This is no child's play

Toy sales in the US have steadily dropped for the past few years. But for more than a decade, the bright spot in an otherwise gloomy market has been toys aimed at grown-ups.

In 2007, retail sales of toys geared to the over-18 set rose nearly 10 per cent.

“This is one of the industry's biggest trends,'' says Gareb Shamus, New York publisher of the industry magazine Toy Wishes.

“And it's only going to increase as this demographic gets older.'' It's a trend that grew from the era of mass-market tie-ins.

Grow together

“Toy companies got accustomed to reaping the profits from film and TV tie-ins,'' Shamus says.

“And they regrouped and retooled their products to hold on to their customers as the fans began to get older.''

Even as adults are holding onto their toys longer, children are setting them aside at an ever-earlier age.

Toy industry expert Richard Gottlieb calls this “age compression''. Increasingly, he says, both ends of the spectrum aspire to the “sweet spot of our time, which is teen culture. Everyone wants to be that eternal youth''.

“Manufacturers have retooled to produce sophisticated versions of their products,'' says Reyne Rice, a trend tracker for the Toy Industry Association.

She points to items such as a Spider-Man collectible action figure with more than 50 moveable joints and a Star Wars sculpture with the fine detailing of an adult work of art. “It's clearly targeted at adults.''

Brick it on

With a basement full of Lego constructions, Ohio State University assistant professor Paul Janssen is an enthusiastic member of AFOL (Adult fans of Lego).

A father of three, Dr Janssen says he is no longer embarrassed to admit that he loves to play with the little bricks.

AFOL members even have a name for the years spent away from the beloved building toys. “We call them the Dark Ages,'' Janssen says with a laugh. “For most, it's roughly the years between 15 and 20.''

This deep, emotional connection is what toymaker Jason Feinberg tries to tap with his line of “dolls'' for adults. He sculpts famous figures from history and modern life and mass-produces them.

Beneath this adult attraction to a “toy'' is something deeper, Feinberg says.

Other cultures have long respected the desire to have a physical, outward symbol of people or things that are close to the heart, “We've lost something by reducing this need to merely being a child's toy.''