Brace for nos­tal­gia, the Toy Sto­ry 4 trail­er is here

It has been nine years since the last install­ment of the Toy Sto­ry fran­chise, which is coin­ci­den­tal­ly the exact amount of time it takes for the aver­age human’s emo­tions to recov­er enough to be man­gled once again.

The fourth chap­ter of the liv­ing-play­thing saga returns to the tried-and-true schemat­ic of sep­a­rat­ing one or more six-inch-tall char­ac­ters from their human own­ers, and chal­leng­ing them to make the per­ilous return jour­ney home.

This time around, Woody hits the road with a new com­pan­ion: a ner­vous, exis­ten­tial-mind­ed fork named Forky (voiced, nat­u­ral­ly, by per­son­i­fied pan­ic attack Tony Hale).

While Forky won­ders why he’s been dragged against his will into sen­tience – been there, bud­dy! – the toys back at the ranch for­mu­late a plan to res­cue their lost comrades.

The mis­sion takes the assort­ed hunks of col­or­ful plas­tic through an amuse­ment park and an odd­i­ties store, where men­ac­ing ven­tril­o­quist dolls live with a new­ly reimag­ined Bo Peep. (Our era of girl-pow­er requires a tough-as-nails Bo Peep per­fect­ly capa­ble of defend­ing her­self, thank you very much.)

All your favorites from the cast have returned to reprise their vocal roles, and they’re joined by a hand­ful of excit­ing addi­tions in Keanu Reeves, Patri­cia Arquette, and the erst­while com­e­dy duo of Kee­gan-Michael Key and Jor­dan Peele (who voice some pushy car­ni­val prize plushies).

These films have proven them­selves to be effec­tive tear-extrac­tors three times over, but every new attempt to recap­ture the mag­ic seems more improb­a­ble. Could Disney/​Pixar pos­si­bly pull off the same mir­a­cle for the fourth time?

Toy Sto­ry 4 comes to the­aters in the US and UK on 21 June.