Toys are objects of such high familiarity that we hardly notice them in our everyday lives and barely think of them. Sometimes, we are impressed by their “cuteness” or technical abilities, but to many they have lost a deeper sense.
At a closer look, toys become not just the objects used by children to play, but some quite interesting and on occasion astonishing objects. While many toys are small replicas of things (small cars, small houses, small animals, etc.), others are more complex creations. Classic toys, such as the Teddy Bear are anthropomorphic creatures: they are neither human, nor animal or plant. Thus, it can be said that these toys resemble old statues and totems of old, which we find everywhere, from Egypt to Greece and the Northern Isles.
Representational toys – cars, classic animal-shaped toys, etc. can have the role of teaching children about the world around them. Because touch is so sensitive, they learn to distinguish things visually based on the outlines they feel with their fingers. Some people argue that this is why statues such as the Venus of Willendorf were so small (they were held in palms) had such pronounced sexual features – they served as a teaching tool for reproduction.
This theory does make sense: the world we see and feel in miniature has a certain echo in the everyday.
The obvious question though, is why are anthropomorphic animals so popular in the world of toys and why have such representations existed for so long? This is a question which raises more questions than it gives answers, but it does offer some interesting points. Many people claim that Egyptians, for example, used to make these statutes for symbolic reasons, and, while this may be true, it is hard to believe that people in the past used to make things just for the sake of symbolism and politics, given how hard it was to achieve such artistic success. Anthropomorphic creatures and chimeras have always been part of the world culture and maybe the time is here for us to try to understand why this is.
Could it be because of a rather flexible, energy flow-based relationship between humans, animals and nature or could it be more?
If by exploring themes such as urbex, one can place himself on a path of self-discovery from the outside-inwards, by exploring the relation between toys and totems, one takes an opposite approach.
As the century progresses, we need to relearn to find the real value in the small and to understand the holistic relation between the small and the grand.