Living: In All Seasons, Toys Are Us

(3 of 8)

As for the doll, it is found in almost every epoch and culture, reaching back to the little votive objects of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as the creche miniatures of Europe in the Middle Ages. Even the cheapest five- and-dime figurine is kin to the priceless Japanese ceremonial dolls that museums covet and to the feminine miniatures some African peoples still present to adolescent girls when they reach sexual maturity.

This year's fashion doll is Jem, with her own rock band, the Holograms, and her own theme song, "Jem is truly, truly, truly outrageous." She is related by plastic to Cricket, a talking tot ("Are we having fun or what?"), and to Barbie, the original glitz princess. Barbie's clothes alone sell more than 20 million pieces each year, making Mattel the largest manufacturer of women's wear in the world.

Yet no matter how pneumatic and now these misses are, they are never far removed from the maiden in the tower or the girl in the glass slipper, yearning to be rescued from her room and from her medieval homework. To Sara Wilford, director of the Early Childhood Center at New York's Sarah Lawrence College, "it is not so strange that children would find a Barbie doll to be interesting, something they could idealize and put in a Cinderella framework."

"Every toy and tale throws a long shadow," says Film Animator Chuck Jones. "I could never have done some of the Bugs Bunny cartoons -- and kids couldn't have responded to them -- without a knowledge of knights and witches and giants. Every popular figure, from Daffy Duck to the Cabbage Patch Kids, has ancestors in the old country."

Among the nation of little immigrants:

THE KNIGHT. Chaucer's "verray parfit gentil" hero could be a killer in a metal dinner jacket, slaying unbelievers when it pleased him. Even so, as Mark Twain speculated about the old warriors, "there was something very engaging about these great simplehearted creatures, (although) there did not seem to be brains enough . . . to bait a fishhook with." The knight has been Galahad, Don Quixote and every tin soldier, in Robert Louis Stevenson's couplet, "With different uniforms and drills/ Among the bedclothes, through the hills." The chevalier now answers the roll call as Rambo and G.I. Joe. He wears camouflage, may carry an UZI instead of a sword and has a way of setting off unintended explosions of controversy wherever he appears.

In San Francisco last month, protesters marched before Jeffrey's toy store, distributing leaflets about the hazards of military playthings. Inside, customers went on buying. Outside, a motorcyclist pulled up and shouted at the ! pickets, "If I had my way, the CIA would pick you all up and that would be the end of it!" He did not say what else he wanted for Christmas. Many editorial cartoonists did. Some 100 of them, including eight Pulitzer prizewinners, are drawing antiwar newspaper cartoons urging parents to boycott playthings with violent themes. Says Bob Staake: "Our art asks America to put Gumby, not Rambo, under the Christmas tree. At a time when we are supposed to be celebrating peace, it seems insane to turn war into a Christmas present."