Instead of Replacing Don Rickles in Toy Story 4, Disney Dug Through 25 Years of Voice Clips and Reused it For The Mr. Potato Head Dialogue

It has been 2 years since Don Rickles, the voice of Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story passed away and Instead of Replacing Don Rickles in Toy Story 4, Disney Dug Through 25 Years of Voice Clips and Reused it For The Mr. Potato Head Dialogue and we cannot thank them enough!

Mr. Potato Head is one of the iconic characters and quite frankly, a toy many of us had growing up.

So, to think that Disney could have hired an entirely new actor to voice him, would have brought up so many emotions.

In an interview, director Josh Cooley explained how they managed to bring the late, beloved comic back to life for the final chapter in the series:

“Of course we loved Don obviously, and after he passed, his family contacted us and asked if there was any way that we could create a performance using the recordings that we had. Now, he signed to be in Toy Story 4. Unfortunately we did not get a chance to record him for the film.” 

Josh Cooley

He continued saying:

“But we went through, jeez, 25 years of everything we didn’t use for Toy Story 1, 2, 3, the theme parks, the ice-capades, the video games — everything that he’s recorded for Mr. Potato Head. And we were able to do that. And so I’m very honored that they asked us to do that, and I’m very honored that he’s in the film. Nobody can replace him.”

From a fan standpoint, I am so glad they did this too. I cannot even begin to imagine the emotional toll along with time this took to do this. It is a pretty incredible thing and is something that makes me grateful to have the technology we have these days.

So, when you are watching Toy Story 4 (which is now in theaters) keep this in mind. Mr. Potato Head is the REAL deal and the time and effort poured into his character is a bit extra.