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The Toys “R” Us origin-story trailer was a June 2024 brand film project that used OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video technology. Toys “R” Us called it the “FIRST EVER brand film created with OpenAI Sora technology,” but that is the company’s promotional claim, not an independently verified industry-wide finding. Sora is no longer available: OpenAI says its web and app experiences ended on April 26, 2026, and its API ended on September 24, 2026.
What the trailer was
The Origin of Toys“R”Us was presented as an origin story for the toy retailer. Toys “R” Us released a teaser on June 21, 2024, followed by a Toys “R” Us Studios and Native Foreign announcement on June 24.
The film depicts a young Charles Lazarus—the founder of Toys “R” Us and creator of Geoffrey the Giraffe—imagining a magical place that could change toy stores. Those scenes are the film’s depiction; the available material does not independently verify every story detail as literal historical fact.
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How Sora was used
The brand described the project as its first film made with OpenAI’s Sora. The Studios description at the time said Sora could generate videos of up to one minute from text instructions. That was a description of the tool during the 2024 production, not a current product specification.
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Reporting describes AI-generated scenes showing young Lazarus with his father in a bicycle shop. The production aimed for a 1920s-and-1930s feeling in the early scenes before moving toward a more modern visual style later in the story.
Calling the film “made entirely by AI” would overstate the documented evidence. The sources identify human creative leadership and do not detail every generation, edit, visual effect, or post-production step.
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Production partners and credits
| Role | Documented detail |
|---|---|
| Brand project | Toys “R” Us Studios’ origin-story film |
| Production partner | Native Foreign |
| Executive producer | Kim Miller Olko, president of Toys “R” Us Studios |
| Director | Nik Kleverov of Native Foreign |
| AI tool identified by the brand | OpenAI Sora |
What “first-ever” means here
The phrase appears in the official teaser and in the joint Toys “R” Us Studios–Native Foreign announcement. It should therefore be read as Toys “R” Us describing its own project as its first Sora brand film. The available sources do not establish that no earlier brand film anywhere had used Sora.
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The trailer belongs to the 2024 period when Sora was being introduced as a text-to-video system. Its availability changed afterward.
- April 26, 2026: OpenAI says the Sora web and app experiences were discontinued.
- September 24, 2026: OpenAI says the Sora API, including the Videos API and Sora 2 aliases and snapshots, was discontinued.
Consequently, the trailer is useful as a record of an early branded Sora production, not as a demonstration of a service readers can currently sign up for or call through an API.
What viewers can—and cannot—conclude
Supported by the available record
- It was a Toys “R” Us brand project released in June 2024.
- The company framed it as an origin story involving Charles Lazarus and Geoffrey the Giraffe.
- Toys “R” Us identified OpenAI’s Sora as the text-to-video technology used.
- Native Foreign was the production partner, with Kim Miller Olko as executive producer and Nik Kleverov as director.
- Coverage described AI-generated period scenes, including Lazarus and his father in a bicycle shop.
Not established by the sources
- That the film contained no conventional footage, human-authored assets, or post-production work.
- That the “first-ever” claim applies to the entire advertising industry rather than to Toys “R” Us’s own brand-film history.
- That every event shown in the origin story is independently verified biography.
Why the trailer still matters
The project captured an early commercial use of text-to-video generation: a recognizable brand used a founder narrative, period styling, and a fictional mascot origin to show what the technology could contribute to a short film. Its historical importance is now separate from product access, because the Sora experiences and API associated with that 2024 moment have been discontinued.
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