This is a poster I created after visiting the gallery of “Dark Peculiar Toys” by Viktor Koen. His site can be found here.

Toys are the most prominent artifacts that reflect changes in society throughout history. Toys are not just for entertainment purposes, but can also reshape the ideology of children who are malleable and innocent. During different time periods, there will be immense changes in massively produced toys, and these changes often reveal how society wants to instill certain concepts in children.

A great place that has a huge collection of toys from different times periods is the Toy Museum of New York. The museum is located at 180 Smith Street of Brooklyn, above a café. The Toy Museum of New York can only be visited by attending theater shows which features their toy collections from the late 1800s to the beginning of the 21^st century.

Their dolls are probably the most noticeable and dominant sector of the toy collection. The museum contains china dolls made in the late 1800s in which the proportion of the dolls resembles that of human beings. The hairstyles, fancy clothing, and expensive-looking jewelry shows that these dolls were expensive and were mainly sold to the upper class.

At the change of the 20^th century, teddy bears became extremely popular. As many know, teddy bears were named after Theodore Roosevelt who was president during this time. These cuddly and cute bears gave children the impression that Teddy Roosevelt was as likeable by people as these teddy bears.

Also, in the early 1900s, porcelain dolls were massively produced. Their white, milky skin and realistic, stoned faces reveal that society believes beauty is defined as having pale skin, big eyes, and a small face.

However, Raggedy Ann also became popular at the same time. Ann was completely different from the dolls. Ann was a doll with messy hair, a big face that is half the size of its body, and a pinkish-based face.  This was a turning point in toy designing, where children stopped to only idolize “pretty faces” and the past definition of beauty was challenged. Ann also wore lower classmen clothing with an apron and instead of blonde hair, she had red. This appealed to the lower class because although Ann was of lower class, she was a likeable character according to films. Her disproportionate body invites more creativity and imagination from children and shows that society was becoming less conservative and more welcoming of new ideas.

Their Barbie doll collection further signifies that beauty is recognized in different styles, features, and skin color. The collection features Barbie dolls of different ethnicities, social statuses, and facial features. Yet, even as of now, all Barbie dolls are slim and tall and this reflects how society today still believes that even though there is diversity, certain features are still favored over others.

All photos from the official Toy Museum of New York website except for the Barbie photo which was from the official National Museum of Play website. Photos are not allowed to be taken in the museum.