Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood

Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood

To sort out who's who and what's what in the enchanting, vexing world of Barbies® and Ninja Turtles®, Tinkertoys® and teddy bears, is to begin to see what's become of childhood in America. It is this changing world, and what it unveils about our values, that Gary Cross explores in Kids' Stuff , a revealing look into the meaning of American toys through this century. Early in the 1900s toys reflected parents' ideas about children and their futures. Erector sets introduced boys to a realm of business and technology, while baby dolls anticipated motherhood and building blocks honed the fine motor skills of the youngest children. Kids' Stuff chronicles the transformation that occurred as the interests and intentions of parents, children, and the toy industry gradually diverged--starting in the 1930s when toymakers, marketing playthings inspired by popular favorites like Shirley Temple and Buck Rogers, began to appeal directly to the young. TV advertising, blockbuster films like Star Wars ®, and Saturday morning cartoons exploited their youthful audience in new and audacious ways. Meanwhile, powerful social and economic forces were transforming the nature of play in American society. Cross offers a richly textured account of a culture in which erector sets and baby dolls are no longer alone in preparing children for the future, and in which the toys that now crowd the racks are as perplexing for parents as they are beguiling for little boys and girls. Whether we want our children to be high achievers in a competitive world or playful and free from the worries of adult life, the toy store confronts us with many choices. What does the endless array of action figures and fashion dolls mean? Are children--or parents--the dupes of the film, television, and toy industries, with their latest fads and fantasies? What does this say about our time, and what does it bode for our future? Tapping a vein of rich cultural history, Kids' Stuff exposes the serious business behind a century of playthings. “[A] fascinating new study of American toys...Mr. Cross not only gives the reader a succinct history of toys in America, but also examines the reasons for the sea change that has taken place in the toy industry in recent years. He looks at changing notions of childhood and disparate theories of play, and he assesses the declining popularity of the educational toy as a means of developing a child's creativity and skills...He has not written a polemic or diatribe, but an intelligently informed analysis that reveals a lot about how our attitudes toward children, and children's attitudes toward the world, have evolved over the last century.” ― Michiko Kakutani , New York Times “Gary Cross, in his book on the history of American toys, notes that for a century or so, manufactured American toys--dolls, trains, soldiers, board games--encouraged children to fantasize about joining the adult world. In that way, they were Bruegelesque. Childhood may have been seen as a privileged time, but there was still a fundamental message: someday all this was to be left behind, as Winnie-the-Pooh was when Christopher Robin went off to school...More recently, Mr. Cross argues, the game has changed. Contemporary toys, particularly for boys, including figures like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers and video games like Virtual Fighter and Quake, encourage a fantasy world independent of adult influence and adult rationality, a world with its own languages, rules and culture. Adults are irrelevant as either players or models.” ― Edward Rothstein , New York Times “[Gary Cross] has read every trade journal, toy press release, Erector set ad and obscure article from or on American toy history. In this indispensable book, his is a kind of tunnel-vision scholarship at the end of which, rare in our times, there is actually illumination...If the once modest toy is beginning to be displaced from its previously immodest spot in the child's heart, this history of toys should gain a place in adult consciousness. It, too, is a tool, directing us toward a new-style education in what's important in our particular age of confusion presided over by the entertainment conglomerate, that voice of modern authority. With the help of Gary Cross, we can now take a long look at history and give some thought to how to deal with our children's new transnational babysitters.” ― Tom Engelhardt , The Nation “No parent of a Teletubby fan would disagree with the argument of Gary Cross's Kids' Stuff ...that toy makers no longer sell to parents, but to children, and that television is their most powerful marketing tool. As Mr. Cross shows in his enjoyable history, the origins of this trend are old.” ― The Economist “Gary Cross observes that as more toys are derived from cartoons and other media--which can limit kids' play to scenarios that someone else has dreamed up--children's rooms are turning into shrines to fast-food giveaways and movie tie-ins.”