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When Toys Take Over
* The Guardian, Saturday 20 January 2007
Liz Hollis's mother still fondly remembers the three toys she had as a child in the 50s. Liz herself also recalls most of her own from the 70s. But her children have so many that now even their toys have toys. Should we be concerned at such an excess?
My mother, 67, remembers every toy she owned in her postwar childhood. She had just one bear (so cherished that she has him still, albeit moth-eaten), one doll and a wheelbarrow.
Growing up in the early 70s, I had more: a couple of Mary Quant dolls, six or seven soft toys (some hand-knitted in lurid colours), and an assortment of puzzles and games.
However, both collections are dwarfed in quantity and scope by the toys my daughters, aged just two and eight, already possess. They have lots of toys. Lots and lots and lots of toys. Toys that light up. Toys that talk. Happy Meal toys. Magazine covermount toys. Party-bag toys. Toys that beep, flash, spin, come apart into a hundred tiny pieces. Even some of their toys have toys (no, really).
A head count reveals an alarming 32 Barbies and 28 baby dolls jostling for attention alongside 51 cuddly toys and mountains of multicoloured plastic bits. On every surface and in every corner there is discarded kids' stuff.
Most children have a similar stockpile - the UK's toy industry is now worth a staggering £2.1bn a year, according to the Toy Retailers Association.
My mother's generation is dismayed: how can receiving yet another party bag brim-full of throwaway plastic equal the intensity of receiving just a couple of presents a year?
Margaret Greentree, who grew up in Norfolk in the 50s, remembers as a child waiting for a whole year before finally receiving her second-hand bike: "It had flat tyres and needed repairing, but it was precious. The ecstasy I felt on receiving it was unsurpassed." Recently, she watched her grandson receive a bike for no particular reason, and she felt sorry for him: "How can he feel the pleasure I felt?"
Dan Fletcher, 86, agrees. His prize possession was a set of wooden farm animals covered in real fur. "They seemed utterly magical. I hardly dared play with them, they were so precious, so I spent a lot of time just looking at them. I kept them in such good condition that I was able to pass them down to my own three sons."
This isn't just nostalgia: in 50s Britain, toys were scarce. During the war, factories swapped production to munitions and imports stopped from Germany, the major toy-making country. Playthings became hallowed objects: enjoyed for a whole childhood; repaired time and again, and passed on to younger children. A toy today is just another temporary distraction.
Catherine Howell, head of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, east London, says that the typical British child's toy collection has increased dramatically decade on decade, especially in the past 20 years. "It must surely have reached saturation point now. It's unimaginable that it could continue to soar at the same rate," she says.
The museum is about to review its contemporary collecting policy because of the huge quantity of toys now on sale. "It's hard to know what will become iconic," says Howell.
Betty Shaw, 62, has run a dolls' hospital for decades. But now, she says, the hospital's only "patients" are family heirlooms with missing eyes and limbs. "I can't imagine a child bringing their Bratz doll to my hospital. They are so easily come by that kids just wreck them and buy a new one," she says.
Betty still has Molly, her childhood doll, which was cheaply made after the war from "composite" - pulped rags and sawdust mixed with glue. "I had to look after her as I knew I wouldn't get another," she says.
But times change. Now, toys are abundant - and cheap. Should parents really be concerned if their kids seem to have an excess of toys? It's bad news for the toy industry but my mother's generation has a point. Many child psychologists and other experts are also concerned about what's in your child's toy cupboard - at best, they say, you're wasting your money; at worst, you risk stunting your child's development.
Claire Lerner, a child-development worker, carried out a US government-funded study into the effect of inundating children with toys. She found that too many playthings can restrict development and may harm children.
"They get overwhelmed and over-stimulated and cannot concentrate on any one thing long enough to learn from it so they just shut down. Too many toys means they are not learning to play imaginatively either," she says.
A study by the University of Stirling recently concluded that expensive, hi-tech toys are a waste of money - children learn just as much from playing with an old mobile phone.
So should parents chuck the lot? Perhaps. In Germany, two public health workers, Rainer Strick and Elke Schubert, persuaded a Munich nursery to pack away all playthings for three months out of every year, leaving the children with nothing but tables, chairs, blankets and their initiative. Then they watched what happened.
Initially, the children were bored but by day two they had turned tables and blankets into dens and were absorbed in make-believe games. They became more imaginative and contented, and in the process learned to concentrate, communicate better and integrate more in groups.
Steiner Waldorf educationalists have long recognised the positive effects of taking away excess toys from children and replacing them with simpler, more natural playthings such as conkers, shells and lengths of fabric to stimulate creative play.
Veronica Moen, director of Myriad Natural Toys, which sells Steiner-influenced playthings, thinks we should radically edit the toy cupboard: "Simpler toys mean imagination has to do all the work. Minimal facial expressions on dolls, for example, make children bestow them with emotions and act out scenarios. Natural materials, like wood, stimulate their senses."
According to Dr John Richer, consultant clinical paediatric psychologist at John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford, "The mistake that many parents make when they buy a toy, especially for very young children, is they get toys that can do a lot, instead of getting toys a child can do a lot with." He says studies show that when a child is confronted with a new object they go through two stages: exploration then play.
In exploration, children ask: "What does this object do?" In play it is "What can I do with this?" When a child is confronted with too many new toys they spend too long exploring and not enough time playing. "The theory is that children who play more tend to become more creative, imaginati ve and emotionally secure.
"The impression is they are better at taking initiative and are more adaptable, which is what one wants in a fast-changing world," says Dr Richer.
Less, it seems, is more when it comes to boosting a child's development. Bernadette Duffy, head of Thomas Coram Early Childhood Centre, in London, advises that parents avoid electronic toys and buy ones that need imaginative input from the child: Lego, bricks, farm animals, simple dolls, good books.
And playing simple games with Mum or Dad is worth more than the best-stocked toy cupboard. "Spending time with your child is the best present you can give them," says Duffy.
But what to do with all the tat that your children have already accumulated? Boxing up old toys and bringing them out several months later helps reduce over-stimulation and boredom. Or divide the kids' toys into five bags. Give them a bag for a day or so, then store it away again.
So, box up all the gizmos. Pack away the surfeit of cuddly toys and dolls. Bin the broken bits of plastic and leave out just a few of the classic favourites, such as trains, books, cars, Lego and simple dolls that make children do all the creative work. Stand well back and watch them flourish.
