Toy Stories

Who says that toys are just kid stuff? When mountains of gifts are opened tomorrow in homes across the US, their young owners may discover that they've been given passports to a world beyond any they've known. The toys they unwrap may transport them to distant stars and faraway countries, to a land of fantasies and imagination, where they get to be astronauts, parents, and kings or queens.

What the young recipients might not realize until much later, though, is how much of an impact those toys could have on their adult lives.

Some playthings nurture, instill creativity, or make tough times easier for a child. But the best toys open the doors to the future by fostering deep-seated interests and talents - and their effects can last for a lifetime.

Just ask Caryn Amster. When she was barely tall enough to be seen behind the cash register, Ms. Amster helped out in her parents' Wee Folks toy store on 79th Street in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood.

Over the years she has seen, time and time again, how profoundly a toy can change a child's life.

In fact, she is so convinced of the power of child-toy ties that she is writing a book about her parents' store and the toy memories of some of its former customers.

She recalls two boys who often visited the store and grew up to be engineers.

"Did their meticulousness come first," Amster wonders, "or did they learn to be meticulous by building these very intricate 450-piece boats, the battleships and sailing ships that came in huge boxes?"

No one can say for sure what the connection is, but it's generally agreed that the how isn't that important. The outcome is what matters, and for generation after generation, toys have taught important lessons.

One of the earliest lessons may be that the world, while a big and strange place, can also be soft and inviting.

Toys allow children to nurture and feel nurtured, according to Dolph Gotelli, who teaches environmental design at the University of California, Davis. That's why Professor Gotelli gives teddy bears to the infant children of friends. Those bears provide a warm welcome to the world for their young owners, and the comfort they offer can stay with children for years.

Stewart Goodbody, a professional woman in New York, knows this firsthand. Ms. Goodbody received a Velveteen Rabbit on her first birthday and still has it. "Having my stuffed animal for 24 years has been a great source of comfort for me," she says.

Some children, growing up in turbulent times, find solace and understanding in a particular toy. Weeble Wobbles are a good example. Created in 1969, the egg-shaped plastic people may have looked kooky, but their family ties and counterweighted bodies gave them a lovable quality.

"Weeble Wobbles were absolutely wonderful," says Rebecca Laurie, a media relations specialist at the University of Denver. "It is the only toy set that I can think of in the late 1970s and early '80s - during a time of mass divorce and the liquidation of the nuclear family - that seemed to promote family and togetherness.

"The Weebles weren't perfect. They rolled around if you tipped them over and had two-dimensional faces, almost as if they were clumsy," she says. But they allowed children to play house and deal with real-life issues while also "being injected into a fantasy world."

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4