The changing yet steadfast toys of the 20th century
After reading this week’s assigned readings from “Kid’s Stuff” I realized that last weeks discussion as well as the reading really helped to segway into this weeks readings on a deeper level. Cross mentions the Buddy “L” line of construction vehicles, made by Moline Pressed Steel, in which a young boy named Buddy was bored and his dad decided to have an express truck and eventually Buddy’s father had wound up buying him a whole slew of vehicles. Moline Pressed Steel also began to incorporate other people in Buddy’s life who could contribute to his growing empire of vehicles, people such as Buddy’s father and Nancy Jones, a neighborhood girl. Even though the Buddy “L” toys came out at the beginning of the 20th century they still seemed to incorporate some of the modern advertising techniques. The fact that Buddy had a whole story behind him and his toys shows a great similarity between other toys that included stories such as “He-Man and Masters of the Universe” and “G.I. Joe.”
The Billiken dolls also included marketing techniques that can be seen in toys today. The jingles associated with the Billiken dolls really reminded me of the poems that would come attached to the tags on the Ty Benaie Babies. They were cute little poems that gave you a mini-biography of the toy in just a few short lines, much like the jingles that were assocated the Billiken dolls. I noticed lots of other “blasts from the past” while reading, one thing that I thought was really interesting was the the first decade of the baby boomer generation was the creating point for many of the toys and figures we see today. This decade really seemed to be the one that created the toys that many people would consider to be “timeless.” These include Play Doh, Etch-a-Sketch, Mr. Potato Head, as well as characters such as Smokey the Bear. These toys really stood out to me because they were toys that my mom played with a child, that I played with as a child, and also toys that my little brother (who is 13 years my junior) played with. Through the reading I realized that not only did the marketing techniques of the past follow through to the present but so did the toys of the past.
There were a couple of things throughout the reading that I was curious about and that brought up some questions. One of the main things that really made me say “what in the world?!” was on page 174 when Cross talks about a “Growing Up Skipper” doll in which you turn her arm and she grew taller as well as developed breats. This seemed very distrubing to me, mainly because I never had any toys like this as a child and I didn’t think that other generations, especially those of the past, would’ve had toys such as this. The fact that Skipper had “instant boobs” just seems completely obsurd not to mention biologically incorrect. Another concept throughout the reading that I had questions about included the era after World War II and the toys that girls played with during that time. I guess I was expecting more of a change in the “girls” toys following the era where Rosie the Riveter was standing up for women in America. I thought that since many women took on the jobs of the men away at war that little girls would in turn want to become something more than just a housewive. Cross did mention that girls had toys to represent that of a nurse but I guess I had just expected an even more change considering the many changes that the people at home went through during the war. Something else I found really interesting in the reading was when Cross talks about how families desired babies that were cute and cuddly when considering adoption and that the demand for older orphan children was practically non-existant (pg. 85). Cross then goes on to mention later in the chapter that the story of the orphan Annie came about during that time (pg. 118). It really makes you wonder what the hidden message Annie’s creators were trying to convey.
The theme of racism in toys is presetented to us again, but this time the racist themes are not limited to blacks, but they also include the Chinese and the Irish (pg. 98). The Irish are represented as being uncivilized and the Chinese are portrayed as devious. The racist themes towards blacks that were found in toys seemed to only to escalade. One thing that I found to be interesting, or maybe just a bad result of my over-analyzing, was when the McLoughlin Brothers’ game company came out with a jigsaw puzzle called the “Chopped Up Niggers” and also one called the “Chopped Up Animals”, maybe to sort of create a parallel in saying that “black people” (for the sake of not using the n-word) were animal like (pg. 99).
I feel as though through this reading I really learned a lot about the changing of toys throughout the 20th century as well as some of the characteristics of the toy world that have remained constant. I also learned a lot about the toys that dominated the boy world, a completely foreign concept to me considering I only owned “girl” toys and didn’t have any brothers in my house growing up. I also learned a great deal about the world of fantasy toys, another concept that I didn’t have a lot of background on, being that most of my toys growing up were baby dolls, Barbies, and kitchen sets, toys not associated with fantasy.
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