If you have kids, nephews and nieces or little brothers and sisters, you’re probably been already brainwashed by tons of ads on the TV, on newspapers and all over the Internet, about the latest trendy Christmas toys.
I can’t honestly stand any kind of “must-have” frenzy, but I find this one particularly unnerving.
Apart from the capitalist connections, there is one main reason why I can’t stand this obsession: most of the toys you find on the shelves nowadays are assembled with low quality materials and display zero degree of originality.
Yes, I agree, some kids destroy everything they touch, but most of the toys, even the ones made following specific “quality” standards, seem to break down very easily.
Besides, though a few details have been updated throughout the decades, there are specific toys that seem to resist any kind of crisis, from the doll that cries because its nappies need to be changed to dull doll houses made out of bad quality cardboard with a few plastic furnishings and accessories added.
No wonder kids get tired of their Christmas presents 48 hours after they got them.
As a little girl I wasn’t very fond of dolls that looked like babies and required your constant attention, yet I never mangled, destroyed or ripped to bits and pieces any doll I was given.
I was definitely more than just careful with my dolls, in fact I was simply obsessive, but given the quality of the toys I used to have, it was also extremely difficult to destroy them very easily.
One of my favourite dolls was very similar to a Barbie (though its limbs were bigger and more solid), it was called BellaJoy and was produced by Sebino, an Italian toy company founded in 1957 that became rather popular in the 70s-80s.
My favourite version of the BellaJoy doll was actually rather educational from a fashion design point of view: it was called StilJoy and featured a BellaJoy doll in a short dressing gown, a flat figurine and various swatches of fabric.
The idea was trying as many combinations as possible on the figurine with the fabric swatches and then make a garment.
Though limited (after all the figurine was flat, though you still had the doll to experiment with three-dimensionality), this doll provided endless hours of fun since it definitely tried to stimulate a child’s creativity.
I must admit it wasn’t a great toy from an adult’s perspective because it implied that the child would go back to the adult in question asking for sewing tips every 10 minutes or so. But it was great to see the final results of your hard work.
I remember obsessively asking my aunt to help me making a dress (and I also remember developing an attitude for stealing scraps of fabric lying around the house…). My aunt had great dressmaking skills and in the end she surrendered and we came up with a summer frock in lace that featured a blue lining and straps that crisscrossed on the back made out of leftover pieces of elastic.
Sebino eventually went out of business merging with another toy company in the early 80s. Little by little quality toys became a dream in Italy (and in the rest of the world…) and the StilJoy doll sadly went out of production, replaced in the last few years by fashion video games and dolls that can show off their perfect plastic bodies and fancy clothes on a toy runway, and can turn little girls into perfect fashion consumers, though they can’t help them developing their creativity nor any tailoring skills.
While I still have my StilJoy to pass on to my children if I'll ever have any, I hope some company will resume making (solid) and entertaining fashion design related dolls. I guess future designers would definitely benefit from such toys.
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