The Highest Grossing Kids’ Movie Every Year Since ‘Toy Story’ Came Out

Hollywood knows how to mine box-office gold, and since the release of the original “Toy Story” in 1995, worldwide grosses for children’s movies have soared. (These are the 40 most profitable kids’ movies of all time.)

To compile a list of the top-grossing kids movies every year since “Toy Story” came out, 24/7 Tempo ranked all movies released since 1995 by their worldwide box-office gross, using data from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by Nash Information Services.

In the 28 years since Pixar’s story about talking toys and their relationship with their human owners was released, there have been just two years – 1995 and 1997- in which worldwide gross for kids’ flicks have fallen under $1 billion. Worldwide gross eclipsed $7 billion in 2016 and 2019.

The number of children’s films released by the movie industry has leapt as well. In 1997, just nine kid-oriented motion pictures were released according to The Numbers. In 2019, there were 179.

“Toy Story” was a critical and box-office hit and spawned three sequels for Pixar Animation Studios, which produced its films sometimes in collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures. Other successes for Pixar included the Monsters and the Incredibles franchises. (Beware of the worst movie from every major franchise.)

As you might expect, Disney itself is well-represented on our list, with films such as “101 Dalmatians,” “Flubber,” “Dinosaur,” and “Frozen.”

DreamWorks Animation got on the children’s movie gravy train with runaway hit franchises such as Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda, while 20th Century Fox found success with the Ice Age franchise.