“I had a doll like that”

Ukraine’s only State Toy Museum is a unique place. Children and adults spend hours exploring stands with toy locomotives and ships. Private collectors often weep and beg the management: “Sell me this car!” Among the items on display are wonderful dolls and plush teddy bears that were the childhood favorites of many a generation of Ukrainians. Here you will also find Ukraine’s first Transformer, ethnic souvenir dolls, and cute Soviet dolls. The museum’s collection numbers some 10,000 mass-produced and custom-designed toys dating from the 1930s-1990s. Approximately 700 of these will be displayed in a new exhibit commemorating the museum’s first anniversary. The opening ceremony was scheduled for Feb. 20, but The Day was invited to visit the museum earlier.

This unusual toy heritage started being collected in 1936, on the instructions of the Council of People’s Commissars. The newly created collection included prototypes that were to be launched into mass production and innovations not destined to become mass products. With time, items began to be donated as gifts. The museum’s pride is a 100-year-old African doll dressed in an antique baptismal shirt, a present from the family of the famous Ukrainian scientist Yuriy Bohomolets. Visitors often bring old but truly precious toys. You simply cannot dump into the garbage a damaged doll once owned by your grandmother or a steamboat that belonged to your grandfather.

A separate exhibition hall is reserved for unique folk toys: dolls and figurines made of all kinds of natural materials (clay, straw, wood, willow, and even cheese). Genetic memory must be at play here, as folk toys are very popular with the smallest visitors. In this age of modern computer games and robots children still like to play with simple wooden horses.

“For every child a toy is not simply something to play with. It’s the first textbook. It forms a general impression of beauty, artistic taste, and world view. That’s why you have to choose a toy carefully,” says Liudmyla Hladun, curator of the State Toy Museum.

Young mothers often ask the museum guides about toy safety. They have even formed a club and are exchanging information by e-mail. “To make sure your toys are safe, it’s best to buy them in special stores,” says Hladun. “You must always check the certificate. Another important thing is the label. It specifies the age that conforms to the physical and psychological parameters of the toy.” Domestic certified products are subject to compulsory expert examination by the Ministry of Health and the State Consumer Standard Committee to confirm the safety of the chemical composition. “Before a toy hits the shelves it must be checked for conformity to certain psychological and pedagogical standards,” says Liudmyla Martyniuk, executive secretary of the Interdepartmental Artistic- Technical Council on Toys and Visual-Teaching Aids at the Ministry of Education. She adds, “Toys help a child to perceive the world and educate it. Apparently a teddy bear with floppy ears, an orange face, and blue paws won’t instill anything in the child except bad taste. A stuffed toy in the form of bacteria or a hangman in a blood-red robe with a black ax in his hand will hardly have a positive effect on children’s mentality, either.”

Defective pirated toys can cause psychological as well as physical damage. Children under 3 years of age should not be allowed to play with toys consisting of many small parts. At this age children tend to put things in their mouth, so small cogwheels and similar items will most certainly find their way into a child’s respiratory tract. Defective plastic figurines, even seamless ones, tend to fall apart. Toy stands at street markets are packed with rattles that have dangerously sharp edges, even though they are designed for children under one year old. You can find a toy Kalashnikov whose bullets can pierce a bottle at a considerable distance.

Liudmyla Martyniuk recalls a horrible monster that was submitted for psychological-pedagogical examination. Besides a suspicious exterior, the monstrosity also had an inexplicable chemical composition: the toy left an acrid-smelling slime on the skin. “All domestic and imported toys must be certified — of course if they are brought here legally. But as practice has shown, nearly 90 percent of foreign-made toys are imported illegally,” says Martyniuk.

A toy is a tiny model of the world. That’s why they say that trying to make one when you’re in a foul mood won’t work. All the dolls and figurines collected at the State Toy Museum look very attractive, perhaps because every craftsman put his heart in the job. This is probably why they never age.

“Look, granddaughter, I had a doll like this! A long time ago, in my childhood,” an old woman says happily, gazing at a stand. Perhaps deep inside she is still that little girl, who will never grow up.