Yesterday’s post on toys was triggered by the news that the inventer of Slinky had died. Is Slinky a toy? More of an engineering exercise to prove a principle in mechanics. Similar to that wooden bird that dipped its beak into a glass of water, stopped, then resumed. That proved something or other but nobody ever told me what.My elder daughter, a teacher’s assistant specialising in science, admits to playing with Slinkies and adds, somewhat dubiously, “they are good for demonstrating waves”. Remembering she was greatly attached in her youth to a shapeless, knitted creature called Fub I asked her what her favourite toy was. She responded: “I loved that garden thing that I had - you would never be able to market it now because the little tool thing was lethal.” I have no idea what this could have been.
In raising the girls’ toys/boys’ toys bifurcation it now occurs to me that small children do not initially demand toys, but are given what seems appropriate by their parents. Obviously this is not the moment for handing over a 00-gauge model of The Flying Scotsman. Suckability rather than realism is likely to be the overriding parameter.
More soft toys may go to young girls rather than young boys but something odd happens as the years go by. Men of all ages admit to an attachment to teddy bears. In the case of Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited the attachment is perhaps self-explanatory. In other instances less so. A late life reaction to being given an air-gun at a vulnerable age?
As far as I know I have no latent teddy tendencies but I must confess to enjoying a walk round Hamlyn’s on visits to London.
