Cat to buy a collection of Mean Bob action figures and sell them for a lot of money. They later try to resist Cat from selling them.
Christmas In Tattertown: A girl named Debbie finds a strange book, which sucks her, her Little Miss Muffet doll, and Dog, her stuffed dog, into the realm of Tattertown, where discarded items—including Muffet and Dog—come to life. Muffet, who has long felt oppressed by the wear and tear of being a toy, runs away from Debbie and, calling herself Muffet the Merciless, makes up her mind to conquer Tattertown, with the aid of Sidney the Spider, who had attempted to take over Tattertown before. Disguising herself as Santa Claus, Muffet plans an air raid on Tattertown.
In the first episode of Code Lyoko ("Teddygodzilla"), XANA brings Millie's teddy bear to life and enlarges it to giant size to hunt down the Lyoko warriors.
Darkwing Duck:
- The villainous Quackerjack mainly uses his powers of animation to send toys on crime sprees through St. Canard.
- In "The Haunting of Mr. Banana Brain", Paddywhack, a supernatural Monster Clown, escapes the jack-in-the-box in which he's been imprisoned, possesses the titular doll, and traps Darkwing and Quackerjack inside the box.
Dave the Barbarian: In "Night of the Living Plush", Chuckles casts a spell to bring Candy's excessive plushie collection to life. Under his command, the plushies rampage through Udrogoth, causing adorable havoc. Once they're stopped, however, they turn on him, beating him up.
In one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Billy gets a tricycle from a boy in Pittsburgh which he names "Trikey". Billy immediately considers it to be his friend, even though it appears to be inanimate. Later it becomes apparent that Trikey is alive and evil, brutally maiming Irwin, Pud'n, and Sperg after they insult Billy for having it, then beating up Grim when he tries to destroy it. Eventually, Mandy destroys it by crushing it with the garage door, after which the spirit of the boy comes out of its remains cursing them.
An episode of Lilo & Stitch: The Series has the experiment of the episode (Experiment 375/Phantasmo) possess Lilo's doll Scrump, using the doll to cause chaos around the house and get Stitch framed for it. The experiment does turn over a new leaf at the end, however.
Meet Julie revolves around lightning bringing a doll to life. Julie is a benevolent example as she dearly loves the girl who owns her, Carol, and assists her in saving her kidnapped father David.
Oh Yeah! Cartoons: The antagonist of the Super Santa short "Jingle Bell Justice" is a stuffed rabbit named Bedlam Bunny who sends an army of toys on a crime spree and seeks revenge against Santa Claus because he's angry that Santa made him a plush bunny instead of something cooler like a toy robot.
Played with in the Phineas and Ferb episode, "Terrifying Tri-State Trilogy of Terror", as its first story features Candance messing with a spell that can brings toy to life and turns evil when exposed to the light of a full moon and trying it on her Ducky Momo plushie. The spell does work, but it turns out that the Ducky Momo plushie just wanted a hug—and it's a teddy bear that turns evil.
In the episode of The Real Ghostbusters "Ghosts R Us", some ghosts trying to make the heroes look bad accidentally wake up a a very powerful Class 10 ghost in an abandoned toy factory. Very cranky from being woken up, the beast creates a body for itself out of the equipment in the factory, turning itself into a giant amalgamation of toys, with a teddy bear's body riding a tricycle, a gift box for a head, and a toy monkey with cymbals on top, before going on a rampage.
Pops's doll Percy in Regular Show. Pops loves him, but he's actually rather abusive.
Robot Chicken: The "Bop It... or Else" sketch involves a Bop It manipulating a child into assassinating a senator, then going to drastic lengths to conceal its involvement in the crime.
The Simpsons's Treehouse of Horror:
- A Krusty doll in "Treehouse of Horror III". Once his switch is set from "Evil" to "Good", there are no further problems. At least for everyone except the doll. However, he gets better... This one is a Shout-Out to the Talking Tina episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), mentioned above.
- In "Treehouse of Horror XXXI", Bart's dolls are all fairly bloodthirsty. This is technically subverted in that the toys themselves aren't evil, they were just biting back against Bart, who had mistreated them horribly. They then proceed to kill him, replace his innards with toy parts, then abuse his body like he was one of them.
In the Spliced episode "Mr. Wrinkles in Time", there's a timeline where Two-Legs Joe's childhood toy, a talking plush hippo named Mr. Wrinkles, comes to life and tortures Joe, also having turned Princess Pony Apehands into his slave.
The Magic Conch Shell in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Club SpongeBob". She's a total Control Freak who demands obedience from her subjects, and she's willing to kill whoever doesn't submit to her whim. After SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidward all get lost in a kelp trench forest, SpongeBob and Patrick are granted the privilege to eat picnic bounty food that was dropped by a plane as while a starving Squidward isn't granted anything to eat because he refused to praise/obey the shell.
In a Season 1 episode of Transformers: Animated, Soundwave is given to Sari as a toy by Megatron so that whenever Sari uses her key on Soundwave, he'll upgrade and grow even more powerful. Soundwave begins an AI takeover on Detroit and use automatons as his slaves with intent to overthrow the humans and exterminate the Autobots. 2 seasons later, Powell makes hundreds of Soundwave toys for all of Detroit.

Living Toys
(aka: Living Toy)

46 Following

Good examples

Evil examples

Video Example(s):

Krusty doll tries kill Homer
Share Video Copied!

Alternative Title(s): Living Toy

Previous

Index

Next

Living Toys (aka: Living Toy) 46 Following

Good examples

Evil examples

Video Example(s):

Krusty doll tries kill Homer Share Video Copied!

Alternative Title(s): Living Toy

Previous

Index

Next

Krusty doll tries kill Homer

Living Toys
(aka: Living Toy)

46 Following

Krusty doll tries kill Homer
Share Video Copied!