Is It Okay To Buy The Toys I Always Wanted?

...in my 30s.

“Does anyone else spend most of their money buying things they wish they had when they were lil kids?” Asked Sandy Liang of her Instagram followers today, and it struck a chord.

I distinctly remember longing for families of tiny felt mice, squirrels and otters as a kid. A mansion (at least I certainly remember it that way in relation to my child-sized stature) of Sylvanian Families had pride of place at the top of the escalators in a certain London department store. And it was all I wanted.

Every time we visited I begged my poor parents for just one teeny tiny family of fuzzy animal-people. Suspecting that this was a collection that would grow completely out of hand – it’s ‘families’ plural, there is no buying just one – the adults staunchly refused.

Fast forward 30 years and what do I see in THE ICONIC’s toy shop? Everyone’s favourite fuzzy little critters. (I was slightly too excited at my colleagues about this arrival for a grown woman.)

So far I’ve resisted spending my paycheck on tiny ‘related’ creatures – just – by living vicariously through Social media. It turns out I’m not the only one, a million followers of TikTok’s @sylvaniandrama are devouring videos of the inanimate toys’ sassy soap-opera scenarios.

As i-D’s Roisin Lanigan admits, in her piece, ‘Help! I’m obsessed with… Sylvanian Families TikTok dramas!’ “Good lord, I am so deeply invested...”

Designed in Japan – the experts in cute – there’s even a Sylvanian Families theme park that I’m booking my ticket for right now.

Now that some of us are parents, isn’t this the time to finally have the toys we really wanted delivered ‘for the kids’. Which reminds me – how good is having exactly what you want delivered to the door without the kids nagging you for everything they see at the checkout?