Toy or Collectible?
by Chris Byrne

Let’s be honest, play is not a tidy business. Particularly when a child’s imagination is engaged, this is not the time to talk about being pristine. That can mean LEGO bricks strewn from one corner of the room to the next, Barbie clothes draped over the furniture, and all kinds of horrors visited on building block constructions. Teaching children to clean up is important, but after the play is over.

But this is not about neatness or tidiness, it’s about the fact that toys are meant to be played with, and play is active, both physically and imaginatively. This is especially true for younger kids who don’t really understand the meaning of "later" or, "We’re going to put this on the shelf where we can admire how pretty it is?"

What we’re talking about is what has become in some sectors a "hot button" issue—play versus collecting. Over the past few years, there has been a greater emphasis on collecting and keeping toys perfectly in the box, but for many kids that’s no fun at all.

To be fair, collecting is a legitimate play pattern—as has been observed with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh, and all kinds of action figures. (In fact somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all action figures are sold to adult collectors.) Some younger kids legitimately get into collecting and have a wonderful time at it. The point is: collecting should never be imposed on a child.

Now, this may lead to something that one mother described as "The All-Nude Barbie Revue" in her daughter’s toy chest. Every single Barbie from paleontologist to princess had lost her garments, and they would play happily together. This is the natural way that kids play. With all her clothes gone, Barbie truly can be anything, and that’s play at its best. This does not mean that this particular young lady has decided that Barbie is best playing in the altogether, however. The point is, the child has been free to follow her inclinations and imagination and experience truly open-ended play.

This comes up now because of a story we heard recently of a three-generation family feud that erupted over a Barbie as Rapunzel—one of the most popular toys a few years ago. Grandma has presented Barbie to her granddaughter with great ceremony—as the doll had topped the daughter’s list. Rampant delight ensued. At least until the end of the day when Rapunzel was looking like she’d built her tower herself, to say nothing of plowing the back 40 and mucking out after her magical horse. Grandmother was incensed at daughter for allowing granddaughter to mess up her beautiful doll. Mother was mad at daughter for upsetting Grandmother, and daughter was upset and probably thoroughly confused. She’d been having a wonderful time.

It’s all about managing expectations. To the young daughter, Barbie was likely no less beautiful for being a little used. In fact, perhaps she seemed more so because by this time the girl and the doll had bonded. Grandmother, from her perspective thought the doll was "ruined," and Mother, well, she was caught in the middle.

The biggest misconception we hear, more often than we’d like to count, is that a toy left in its box will increase in value. This may be strictly true, but at what cost? The reality of today’s toy market is that there are so many of each individual toy made that the chances of it appreciating in value to the limited number of collectors who will want it twenty years from now are very slim…because so many people are saving them. Collectibility is all about scarcity and supply and demand. The reason a mint 1959 Barbie can get upwards of $1,500 is that many fewer of them were made than are made today, and those that were were loved to pieces, or almost. The final key to collecting, though, is that a collectible is only worth what someone is willing to play, and we feel that that’s too big a gamble to take—to bet against the future at the expense of imaginative fun today.

As in so many things related to toys, it comes back to understanding how children play and managing expectations. We believe that the memories and the imaginative value of playing with a toy till it’s nearly disintegrated far outweighs the speculative value of the toy in the future.

In this case, perhaps more communication was required. Mother might have told Grandmother that she wanted her child to play with the toy. Grandmother might have said that she wanted the toy to stay pretty. A conversation could have helped both understand better and avoided the showdown at the Yuletide corral.

Interestingly, collecting is a major hobby in the United States. Doll collecting is the second largest of all hobbies. All these avid doll collectors, however, came not from having their toys taken away from them and put on a shelf, but from playing with and loving their dolls so much as children that collecting them as adults becomes a valid and delightful form of self-expression, and one they came to naturally.

It can be a toy or a collectible. The distinction is in the eye of the individual—and should always be his or her choice.

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