Not heard of Tinkertoys? No, actually not many of the visitors to Walt Disney Studios Park will have done. A quintessential classic American toy, they were invented in 1914 and allow younger children to build simple models from coloured sticks and wooden spools.

Anyway, on to the park — and look at that, our favourite nondescript walkway has reopened to its full width after being closed during the installation of the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop ride seats:

Still just as plain as before!

And that really stands out because, just by turning to your left, you’re now confronted by more colour and more fun-looking props and attractions than the whole rest of the park put together. The Tinkertoys have arrived:

This collection of the construction toys roughly mark out the future entrance of the land. Just in front of these, we’ll see our giant Buzz Lightyear figure and ‘Playland’ letters made out of building blocks:

Added to the purple and orange of RC Racer and the greens of Parachute Drop, the Tinkertoys add red, green, orange and blue, all slightly lighter and closer to pastel shades than the primary colours seen in the classic real-life set above.

These giant-sized Tinkertoys had actually already been Imagineered before Toy Story Playland — like several of the props on their way to Paris, they were designed for the Pixar Place and Toy Story Midway Mania area of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Our new land takes this idea of an oversized playroom and expands it to a garden setting (unfortunately, no interactive dark ride included).

Don’t forget, things like lampposts won’t exist in the fully scaled-up world of Toy Story Playland, so these building sticks will have a variety of functional uses — either supporting cables for over-sized Christmas lights, strung up above the walkways or, as below, carefully concealing human-sized lights:

In fact, turn 180-degrees and you can see more newly-concealed lights:

The Leaning Tower of Tyres outside the Luigi’s Cassa Della Tires façade of Cars Quatre Roues Rallye has had its top tyre modified to include two spotlights, pointing towards the future Toy Story Playland entrance. A clever way to unobtrusively illuminate the giant Buzz Lightyear?

Photos by Dlrpteam for DLRP Today.com