Brian Explains Toys – Thoughts from December 25, 2010

Brian Explains: Toys

This Christmas time, I thought I would talk about an important issue we must examine this time of year. It is an issue affecting us all when we reach a certain age. Are we children, teenagers, young adults, or the dreaded adult? We are walking around thinking fun-filled, happy toy thoughts and suddenly non-child thoughts start entering our minds. We once knew how the world worked. The one who dies with the most toys wins. Now we question who we are. We see the world differently. Before, it was obvious what was the best toy – the bigger the box, the better the toy. Now, the smaller the toy, the more money it costs. When I was a small child, the box was my favorite toy. Just as the world changed over time, so did I.

Our perceptions when we are children change when we “grow up.” I can remember the last time I got toys for my birthday. First, I must explain one thing. My parents gave into whatever I wanted when it came to toys. I didn’t like getting toys (or the dreaded clothes) I didn’t want. I always took my parents to the toy store (RIP Toys-R-Us) and picked out what I wanted. There was very little surprise involved in the process. It was the way I liked it. I was in Junior High at the time of my last “toys birthday.” Going to the toy store, I was determined to buy or have my parents buy toys and that was just what I did.

I was a little wiser in my purchases than I had been in the past. Economizing on the gifts, I knew I was only getting so much money so I got the smaller Star Wars Ewok vehicle instead of the larger, more expensive Ewok village. I remember thinking, “I refuse to give up buying toys just because I’m older. This guy did not want to grow up. I wanted to be a kid forever. Get your wand away from me, Time!” I played with the toys so little even a year after getting them, you could barely tell I had taken them out of the boxes. That little kid inside me refused to accept getting older meant doing without toys. Toys were my life. What was I going to do with my time? This was why teenagers are so crabby. They stopped playing with toys and had nothing to do. I was becoming a crabby teenager! If this continued, I would be one of those cranky adults sitting around and worrying about bills one day. The teenage years were the years people waited to receive their bills. Your childhood was gone and toys were a forgotten memory.

As we grow up, the idea of what constitutes a toy changes. Legos and building blocks were my favorite toys as a child. Later, computer games took over my interest. I was a creative child and am still a creative adult. If I could create something from scratch, I could entertain myself for hours. The next step in the toy evolution was action figures. They were usually set in a certain pose. Some assembly may have been required, but there was no creativity involved in building the toys. You could be creative with scripting what the action figures did, but much of the creativity of older kid toys was taken out. Creativity gets suppressed as we get older because we don’t allow ourselves to create badly. If you ask children about specific aspects of their creations, you will get creative, but not necessarily logical answers. You need to allow yourself to create beyond sense and logic. Eventually, you can take the creative ideas and organize them into logical stories and story ideas. Every author, screenwriter, and actor was a creative child who didn’t let their creativity die.

When talking about toys, there is usually a distinction between girl and boy toys. Girl toys are boring and stupid and boy toys are interesting, creative, and great. Not that I have a bias about what toys are better, but if you look at Lego and Barbie next to each other, the difference becomes clear. Lego was a 100% creative toy and a Barbie was an action figure with such lofty aspirations as finding a man (Ken) and getting married so she could live in the Barbie mansion. You didn’t build a car or the house she lived in. You or your parents bought the car or house. Life was just as mundane as everyday life. The creative script of Barbie’s life had more resemblance to a soap opera than a creative exercise.

My wife always complains about having to buy toys for boys. “Boys toys are so boring,” she usually yells as she rolls her eyes. Admittedly, some boys only want toys they can destroy. I was not one of those boys. Girls also didn’t all aspire to have Barbie marry Ken. Some girls built their dollhouses, built the furniture in the house, and created the fashions for the dolls. There are creative boys and girls. Girls seem to lose the creative aspects of childhood sooner than boys do. They are forced to grow up faster than boys. If you can maintain your creativity longer, this growing up crap doesn’t have to kill your inner child. You definitely see more happy people in creative jobs than you do in non-creative ones.

Creativity doesn’t have to die when we stop playing with toys. Some of us keep our creativity into our adulthood and still play with toys. I still receive Legos from my wife at Christmas because I still like playing and creating. The toys I play with now are more sophisticated and expensive, but I still enjoy the simple toys the best. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil and I can create anything from scratch. My creativity today has everything to do with the toys I played with as a child. If you are giving toys to someone or receiving toys this Christmas, rejoice in the fun and creativity that is growing in the world. Toys make the world a better place. Teenagers make the world a crabby toyless place with no fun or creativity. Give a teenager a toy today and make the world a better place tomorrow.