Toys Overview
A toy is an item that can be used for play. Toys are generally played with by children and pets. Playing with toys is an enjoyable means of training young children for life in society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable to all ages. Many items are designed to serve as toys, but goods produced for other purposes can also be used. For instance, a small child may pick up a household item and “fly” it through the air as to pretend that it is an airplane. Another consideration is interactive digital entertainment. Some toys are produced primarily as collector’s items and are intended for display only.
The origin of toys is prehistoric; dolls representing infants, animals, and soldiers, as well as representations of tools used by adults are readily found at archaeological sites. The origin of the word “toy” is unknown, but it is believed that it was first used in the 14th century. Toys are mainly made for children.
Playing with toys is important when it comes to growing up and learning about the world around us. Younger children use toys to discover their identity, help their bodies grow strong, learn cause and effect, explore relationships, and practice skills they will need as adults. Adults use toys to form and strengthen social bonds, teach, remember and reinforce lessons from their youth, discover their identity, exercise their minds and bodies, explore relationships, practice skills, and decorate their living spaces.
Toy Collectors:
- You keep buying and buying the latest waves of toys that you collect. Sometimes you buy them because you like certain ones, which is how most collectors (innocently) start out. But gradually you decide to get the rest in the same waves so as to ‘complete’ your set. From this part on, your toy hobby has more or less gone off track already. Some collectors call this “being poisoned”. For me, it’s called being “possessed” by some ‘evil toy spirits’!
- Speaking of poison, you also have this unexplainable urge to ‘keep up with the Jones’. When other collectors brag about their latest or prized toys, you suddenly feel that you like those toys too and that you’ve gotta have them as well. Never mind if those toys are really that much to your liking.
- You hunt for similar prized toys and when you snare them at a steal, you feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction and pride while bragging about your finds. At the end of the day, those toys will be stored aside where you hardly look at them anymore. Then you repeat the vicious cycle all over again.
- Your eyes are ‘clouded’ by a mysterious force that make you ‘blind’ to the very obvious clutter spots in your room because all your latest toy purchases are streaming in much faster than you can make proper space for them. It’s like your stomach is very full already, but you just continue stuffing yourself with more food at a buffet because the food just looks too delicious to resist!
- If there ever comes a time when you start to review and reflect on your toy hobby (usually this happens when you run out of space at home, and when you get hit in the face by seeing the increasing totals on your monthly credit card bills), you don’t really know why you bought certain toys in the first place. You vaguely remember that those toys looked so appealing to you at that time, that you just had to put down everything else and rush to buy them upon receiving news of their arrival in the stores.
- You don’t mind forking out a ‘premium’ by buying your toys at the regular ‘cut-throat’ retail prices (regular toy collectors know which toylines are notorious at exorbitant retail pricing), even though you know very well in your mind that you’re being ripped off. Actually at this stage, your emotions have long taken over your logic thinking, and hence you did what you did.
- These days in toy collecting, you know that sets are NEVER complete. The toy companies now release them in waves after waves, that do not seem to have any specific themes. The toys just keep coming. Only the toy companies themselves know when the waves are gonna end (the waves usually end when they don’t make money for the toy companies). So if you are “set-completer” type of toy collector, the ‘trap’ has ‘snapped shut’ on you!
- You tell people that you’re never gonna sell your precious toys and that you’re gonna keep them forever. Have you ever thought of what’s gonna happen to your toy collections after you’re gone? Have them sent along with you? Sell them off (when you’re still around) to raise some money for the loved ones you leave behind (presuming that you do want to leave them some inheritance)? Or will them to some fellow collectors whom you feel deserve them?
We are presuming that your children and loved ones DO NOT share your passion for the toys you collect. No matter how some parent collectors ‘educate’ their children from very young age to ‘love’ collecting toys, be prepared that your children may not eventually share your passion. Now we know how some entrepreneur parents feel when their grown up children have no interest in running and continuing the family businesses. The feeling is very similar.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy
http://www.julianaheng.com/are-you-addicted-to-toy-collecting/
