toys! from Mitsuwa!

Here are a few of my most valued Japanese posessions...the Japanese are wonderfully ingenious when it comes to the essence of Kawaii. toys are cool man.

A quick bit about toys. In the 30's and 40's especially, my belief is that those who were designing kids toys and products were greatly in tune with the correct aesthetic of cuteness, or kawaii, in Japanese. You had Paul Rand, designing childrens books and Olympia typewriter ads with cartoons in them, appealing to both adults and children....And it's not necessarily because it was specifically "cute", it is that the shapes and elements involved take one back to a time, an aesthetic memory if you will, that for most brings forth pleasant emotions. The first handmade card you drew for your mom in third grade, of the collage you made in art class in sixth grade. The smell of paste glue and the sound of cutting paper and the texture of a finished product. For most American children, now grown adults, these things will bring forth a feeling of youthfulness (though passed) that encourages the eye to see even a more pleasing sight than it might have evoked without these elements. Perhaps this is merely a minute detail of the whole picture, but for me, it is what makes a toy worth buying. Because the simple truth is that when you get older, you can still appreciate toys but one doesn't actually play with them any more, we just admire them on our shelves or in boxes or in pictures on blogs. So to actually purchase a toy, means it is so great to just look at, without adding anything to it, and that is a great thing in life. Aesthetic appreciation without a serious purpose to it, enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment. Etc...