Selling childhood

We learn about stuff, as with so much else, when we are young. Adults provide children with objects of play to foster creativity, frequently through role-playing. However, playthings, often quite unintentionally, have introduced us to modern consumer culture. Consumer goods, for kids as well as for adults, are about much more than utility – these objects give the young membership in social tribes, reveal and shape their aspirations, and sometimes symbolise for the adult gift-givers memories of their own childhoods and their hopes for the futures of today’s children. And, in light of the many meanings of kids’ stuff, parents and childhood experts have long debated over whether specific toys, be they dolls, building blocks, or cap guns, meet the standard of a ‘proper’ toy. As a member of the Toy, a museum in New York State devoted to childhood and play, each year I consider whether a specific toy is really about play at all. Many toys, especially the more successful ones, I think, are about something very different – the modern consumer ‘additive’ compulsion. This is the desire to collect a complete set of objects, often determined by a manufacturer intent on selling an expansive set; for example, “,” was the slogan of the makers of popular exotic figures, exhorting young consumers to do exactly that.