Toy Stories

The last time I set foot in my childhood home was February 2020.

For about six months I had been traveling back and forth to visit my parents in our Northeastern suburb of Atlanta, going through what we called “The Unfinished Part of the basement,” which was approximately half of the ground floor and served as our makeshift storage area. We lived in the house for about 25 years, so you can imagine the orogeny of “stuff” that occurred over time.

The corner I was tasked with cleaning out presented itself as a montage of my younger self—a double-sided easel, a hand painted storage chest of dance recital costumes, a large-scale Playskool house, tons of books, various dolls of all sizes, 13 grades worth of yearbooks, and archived school work. The contents of our playroom had been moved into The Unfinished Part when we outgrew the need for a space to play, instead preferring home exercise equipment. I insisted on keeping it all, because I can get…emotionally attached to my things.

So there I was, 18 years later, parsing apart the books and toys I wanted to pack into waterproof bins from the others destined for donation boxes, because I am still…emotionally tied to some of my things.¹ Amidst our Beanie Babies, which were given away,² and a salvaged Pokémon card collection³ was a long forgotten treasure.

A Toy That Shaped My Life: Paper Dolls

Paper dolls were first exported as boxed sets to the United States from Europe in the 1820’s, and American companies began selling their own versions later on in the 19th century when technological advances made printing pictures cheaper.

Early on they portrayed members of royal families, expanding over time in women’s publications like McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal to feature original career-oriented characters. Their popularity understandably began to decline around the time of Barbie, but they remained a staple toy until the end of the 20th century.

Barbie is famously credited as the first foray into auto-symbolic role play for little girls to “try on” different female personalities outside of being a Mommy, but it was actually paper dolls. A rising tide lifts all revolutionary ships.

Children practice how to act in the world through play.

When kids begin to engage in autosymbolic play, they are recreating familiar social routines with the newfound knowledge that they are pretending. Going grocery shopping and cooking in the kitchen are quintessential examples of autosymbolic play. Sometimes they pretend to be the cashier, other times the shopper. Symbolic role play is pivotal for the social development of language, especially conversation skills.