War Toys

Abstract

With only 64 shopping days to Christmas, ‘Toys for 1988: the Gamleys Christmas Catalogue’ landed unsolicited on my doormat. It was a reminder that the toy industry trades in wishes and desires. The front cover photograph features a Christmas morning scene with tree and presents, bathed in golden light, that is gazed at from the shadows in the doorway by a boy and a girl with their backs to the camera. The presents themselves are not wrapped up as gifts, but displayed as they would be in the shop, in attractive packages with brand names facing the viewer: ‘Kongman’, a ‘Tiny Tears’ doll, ‘Le Mans Scalextric’ — and an ‘Action Force’ helicopter. Within the catalogue, these toys are sorted into sections. At the front, you immediately discover ‘Action Figures, Cars, Trucks, Robots, Trains and Science’, featuring on the first page the ‘Action Force’ series of ‘fully poseable modern army figures’ and their range of military vehicles. At the back, after some hunting, you will find ‘Soft Toys, Around the House, Dolls and Accessories’. Predict- ably, all six illustrative photos in the ‘around the house’ section featurerls, and all four in the ‘action’ section feature boys. The organisation of desire here is gendered, and a classic dichotomy reproduced, whereby girlhood is associated with domesticity and the private world, and boyhood with adventure and the public world.

‘A toy, simply, is something to have fun with.’

Leslie Daiken, Children’s Toys Throughout the Ages.