ishakhemkablog

When I was younger my dad would go to Boston quite often for work and each time he went he would bring me back these miniature rubber animals.

This summer, whilst doing research on the east coast, in Rhode Island, I visited a craft and supplies shop near a little coffee exchange where I was working, which had plastic packets of the very same animals. I immediately wanted to rip one open and smell that artificial plasticy scent that would probably kick off a month of my life, or impair me in some way or another. The variety they had was extensive, farm animals, sea animals, fictional animals like kangaroos. A sensible 4 per pack for 5 dollars. Even at 17 that deal was seductive.  I wondered how many of these animals I had gone through in my childhood years. I suppose part of the appeal was that you couldn’t purchase that type of toy at  Harrods or Hamleys or anywhere in London. The fleeting, pined after, plastic pig. The image of Boston that these toys shaped for me, was one of mass production. I imagined thousands of factories which solely spat out these magical little animals, and naturally, the business person I was  believed that the market in Boston must have been proportionate.

Naturally there must have been thousands and thousands of plastic-animal-loving children.  A lion was mauling an antelope on one of the shelves at Target. A  unicorn was being chewed on lightly in the corner of a  JP Morgan office.  I imagined a giraffe looming  over the Harvard admissions office (technically in Cambridge, Massachusetts but the giraffe didn’t seem to care).

A Toy Story 1 rewatch made me think about where my beloved plastic pets ended up. Surely, I didn’t treat them as cruelly as the skull-shirted menace next door, who  in the film dismembered and terrorised his dolls. My toys were probably in a cupboard somewhere or in a drawer. After further thought, I realised that they were probably actually in a landfill somewhere, even if I hoped they weren’t.

The same toys I had sworn never to reveal could talk,the ones I turned my back on in the hope of catching them moving if I spun round fast enough, I had simply lost.

The child psychologist D.W Winnicott explained the importance of the toy as a “transitional object” and thought that the role of toys was never frivolous. Toys help children to bridge their internal,mental world with the physical world around them. In an Aristotelian sense, one could argue that the Telos or purpose of a toy is to help us to grow, imagine and play.  Yet, there is something unsettling about this idea that the toy-which we used to regard with names, fondness and respect-would spend its whole life centred around our development. The most uneasy and unsettling part of Winnicott’s theory is that the way that we measure the success of the toy is through us eventually not needing and discarding it. The telos of the toy is therefore to be used and discarded, they are condemned to be played with and forgotten. A plastic pig that performs best is rewarded by being chucked in a landfill.

Having a father passionate about shows like the Thunderbirds meant I watched some shows that were slightly dated. That’s why my favourite show when I was 5 was called ‘Bagpuss’, which was from the 70s and followed the life of a cat puppet and his friends in a shop of lost items. The shop it was set in didn’t sell anything and instead was a place where lost and broken things were brought in and mended by the toys, then put in the window so their owner could return and reclaim them. The sentiment of the whole show was that no one object was ever worthless, that someone would always value it in some way. The irony is that Bagpuss himself became one of the forgotten or broken things. When I brought it up to friends in year 5, nobody had heard of it. So I whipped out my iPad to show them a picture of my fuchsia feline friend, only to discover that not only was he unknown to my friends but apparently quite creepy. I remember his beady puppet face evoking vague shrieks, dropping of ice creams and rapid speeding ups of hopscotch rounds to gallop to the other side of the playground. I was slightly sad when thinking about how my favourite show- about rescuing the forgotten- had been forgotten itself, left at the window with no one coming to collect it.

My History GCSE mock was a cry for help. When I got it back, I imagined  Jackson Pollock to have been proud at the way my mascara splattered all over the page. The number on the page was an even number that was so low that if I had that number of melatonin gummies I would be wide awake. After tearful reflection, I realised pacing up and down in my room trying to remember 50 essay plans wasn’t working as well as I thought. So I had the brilliant idea of retrieving my ‘Sylvanian families’ animals from a box in the attic and forcing them to act. My rabbit in dungarees was now Khrushchev, my baby koala was Chairman Mao, my penguin now was titled the head of propaganda. They feuded in the Sino-Soviet split, they raged and refuted during the Kapp putsch, they conversed and negotiated at Yalta. And they were the ones I thought of when I got my History gcse 9.

Now I collect  ‘Sonny angels’- collectible figures which can go on your laptop that I have about 40 of. They are lined up like the red army on my dresser. I still look over my shoulder at them and talk to them sometimes. I suppose Winnicott would say that I haven’t properly grown up yet. I prefer to think that my room is a small shop with my own window.