The Hollywood Chinese Theatre District, 2:00 a.m.
The street should have been dead. At this hour, it was usually just stray cats and silence.
Instead, it was a party.
A crowd of nearly a hundred people, still buzzing, high on the movie they'd just seen, had washed up against the brightly lit storefront of SpongeBob's Secret Chest. The sound was a happy, electric roar.
"Oh my god, they actually have the Sheriff Woody dolls!" "This jacket is gorgeous! It's got Jessie on the back!" "Forget that, Buzz Lightyear is the only one that matters!" "Look! They have a box set with all of them!"
This wasn't just excitement; it was a desperate, sudden need. The first wave of Toy Story fans had been unleashed, and they were in a frenzy, their wallets open and all common sense thrown to the wind.
Inside, James and Charlize, who had been trading "our-boss-is-a-psycho" jokes just ten minutes earlier, were frozen. They just stared, wide-eyed, as the tide of people pushed through the doors, their chatter filling the small store.
James, with the instincts of a born hustler, recovered first. A switch flipped in his brain. His posture straightened, his face split into a dazzling, hundred-watt smile, and his voice boomed over the noise, radiating a salesman's practiced, perfect enthusiasm.
"Welcome, everyone, welcome to SpongeBob's Secret Chest! You've come to the right place! We have all the officially licensed toys, figures, keychains, and apparel from the incredible movie you just saw!"
He paused for effect, letting the magic words sink in before delivering the killing blow.
"And remember, we are the exclusive retailer for Toy Story merchandise in all of California. What you see here, you won't find anywhere else. Supplies are limited, so get it while you can!"
Exclusive? Limited?
The words were like gasoline on a fire. The buzzing crowd turned into a shark feed.
"I'll take a Buzz Lightyear toy and a Woody doll!" a young woman yelled, waving a credit card over the heads of the people in front of her.
"Me too!" another voice echoed.
"Right away, madam!" James beamed, his hands flying to the cash register. "That'll be thirty-eight for the Buzz and forty-two for the Woody... for a grand total of eighty dollars!"
Ka-ching. The drawer slid open.
James's mind was racing, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The boss isn't just a genius. He's a damn pirate. A stone-cold, cutthroat pirate. He felt a giddy, almost sick thrill. The Buzz toy costs us... what? Three bucks? The Woody maybe six? This one sale... this one girl... we just made seventy-one bucks. James had always prided himself on his hustle, but this was a different universe. This was pure, beautiful audacity. This was what having an absolute monopoly felt like.
The store just... exploded. It became a blur of hands, cash, and plastic.
"Sir, this jacket? An excellent choice. That'll be $288." "Ma'am, your keychains and books come to $120." "The Buzz Lightyear flight suit? It's a limited edition... yes, we only have two left. That will be $3,780."
James and Charlize were drowning, but in the best way possible. They were a two-person team against a happy, frantic mob, ringing up sales, bagging merchandise, running on pure, uncut adrenaline. All their earlier doubts, all their grumbling about their boss's insanity, evaporated. It was replaced by a single, glowing, undeniable realization: the man was a king.
Just as the chaos hit its peak, Zane and Lasseter walked in.
"James, you son of a gun, get that Chevrolet to the front of the store, now!" Zane yelled over the din.
It was his craziest gamble: a custom sports car, a perfect, driveable replica of the movie's Pizza Planet truck. It had cost him $80,000 to build. The sticker price he'd slapped on the windshield? $200,000. It didn't sell that night, but it didn't have to. It was an anchor, a piece of ludicrous, high-end art that made a $288 jacket seem perfectly reasonable by comparison.
Half an hour later, the last fan was gone. The store looked like a hurricane had blown through it. Shelves were half-empty, displays were crooked, and the two employees were slumped over the counter, completely exhausted but grinning like idiots.
"Zane... you're a legend," James breathed, his voice full of genuine awe. He stared at the register's final tally. "Tonight's turnover... just from this store... it's over $16,500. From one screening."
"That's right, boss," Charlize chimed in, pushing a stray strand of blonde hair out of her eyes. Her smile was tired but triumphant. "And since business was so good, you're definitely paying us overtime, right?"
Zane smirked. "No overtime pay."
She gasped, her face a mask of playful offense, but he cut her off. "But I will buy everyone a midnight snack. You don't have to eat it if you don't want to."
"Oh, I'm eating," she shot back, her energy returning. "I'm going to order the most expensive thing on the menu and eat you out of house and home, you vampire."
Zane laughed, then immediately got on the phone, calling the managers at the other six locations. The numbers came in, each one making his grin wider. The total sales, across all seven stores, just from the midnight screenings: $90,000.
At that moment, John Lasseter, who had been watching the entire spectacle with the stunned, silent expression of a man in a dream, finally found his voice.
"Zane," he said, and his voice was raw with something that sounded a lot like dread. "I'm... I'm starting to regret our deal. I have a feeling that in a few days, Steve Jobs is going to want to personally tear you limb from limb." He stared at Zane, really looked at him, as if trying to see into his soul. "How? How did you know this was going to happen?"
Zane just smiled.
The next day, Hollywood awoke to the news. Toy Story wasn't just a hit. It was a monster. A $4.2 million midnight showing had rolled into an explosive $29.14 million first day. It didn't just beat the competition—it utterly humiliated Universal's Casino and the new James Bond film, GoldenEye.
The industry was reeling.
And as the box office numbers spread like wildfire, the phones at Pixar Animation Studios started ringing. And ringing. And ringing.
The owners of every major retail chain, every merchandise buyer, every toy company was calling, desperate, demanding to get their hands on the peripheral rights.
They were all, to a one, furiously disappointed.
"What do you mean the rights are gone?!" "ZAN-E-BLACK-WOOD? Who the hell is Zane Blackwood?!" "That son of a bitch locked up four entire states two months ago?!"
The titans of the retail world, men used to snapping their fingers and getting what they wanted, were practically spitting blood. And one by one, with their teeth gritted so hard their jaws ached, they had to swallow their pride, pick up the phone, and find the number for a kid who had just put the entire industry on notice.
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