Toys, or play objects— means of entertainment for children.
Toys are usually made by adults and are aimed at transmitting various experiences, values, norms, and behavioral stereotypes, thereby performing an educational and socializing function in the course of their play-based use.
Types of toys
In the 1950s, Soviet educators and children's institutions adopted the following working classification of games and toys:
- toys for creative role-play games (e.g., dolls);
- activity toys (board games, semi-finished kits, construction materials, building sets, etc.);
- technical toys (cars, tractors, etc.);
- toys for active and sporting games;
- decorative carnival and festive toys. (Baykovskaya O.F. Review of Mass-Produced Artel Goods. // Igrushka [The Toy]. Moscow, 1950. P. 37)
The reflective function of figurative and narrative toys had long been noted: "Possessing a whole range of very different values," wrote N.D. Bartram, "a toy is by its very nature divided into the toy as 'a child's delight' and the toy that reflects life, serving as a kind of mirror of it." (Bartram N.D. Reminiscences of an Artist // Selected Articles. Moscow, 1979. P. 46)
To this comparison one should add that the toy reflects nature, society, cultural objects, and the technical achievements and fantasies of society in a specifically "playful" way. In toys that reflect real objects, their content is playfully refracted through their form — that is, interpreted in a toy-like manner.
V.P. Pryakhin called this specificity "the distinctive pictorial language of the toy."
The conceptual Soviet toy
In the early 1920s, hard times came for both people and dolls alike.
Wars and revolution had badly devastated the country's economy, and industry had fallen into decline. The production of toys ceased entirely for a time, so that in those years dolls could be bought, as in the old days, only at markets and fairs from individual craftsmen.
Nevertheless, in 1918 the People's Commissariat of Education founded the Toy Museum with the aim of studying the history and ethnography of toys. Several years later, artels and factories began to be revived in areas with traditional folk crafts. During this period, no luxurious, expensive dolls with porcelain heads and fine dresses were made. Both the materials and the dolls became simpler — the world of dolls, like a mirror, reflected what was happening in the country at the time. Despite their simplicity, the dolls were by no means inferior to their predecessors. They did not lose their charm, even if they were made "from rags and stuffed with cotton wool, with clothing sewn from scraps of cheap fabric." (Yurina N.G. How Dolls Survived Wars and Revolutions // Dolls. Moscow: Slovo, 2002). The painted faces of these dolls, along with fashionable dresses adorned with flowers — rosettes made of gauze — reminded their happy owners of the beautiful heroines of silent cinema.
The Moscow artel "Zabava Detey" ("Children's Amusement") produced rag dolls in those years: female workers in red headscarves, postal workers, firefighters, and milkmaids. The Zagorsk masters (Sergiev Posad had by then been renamed Zagorsk) turned out Red Army soldiers, sailors, traffic policemen, and Pioneer drummers. And for the boys, horses and wheeled pull-along toys were fashioned from tin and papier-mâché.
After 1930, work began on creating a new Soviet toy that would reflect the era and the new person — the builder of socialism. Shaping a new type of personality, grounded in socialist norms, values, and behavioral stereotypes, required the creation of new toy models. In May 1932, the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Toys (VNIIIg) was founded in the city of Zagorsk, with a branch in the city of Vyatka. These were the only toy research institutions of their kind in the world.
The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War halted toy production. But by 1943, it had resumed.
In 1948, the USSR held a republican competition for new toy designs, organized with the assistance of the Industrial Cooperation Authority under the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR. The artel named after March 8 (Moscow) prepared a series of dolls (40 cm and 25 cm in size) based on designs by artists E.E. Borisova and M.N. Bartram. The authors reproduced in their play-doll models examples of Soviet people of various specializations, professions, and occupations. The boy dolls and girl dolls were dressed in different costumes and equipped with role-play and professional accessories. They represented a Nakhimov cadet, a Suvorov cadet, a pilot, a border guard, a doctor, a miner, and a factory worker. All of these dolls were named accordingly: "Gymnast," "Suvorov Cadet," "Doctor," "Border Guard," "Schoolgirl," "Nakhimov Cadet," and so on.
It would be worth pausing in more detail on the 1950s and examining some of the toy models from that period.
In the 1950s, production resumed of the celluloid baby dolls and little ducks for toddlers that had been popular before the war. The rubber dolls precisely copied the children of the era — their hairstyles, dresses, and short bibbed trousers, shoes, coats, and so on.
The economy, devastated by the war, gradually recovered. New technologies and materials appeared in toy production. The doll industry gained momentum, and toys began to be manufactured in large batches.
As for the aforementioned popularity of toy horses, several varieties existed, each with a different name.
"For example, the 'Small Horse' was made of papier-mâché, painted in various oil colors to match a particular coat. The ears were made of leather. A bridle made of colorful braid was obligatory." (Abramova I. I'll Never Abandon You All the Same… // Vitebsky Kurier. 2004. No. 87) In addition to this model, there was also the "Medium Horse," whose main distinction was that it had wheels and could be pushed along the floor. The "Heroic Horse" evoked the exploits of cavalry soldiers. But every boy's dream was the "Sound Horse." Its head was movable, and most remarkably, it could neigh — a sound device was installed inside the horse specially for this purpose. Naturally, its price was higher than that of the others.
If in the 1950s the "Heroic Horse" toy evoked the feats of cavalrymen, and dolls in the guise of workers in various trades helped children choose a profession, modern toys more often present children with a carefree future.
The influence of toys on their owners' social status
It is worth examining in more detail the question of how a toy can determine a person's status in society. We have already spoken of the significance of toys in society and how society is reflected in them. To repeat the words of N.D. Bartram, it should be noted that "each country expresses itself in its own toy in its own way, characterizing one era or another." Bartram N.D. Reminiscences of an Artist // Selected Articles. Moscow, 1979. P. 50. The same is true of a person. A toy shows how much a person can embody the society in which he lives, and beyond that, it indicates his position within it.
Each respondent had their own opinion on this matter. Here is the answer of one respondent: "Of course, if the toys were sewn at home, that indicated poverty. Among the poor, everyone sewed. The wealthy had large, celluloid dolls. A friend's father was a cash collector. And nowadays it shows social status to an even greater degree. The wealthy have model railways and enormous stuffed animals."
Another respondent stated that "in our village, people generally all lived the same way. Everyone sewed their own toys. Maybe in the cities, sure. The only difference was that those who could sew well had prettier dolls. And those who couldn't — the results were a fright. But nowadays, toys are hardly a marker of social status. They're accessible to everyone." That is, despite the fact that both respondents spent their childhoods in a village, they hold different views on the matter. Perhaps, as the second respondent said, the standard of living in their village was roughly equal, while in the first respondent's village certain differences did exist. But it seems to us that in the first respondent's case, people of high status were not all that numerous. Such a situation may be more possible for those living in a city, but in a village it was most likely not the case.
The following answer was also given to this question: "…in Soviet times, German dolls were only accessible to the wealthy. And nowadays there are also expensive toys that only wealthy people can afford." That is, this respondent also agrees that toys are undoubtedly an indicator of a person's status.
(Source: Toys of the Gorky Region. Zagorsk, 1933. P. 4)