Toy stories: The serious business of play
A growing number of adults enjoy fooling around with objects generally assumed to have been created for children . . . and maybe you should think about it too, writes
All work and no play makes for a dull, mundane existence. Or something like that. When did you last play? I mean, when did you really get silly and laugh?
For many adults, life is a series of serious mundane daily chores and play is something they grow out of once they leave the school playground.
Collated by The National Institute for Play, based in California, numerous studies show the health benefits of play are not to be sneered at.
At work too, a relaxed fun environment has been shown to aid productivity and teambuilding.
It’s why Google added PlayStations to its offices and perhaps why, closer to home, TradeMe installed a slide between floors for its Wellington staff.
Between work commitments, parenting and running a household, many adults find there is little room left for playfulness. Fun is squashed and scheduled into a small portion of a weekend.
But maybe we need to find new ways to inject playfulness into our daily lives?
Through play, people generally laugh more, which has the opposite effect on the body to stress. Blood pressure tends to go down and the pleasure centre of your brain releases a joyous hit of dopamine.
Some play by hitting a golf ball or, more recently, ‘‘frisbee golf’’ aka disc golf – a combination of two fun sports so popular in Christchurch people regularly
Vicki Anderson.
queue for their turn.
Others sing in choirs, some prefer to knit.
But a growing number of adults are reclaiming playtime through toys originally designed for children.
Matt Paulin of Christchurch races remote control cars for fun.
‘‘Our club is very much about toys for adults,’’ he says. ‘‘We have a lot of people in the club, it is somewhere they can go and relax and enjoy themselves and have time out from the stresses of family and work.’’
He is the president of the Harewood
RC Club which has been in operation for ‘‘around 30 years’’. Its members, ‘‘mostly men but also families’’, range in age from eight to 70 and meet monthly to race their tiny cars on a dirt track.
‘‘Ours is the longest-standing club in the country. It’s an important thing, there are a few people who have mental health problems and physical disabilities and kids with physical disabilities,’’ says Paulin. ‘‘It’s a place they can be together, it unites people from all walks of life and is an important part of their mental well-being.’’
Many people are unaware it is a professional sport.
People who had raced motorbikes and been injured and who were no longer able to compete often turned to remote control car racing off-road or on-road.
‘‘Some have said they get more of a rush from racing remote control cars than racing motorbikes. You can’t hurt yourself.’’
Some club members just ‘‘do it for a laugh’’ but others are competitive. A top-level, remotecontrolled car could cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000.
‘‘The upper end is incredibly competitive. The tuning of the cars, the suspension . . . You can have heated arguments and protests, all in good fun,’’ says Paulin.
‘‘It is a fantastic thing we have but so many people don’t know it exists. It’s such a fun family thing with a huge history in Christchurch. Loads of adults are into these toys.’’
David Primus agrees.
He has operated ToyWorld stores in Christchurch for eight years. The popular outlets have been in the city for more than 40
years and, recently, Primus says, there has been an increase as adults are ‘‘definitely investing in and buying toys for themselves’’.
The main buyers of Hot Wheels cars, for example, are not 4-year-olds but middle-aged men shopping for themselves.
Most start collecting as children and don’t stop, driven (excuse the pun) by a sense of nostalgia. For others, the tiny cars are simply a lucrative side hustle.
There’s even a popular Hot Wheels collectors’ convention, usually held in Hamilton.
‘‘There’s a lot of people out there collecting them, not just children,’’ says Primus. ‘‘One reason is they do limited production runs, so the cars can become quite valuable. They are traded later on eBay and if you need a car to complete a set it can get quite expensive. I have heard of cars going for a couple of hundred dollars when the original car sold for $8 or $9.’’
The 1:24 scale cars are purchased ‘‘98 per cent’’ by adults.
‘‘That is driven by people wanting those cars they can’t have in real life, or it’s a car they do have. That goes across to our model kits, there is a lot of demand for them and most of that is adults who are buying those things.’’
A desire to spend time away from a screen has driven up demand for quieter fun. Demand for tabletop games and jigsaw puzzles has increased since the level 4 lockdown for Covid-19.
‘‘We have a massive range of 1000-piece jigsaws because there are a lot of adults buying them, especially in winter,’’ says Primus. ‘‘There was a massive surge since Covid-19 in terms of sales. We get a lot of collectors there too.’’
Adult advanced
Scrabble’’.
‘‘There is a small subset of the market for rude games, party games, that sort of atmosphere . . . Cards Against Humanity for young adults and there is a lot of stuff focussed on mature adults.’’
Tabletop gaming is also increasingly popular with adults.
‘‘People paint the figurines and form their army, and then they go and meet up, it is called 40K or Warhammer Club in Christchurch. They operate in Woolston and meet one night a week,’’ explains Primus.
‘‘People go along and play games against each other, bring their army and fight it out. Fantasy gaming generally is quite a big community nationwide. Some people can spend hundreds of dollars improving their army.’’
Pokemon cards are popular with some adults who enjoy the nostalgia. Others chase the financial gains from finding a rare collectible card. board games have ‘‘way beyond
‘‘I heard a story recently where one card sold for US$1000 on eBay because it was rare, that was from a pack of cards which cost $50.’’
There aren’t many ‘‘Bronies’’ and ‘‘Pegasisters’’ – adults who collect My Little Ponies – buying the tiny horses, Primus says, but many adults do collect Barbie dolls, animal figurines and TY Toys.
‘‘There is also true scale farm equipment and some adults buy from that section for themselves.’’
Lego has a community around the world known as AFOL (adult fans of Lego) but until recently it had not made a dedicated adult range.
There are a number of AFOL clubs in New Zealand that are part of the LUG (Lego users group) that connect locally and globally.
‘‘Lego has a huge following in the adult community,’’ says Primus.
‘‘We had a flower and a bonsai tree, part of a botanical series for adults. You can’t get them because they are all sold out. It’s an untapped demand. They were designed for the adult collector who builds it and has it on show, on display.’’
Previously the more technical sets had been licence-focussed – think Star Wars, Batman – but things are changing.
Genevieve Capa Cruz, Lego’s global audience marketing strategist, based in Billund, Denmark, says people of all ages have turned to play since Covid-19 to help decrease stress and ‘‘help get them through lockdowns’’.
‘‘What’s important to our adult fans, and what guides our designers, is that the product reflects their interests and provides a sophisticated and immersive building experience,’’ says Cruz.
‘‘With our 18+ sets, introduced in 2020, everything from the model design and the building instructions to the packaging and marketing of these sets is designed to appeal to adults – making it clear they are for adults, not for children.’’
Three years ago, Primus says he was ‘‘practically swimming’’ in fidget spinners.
The craze arrived nowhere.
But such toy fads shift rapidly and adults don’t tend to adopt these trends.
Propelled by breathless TikTok videos, the current children’s fashion is for fidget toys, with Poppits in every colour of the rainbow, in shapes from unicorns to pineapples, having a calming effect on young minds.
These toys are currently the bane of both parents’ and teachers’ lives but primary school-aged children can’t get enough.
Their joy is perhaps understandable to anyone who has ever enthusiastically popped bubblewrap.
‘‘Poppits are a big fad, but they will burn bright and short,’’ says Primus knowingly.
Who knows? Maybe if adults get into Poppits too our collective stress levels will decrease?
After all, some might say fidgety fun is just the playful distraction adults need right now.
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