Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear

"First thing you gotta know about me, is I'm a hugger!"

- Lotso as he first encounters Buzz and hugs him tightly

Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear (or simply known as Lotso) is the main antagonist in Toy Story 3.

Past
According to Chuckles, Lotso was originally a teddy bear owned by a girl named Daisy. Of all her toys, Lotso was considered special to her. However, one day when she took Chuckles, Lotso, and Big Baby on a picnic, she left them behind by accident.

Chuckles, Lotso and Big Baby found their way back to Daisy's home, but Lotso then finds that he was replaced by another copy of him. This left Lotso heartbroken and made him snap. Big Baby tried to return back to Daisy's house, but Lotso refused to let him, claiming she had replaced them all. He lied to Big Baby, and ripped off a heart-shaped pendant Big Baby had hanging from his neck with Daisy's name on it, which Chuckles recovered and hid.

After that they climbed up on a Pizza Planet deliver truck and fell off, finding Sunnyside Daycare. There, Lotso had gathered minions to follow his code of making other toys suffer. He turned Sunnyside into a pyramid where he'd be the head, and would rule in tyranny the daycare center, threatening the toys with spending the night in the box (the sand box), and being harmed by his minions or by the kids in the caterpillar room who were too young to know how to play properly with them.

Chuckles ran lucky when he got broken, Bonnie found him, took him home and repaired him.

Toy Story 3
"We're all just trash waiting to be thrown away! That's all a toy is!"

- Lotso's view on all toys.

When Andy was all grown up, his toys Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Bullseye, Jessie, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, The three Little Aliens, Rex, piggy-bank Hamm, Slinky, and Barbie all went to Sunnyside by accident. Lotso at first acts nice to Andy's toys and humbly gives them a tour of Sunnyside. All of Andy's toys except Woody decided to stay at Sunnyside. Woody didn't believe that he should stay at daycare and leaves Sunnyside to go look for Andy, but Woody then gets found by a girl named Bonnie who goes to the daycare, and Woody is taken home to Bonnie's house.

Afterwards, Lotso's true evil character was revealed when Buzz Lightyear was trying to leave the Caterpillar Room. Buzz requests that he and his toys to not be in the Caterpillar Room anymore, but Lotso refuses, saying that the younger children, who don't play nice with the toys as much as Andy did, really need toys. Lotso orders his henchmen toys to switch Buzz Lightyear's play mode to demo mode after Lotso finds the Buzz Lightyear instruction manual, which makes Buzz think that his friends are henchmen of Emperor Zurg, turning Buzz into a hypnotized henchman of Lotso.

Woody, during that time, meets with Bonnie's toys. When Woody told them that he escaped from Lotso's prison, Sunnyside Daycare Center, all of Bonnie's toys are shocked that Woody actually escaped out of Sunnyside. Chuckles the clown explains to Woody about everything of Lotso's past. Woody realizes that he did an incredible action, while he left his friends (when he tried to persuade them to leave Sunnyside).

Meanwhile, the hypnotized Buzz Lightyear locks up Woody's friends so they could suffer like all the other toys. Woody came back into Sunnyside by going into Bonnie's backpack, but then a Chatter Telephone toy tells Woody that he shouldn't have come back because escape is virtually impossible. The Chatter Telephone reveals all of Lotso's security systems, revealing that a cymbal-banging monkey toy watches all the security cameras and that the outside is always guarded by truck toys. Woody reunites with his friends, who try to reset Buzz and then escape while Lotso was asleep in a chair.

After reaching the dumpster, Lotso and his minions showed up and stopped the escapees. However, Woody talks to him about Daisy, revealing that he lied to Big Baby and trying to explain that she had loved him, exposing Big Baby's pendant that Lotso ripped off. All of Lotso's henchmen and other toys realize this, but Lotso didn't care and turned on his henchmen. When Big Baby sniffles about Daisy while looking at the heart-shaped pendant, Lotso snatches it from him and destroys it with his cane. He pokes Big Baby very hard in the chest with his cane and yells at everyone ,telling them that toys are just trash waiting to be thrown away, causing even his henchmen to cringe. Big Baby out of anger grabs Lotso and throws him into the dumpster. When Woody's friends try to escape, Lotso pulls Woody into the dumpster.

Soon, Woody, his friends, and Lotso were taken by a garbage truck and left at a landfill's trash disposal system. Woody heard Lotso beg for help when he was trapped under a heavy object, sending him and Buzz to save him from a giant shredder. Having apparently reformed, Lotso saw a button that would stop the conveyor belt and save the toys from the incinerator. Woody and his friends relied on him to climb and push the button. However, Lotso didn't change; he tricked them and yelled "Where's your kid now, Sherriff?", running off and leaving the toys to die. Just when all seemed lost for Woody and his friends, they were rescued from the incinerator by a giant claw handled by the three little green men.

Meanwhile, Lotso was found by an old garbage truck driver who reminisced about having a Lots-O-Huggin Bear toy as a kid. He tied Lotso to the front of his garbage truck with numerous dead flies. Along for the ride were other tied up toys who were filthy and worn out from the weather, bugs, and mud. One of the toys tell him that he might want to keep his mouth shut.

It's unknown what happens to Lotso after the movie. He most likely spends eternity tied to the truck, eventually being thrown away after being worn out by the elements. He and the other garbage truck toys are probably to be finished off in the trash disposal.

Personality
At first, Lotso seemed to care for the toys well being and seemed friendly. However, this facade merely concealed his true nature, which was an insane, sadistic tyrant. This nature was mostly brought about from his perceived betrayal from Daisy. However, he was considered to be a kind-hearted friend to both Chuckles and Big Baby before they were accidentally abandoned and subsequently replaced. While in power as a head toy at Sunnyside, he also seemed to developed nihilistic tendencies, as evidenced by his statement that all toys were ultimately going to be tossed out like garbage, and there is no salvation for them. Additionally, by destroying Big Baby's old pendant, Lotso not only wanted to forget his own relation with Daisy and pretend it never even existed, but he also wanted to destroy all of Big Baby's ties to Daisy and all toys' ties to their owners. At the landfill, despite showing thankful feelings toward Woody for saving him from the shredders, Lotso still held on to his beliefs that children would discard their toys out of boredom and disinterest without realizing the physical and emotional pain they are causing to the toy when he refused to push the emergency stop button that, if pressed, would have led to his redemption by saving Woody and his friends from their fiery death in the incinerator.

Trivia

 * Lotso made a cameo appearance in Up, seen in a girl's bedroom beside her bed as Carl's house filled with balloons flew up past her window.
 * Lotso's backstory is similar to Jessie's as they were once loved by their owners and soon abandoned. The difference was that Jessie was intentionally thrown away, while Lotso, Big Baby, and Chuckles were accidentally lost. Also, his comeuppance is similar to Stinky Pete's, as both Toy Story villains are unexpectedly found and left in an unwanted predicament.
 * Lotso was originally concieved as a part of the Care Bears toyline in the 1980's. This idea was dropped after the storyboard for Toy Story 3 was completed.
 * He was originally meant to appear in the first Toy Story film. He was saved for the third film, as the technology needed to create his fur did not exist back then.
 * Before Toy Story 3 came out, Pixar created two commercials for Lotso as if he were a real toy, complete with an aged video filter, and uploaded them to Youtube as part of a viral marketing campaign. To increase the effect, the channel featured a few actual old toy commercials as well, leading many to mistakenly believe that Lotso really was an actual toy that had existed before the movie.
 * He seems to be Nihilistic, as he implies that toys have no salvation other than being destroyed.
 * Lotso is the only primary Toy Story villain to be considered as a complete monster and to be incapable of redemption. Unlike other villains, he is also a sadist, he enjoys seeing the suffering in the nursery toys. Sid Phillips became a more sane human being after witnessing his toys coming to life, and Stinky Pete turned over a new leaf when he was played with by his new owner. However, Lotso failed his opportunity; had he pushed to button, he could have redeemed himself by saving the toys and inevitably found love again by following them to Bonnie's.