Did Wanting Friends Influence Your Toy Purchases?

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I'm more than positive many of the toys I wanted were because either other people had them, or what they had looked cooler than my stuff.

Looking back, I don't necessarily think all of it was....but they seemed cooler to me because they were being played with by people who had other people playing with them, and I didn't.

In fact, for a very specific example, there was one specific Masters of the Universe character I wanted as a kid, and back then never had it because I'd go to the store and see new cool-looking characters instead; it was either look quickly for what I actually wanted, and be out of that wonderful heavenly store, or buy another cooler figure to bring my own "status" up.


Any of you went thru this?


And yes, I do own that character now; god he's still one of my favorites

I was 8
some of my classmates told me they would play with me if I bought Barbie Ballerina


I bought it and took it to school
I didn't know how to play with it, how to use it, how to share it.
I just put Barbie on my desk and stared at it during recess.
Then some of my classmates started playing with it on my desk.
I watched them playing.

Not as a child, but I started doing something similar around my teenage years. I would buy games which were well-suited for multiple players in an effort to make up for my social ineptitude. It helped a lot, in fact, so I still do it to a lesser degree.

Without multi-player games and such, I wouldn't know what to do with a person if I wanted to hang out with them, but if I have games, I can suggest we play video games, cards, Risk, Scrabble, or whatever it happens to be. It can give you an idea of something to do, the activities are, well, activities, so it takes a little bit of the pressure off of the struggle to maintain conversation, and (with the right people) it can be fun, which helps to break the ice. I find it very effective and recommend the tactic highly.

wanting toys
influence me in getting friends ^^,
it also teaches me how to relate to them
got over a thousand action figures now

i don't play with them
just put them on display

One time, I saw a classmate playing with her Twirly Curl Barbie. I just had to have one, so I bought one. That was back in the fall of 1983.

I remember that fashion at school,when I was around 7 and 8 year old of age.People bought these slimy yoyos made in plastic and filled with some kind of goo.These were sooooooo populars at school.And there was also the Bablades (I think it was spelled like that) spinning top.Man,these were all the rage,just because there was also that sh***y cartoon for kids that aired just when the kids got back home from school and who featured these spinning tops in them.That was back in 2005,in Canada,I can't believe those shows were still legal.It was basically a 30-minute lenght commercial for sh***y plastic toys made in China,and then because of the show it was all the rage...

Not with toys when I was little, but I tend to do that as an adult. It's probably not the most (emotionally/mentally) healthy thing to do, I guess. It has to do with being over-concerned about what others think of me and accept. Case in point: the type of cars & trucks I drive... Popular guys in their 20s and 30s drive vehicles such as my Toyota 4x4 rock crawler, so that's definitely an influence to me in choosing. Same with clothing & shoes. I tend to copy what the popular people are wearing, since I have a feeling of being an outcast, and I like to "fit in", or at least pretend to.

Charles

This thread is making me feel a little guilty as a mom .. and then not, lol. A mix, really.

I've been known to buy my kids toys they didn't really want because those toys helped them relate to other kids better.

And I encouraged my son to start collecting WarHammer 40K in addition to his WarHammer Classic for the simple reason that he knows 3 kids who play 40K, and only 1 who plays Classic, plus the local game store has 40K game nights, but no Classic game nights. When he got upset about no one to play Classic with, a switch to 40K seemed the logical conclusion. He is currently building armies in both.

There is a pragmatic aspect to play, and it doesn't hurt to recognize it, but I would not go so far as to get a Barbie just so other kids could play with it. I am trying to raise my kids to be who they are, and not who the neighbor kids are, after all.

Nope! Even if I wanted acceptance, I was good at striking on my own. One way was that I bought what I wanted, mostly BIONICLE models. Still do.

Nope. I remember seeing kids playing with certian toys and wanting one of my own because it seemed so fun to me. I never wanted a certian toy as "friend bait". I never actualy wanted friends, I just wanted somone to lecture to about my special intrests.

No influence. I didn't want friends as a child; I just wanted to be left alone with my interests.


... I haven't changed, really.

Actually, the thought of purchasing toys in order to win friends never had occurred to me. But since I always kept to myself back then anyway, including the toys that I had, I don't think I could have pulled it off.