Toys

Pushed out by a celebrity-driven popular culture, beloved toys of the past, including blocks, erector sets, doll houses, trains, tops, and tea sets, have almost disappeared because of media advertising that targets children not as imaginative players but as pop culture consumer imitators. Material objects, such as Citizen Kane's Rosebud, Mattel's Barbie, and Hasbro's GI Joe, are reflections of society's attitudes towards children. Toys mirror cultural notions about family and childrearing values, while concomitantly resonating with a child's inner-world of play. Thus contemporary toys mimic ideas found on television rather than creative possibilities found in a child's imagination. Children today may be able to dress Barbie in a vast array of wardrobe options, but gone are the days of popular toys that allowed a previous generation of children to build, imagine, and interact with unique forms from a more diverse range of choices, choices that were not prescribed by celebrity icons on places like television, computer, and movie screens.

Although toys have been around for thousands of years, the relationship between toys, children, and culture has shifted with the passing of time. Gary Cross, in Kid's Stuff, notes the discovery of 5,000-year-old dolls, balls, rattles, and ancient artifacts resembling smaller versions of adult tools and weapons. Many of these early toys and miniatures were made for religious rites or for the exclusive use of adults. Wooden Noah's Arks and fashion dolls, for example, were favorite gifts of aristocratic women in the Middle Ages, while clay soldiers and knights were a source of entertainment for adult men. Eventually these "adult toys" were given to children. Brian Sutton-Smith, in his book Toys as Culture, explains that play and toys became a part of children's culture in the 1600s as a result of a decreased need for child labor combined and a new and related concern with controlling children's behavior. Play and toys began to be considered by such serious thinkers as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, who held that children were different than adults and needed protection and special activities, like play, to progress.

Changes in American domestic life facilitated the introduction of toys into the home. Over the course of the nineteenth century, work was done with greater frequency away from the house and not by children, furthering the notion that children needed to be treated differently. Toys and children's books began to claim more importance in this new children's culture of the nineteenth century, for it was thought that they could provide for the moral and intellectual development of the child.

Developing industrial and technological capacities brought innovations to the making of toys; rubber, plaster, and sheet metal made toys easier to manufacture. Germany was the largest exporter of toys in the early nineteenth century, and more than any other country was responsible for the modern world of toys. Just another dry good in the United States, toys offered gender-typed play tools for boys and dolls for girls. After the Civil War, however, chain stores like Woolworth's (1879) and Sears (1887) emerged and began to sell toys as gifts. Other stores, such as Macy's, designated specific sections of their consumer spaces for the sale of toys. FAO Schwartz opened in 1870 as a specialty retailer of toys.

Notions about the amount of toys required in children's lives changed when Christmas became a legal holiday in the mid-nineteenth century, helped along by the popularization of Santa in Clement Moore's 1823 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The promise of Santa's arrival promoted an even larger children's market. Santa added a sense of mystery and a morality theme as "His List" told him who was "naughty or nice"; at the same time, this happy image of St. Nick served to disguise the crass commercialism of the Christmas spirit. Ultimately, indulging children became part of a family's status reinforced by new advertising and commercial interests.

Toys bought for boys in the early twentieth century reflected a fascination with industrialization and technology; early "industrial" toys include Lionel trains (1906), Moline Buddy trucks (1910), Gilbert Erector sets (1913), Tinker toys, and Lincoln Logs (1916). These construction toys were the antecedent of Legos (1954), the very successful Danish Toy that allows children to follow a design or build their own creations. "Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish American War set the stage for the development of numerous male-identified toys" explains David Brody in his dissertation, Fantasy Realized. The famous and durable Teddy Bear (based on Teddy Roosevelt's popularity) became a favorite as well as the Daisy Air Rifle (1898), Admiral Dewey Dolls, and the very successful, yet racist, Billikens (1912) with their Orientalized physical traits. In contrast toys for girls reflected domestic life, featuring dolls and miniature kitchen appliances. Doll companies like E. I. Horsman and Effanbee and manufacturers like Schoenhut and Steiff produced the Patsy Doll (1924), Raggedy Ann, and other companion dolls.

In 1901 John Dewey wrote about the importance of toys promoting the psychological needs of the child. Dewey ushered in a whole group of child experts in the twentieth century including the psychologist Stanley G. Hall and later the author of Baby and Child Care, Benjamin Spock, who promoted toys that fostered imagination and creativity. Educators, psychologists, and politicians soon had a great deal to say about childrearing and family values. Beginning in 1912, Maria Montessori began making parents aware of the importance of the objects children played with in terms of their ability to learn. Educational toys started to be promoted by a very aggressive Parent's Magazine (1926), whose subscribers were mainly mothers with expendable income. Urged on by such experts, parents grew interested in creating children who could navigate the more industrialized twentieth century with a greater sense of ease.