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Dissertation
Toying with Identity: Adult Toy Collectors, Material Fandom, and Generational Media Audiences
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Drexel University
Dec 2021
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00000908
Abstract
One need only look at current toy aisles to see the industrial legacy of toyetic transmedia franchises like Star Wars, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Masters of the Universe, Care Bears, and My Little Pony. However, the increasing popularity of vintage toy collection, curation, and commerce by adults of specific generations, suggests a deeper connection to the media of that era. Today, the toys, animated series, and other media are collectible connections to the past and markers of generational belonging for a significant number of adults who fell in love with toyetic media as kids. The fandom around these toys and their transmedia narratives should not be dismissed as pure nostalgia, nor should this decade's impact on children's consumer culture be overlooked. The Reagan era of deregulation in 1980s paved the way for advertisers, animation studies, and toy manufacturers to synergistically cultivate a new toyetic approach to children's marketing which significantly impacted Gen Xers and Millennials. Toyetic is a term commonly used by marketing professionals to describe the potential for making toys from a media property. Toyetic also describes a specific transmedia genre that emerged in the 1980s, specifically to sell toys, not as ancillary merchandise, but the primary product sold through highly coordinated transmedia systems. Adults who came of age during this period were the first to be groomed under this new toyetic transmedia genre which cultivated a new children's consumer culture and planted the seeds of brand loyalty that now manifests in vintage toy fandom. Toy fandom is also illustrative of how recent generations are socially constructed media audiences that nostalgically share collective memories and comradery built around the books, comics, films, television shows, cartoons, and toys of their youth as part of both their individual and social identities.
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Details
- Title
- Toying with Identity
- Creators
- Jonathon Nicholas Lundy
- Contributors
- Wesley Shumar (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- viii, 236 pages
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts and Sciences; Communication, Culture, and Media; Communication; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991016053429804721