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What more ironic way to celebrate the characterisation of Breaking Bad’s Walter White – drug kingpin and criminal mastermind – than to purchase a plastic doll in his likeness? From White to Mad Men’s Don Draper, our culture celebrates alpha male archetypes of the old school, and yet in their appreciation too many fans become the antithesis of their hero’s qualities. The decision of Toys R Us in the US to remove Breaking Bad figurines, following an angry petition from parents who didn’t want their offspring exposed to dolls with their own detachable sack of “meth”, should be a wake-up call to the creeping infantilisation of our modern culture. These toys, along with Mattel’s Don Draper or the collector’s Vito Corleone aren’t being bought by children in the traditional sense of the word. They’re being purchased by adults who like to play with their own toys.
Most awkwardly, these adults now seem proud of their toy fascination. Waylon Smithers’ Malibu Stacey collection in The Simpsons has nothing on Change.org petition founder Daniel Pickett of Manhattan Beach, whose rival petition to Toys R Us demanded the store continue to address his needs. “Toys R Us is well known around the world for their vast selection of toys for children of all ages, and we do mean ALL ages,” said the petition, proudly proclaiming that the petitioners are adult children. These aren’t “children at heart” in the Robin Williams, see-joy-everywhere sense of the word. These are “children” in the shutting themselves in a room and playing with plastic dolls as part of a fantasy life sense of the word.
One can only imagine the shame of creeping into a Toys R Us to purchase an articulated plastic doll of your fictional hero. That there is a market for a Parks & Recreation Ron Swanson Bobble Head Toy shows a profound lack of self-awareness on the part of the purchasers, a group of people whose deep appreciation of the character doesn’t extend to considering what Ron Swanson – a hypermasculine character who believes fish to be practically a vegetable – might make of adults collecting figurines. It would be amusing to watch man-children play-acting an encounter between themselves and the character their doll represents. “Good to meet you, Don, thanks for coming over.” “You’re an adult male in your parents’ spare room playing with a doll. Please stop talking to me.”
Is there a distinction between playing Xbox, watching superhero movies, and collecting dolls? A dose of escapism in adult life is no bad thing, but one of the greatest defining elements of adulthood is that our mature imaginations do not require physical playthings. We don’t need to put the shapes through the holes, or weave with loom bands, because we have developed a sophisticated adult culture around words, music, movement and images. The dolls may represent a regression, a cultural crutch leaned on by people who never quite understood why they had to put their Star Wars figures away. This trend is perhaps a rejection of high culture, an attempt to elevate fringe elements of pop culture to the status of socially acceptable material obsession.
The other great excuse of the adult toy purchaser is that they are a “collector”. This lofty title aims to signify that they are no mere amateur toy purchaser but enjoy the prestige of being an adult who expends the majority of their leisure time on the pursuit of plastic figurines. It’s one thing to casually buy the odd Game of Thrones figure, but to compulsively purchase the entire set is to elevate the adult buying of toys from childish distraction to the rarefied pursuit of the connoisseur. The argument that doing something more actually makes it less frivolous is a weak one.
Of course there are more serious arguments in the world today about Ukraine, Isis and Renee Zellweger’s face, but perhaps we should still linger for a few picoseconds to ask how we feel about adults playing with doll versions of their TV heroes. What happened to chess, jai alai and exploration? When did we all agree that adults collecting and playing with toys was OK? Of course, we have long displayed objects that define our tastes. Walking around the Palazzo Pitti’s porcelain museum in Florence recently I saw the Medici collection, left for the ages. Will tourists one day question the aesthetic and cultural values of a society whose richest remnants are high-quality resin casts of Walter White’s sidekick, Jesse Pinkman, in a hazmat suit? “Still in the original packaging”, the sign might fervently declare, as Japanese tourists take photographs with their contact lenses. “Truly,” the guide will say, “this was a cultural dark ages in which few questioned the popularity of plastic playthings among adults. It came to an end only after toy shops started restricting their products to children.”
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