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| BEFORE there were superhero action figures and a zillion variations on Barbie, before children's playthings were the effluvia of multimillion-dollar movie promotions, toys were something real and solid and good. Toys were little firetrucks, printing presses, delivery vans and dolls to cherish as if they were babies. They were ships and circus wagons, cap pistols and marbles, the same kind your parents and their parents had played with.Are you reading the nostalgic rantings of a cranky baby boomer, one losing a half-step a year to two rambunctious sons? Well, so be it. From the perspective of parents overwhelmed by the array of slick contraptions, conceptions and out-and-out confusions thrown at their children, yesterday's toys were oh-so-much nicer. But they seem to have been more than that. Toys once functioned as a way to teach boys and girls how the world worked. They were a way to mimic role models. Many came with a (gasp!) moral message. And if they were more real, the reality they encouraged was the one that parents more or less successfully demanded that children accept. |
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A quirkily charming exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum provides plenty of support for such self-righteous parental nostalgia, right down to the mottoes printed on miniature printing presses. To whit, ''Active Youth Promotes Robust Manhood.'' But there is also a larger thought: Toys are an incisive manifestation of society. This point is persuasively argued by this small but intriguing exhibition, which is called ''City in Play: Toys and the Transformation of the City of New York, 1865-1945.'' The Civil War had just ended, and soon would come the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the city's first elevated trains and its first telephones. New Yorkers born toward the close of the 19th century would see skyscrapers, automobiles, airplanes and moving pictures remake the city yet again. There would be wars, depressions and, always, more people, as the world streamed here in restless search of something better. This exhibition at the museum's Melville Gallery intends to tell what children were up to while all this was going on. The objects are small and the display is understated. You have to read the words. The effect is to make you think. |
