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The article frames adult toy play as a form of world building, where narrative worlds precede storytelling and can help players actively create, extend, and even revise familiar storylines. It argues that play more accurately describes adult object relations than collecting or hobby notions, highlighting creativity, spatial exploration, and hybrid world play.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/from-displays-and-dioramas-to-doll-dramas-adult-world-building-and-world-playing-with-toys/591643/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/from-displays-and-dioramas-to-doll-dramas-adult-world-building-and-world-playing-with-toys/591643.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Dipper","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the article define adult toy play in relation to world building?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It treats adult toy play as a form of world building, where the design of a world supports stories that emerge logically from its core details.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why does the article challenge explanations like nostalgia and hobby collecting?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It argues that adult relationships to toys are often dismissed as nostalgia or consumer collecting, but play better captures the object relations and active engagement adults have with toys.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What role do construction toys play in world playing?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Construction toys are described as systems that bound creative play through mechanics, while still enabling world building, similar to games with rules adapted to creative use.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},591643,1792191085,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},1374404997633,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","From Displays and Dioramas to Doll Dramas  \nAdult World Building and World Playing with Toys •  \nKatriina Heljakka and J. Tuomas Harviainen  \nToys both guide and foster the play—and stimulate the imaginations—of players of all ages. The authors investigate adult use of toys as a point of entry to the world play of both transmedia-connected and stand alone toy characters—dolls, action figures, and soft toys. They point to how adult toy players engage actively in world building in their world play and suggest that play better describes the object relations of adults with toys than such notionsas collecting or pursuing a hobby. They discuss how adults use world playing with toys to develop toy industry back stories and replay—and sometimes revolutionize—original story lines familiar from popular fiction. And they highlight how mature audiences for character toys employ these physical objects to explore their capacity for imaginative, spatial, and hybrid world play. Keywords: adult play and creativity; object play; object relations; photoplay; social media and adult play; social play; toys; toy play; world building;  \nworld play  \nIntroduction  \nThis article examines adult toy play as a type of world building, which the World Building Institute (n.d.) says “designates a narrative practice in which the design of a world precedes the telling of a story; the richly detailed world becomes a container for narrative, producing stories that emerge logically and organically from its well-designed core”(n.p.) .  \nMore often toys are defined solely as objects related to childhood, not as playthings for all ages (Heljakka 2013). Toy play, as a type of object play, has been traditionally associated with children’s use of various physical materials in their play. To many, adults and toys therefore seem a strange combination. A body of research concerned with adult play in such forms of behavior as collecting (e.g.,  \n351  \nAmerican Journal of Play, volume 11, number 3 © The Strong [Contact Katriina Heljakka at katriina.heljakka@utu.fi](Contact Katriina Heljakka at katriina.heljakka@utu.fi)  \nFigure 1. Molly: A doll drama by Blythe player Pinkkisfun, 2014.  \nStewart 1984), media play (e.g. in books, movies, theaters, and television, and attending art-and sport-related events (Sutton-Smith 2017) exists, but adult toy play in particular constitutes a surprisingly neglected area of research. Game studies considers adult toy play a subject for investigation, one in constant if sporadic interaction not just with the study of play in general but also of toy play specifically. Yet much of the key research on games and toys has followed Piaget (1962) and focused on the rules that separate games from free-form play (e.g., Suits 1978; Klabbers 2009) or the instrumental uses of toys in traditionally nonplay contexts such as organizational learning (e.g., Deterding 2016) .  \nAdults who acquire toys and play with them have seen their activities often explained as nostalgia, their toys considered objects that merely provoke a yearning for childhood. However, as Stewart (1993) observes, this remembered child-  \nhood is not a lived childhood but, instead, a voluntarily one.  \nDiscussions of adult activities with toys most often dismiss the play involved and invoke instead collecting, engaging in a hobby, or being a fan of toys. Indeed, play—although identified and acknowledged as behavior involving adult object relations with toys—is usually considered almost exclusively to represent goaldriven activities such as collecting (see e.g., Rehak 2013; Geraghty 2014; Garlen 2014; and Godwin 2015). Moreover, toy play performed by adults—for example, surrounding oneself with kawaii objects (Yano 2013) at an adult age—can sometimes be an act of escapism, and escapism can also be associated with the imaginary worlds of adults (Saler 2012). As a result, escapism joins nostalgia asa disposition that explains adult relationships to toys.  \nBut play can be both autotelic an","cbCaioP8O2EyXc9s","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaioP8O2EyXc9s","pdf",574473,28,"English","# Introduction\n## Adult toy play as world building\n## Toy play vs collecting and nostalgia\n## Allotelic play and consumer relationships\n## Construction toys and systems of play\n## Materials, making, sharing, and appropriate resources","[{\"question\":\"How does the article define adult toy play in relation to world building?\",\"answer\":\"It treats adult toy play as a form of world building, where the design of a world supports stories that emerge logically from its core details.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the article challenge explanations like nostalgia and hobby collecting?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that adult relationships to toys are often dismissed as nostalgia or consumer collecting, but play better captures the object relations and active engagement adults have with toys.\"},{\"question\":\"What role do construction toys play in world playing?\",\"answer\":\"Construction toys are described as systems that bound creative play through mechanics, while still enabling world building, similar to games with rules adapted to creative use.\"}]","From Displays and Dioramas to Doll Dramas - Adult World Building and World Playing with Toys | PDF",1792072895,71]