The afterlife of toys

Kids grow up and toys don’t last forever.  The toys in the MARTA collection reflect the various things that can happen to toys after their owners have outgrown or discarded them.  Toys get broken like the Aquaman action figure or any of the porcelain dolls.  They can get burned as seen in the creepy porcelain doll head.  Sometimes they just get lost.  The Fisher Price dog is a great example of that dating to the time of the archaeological survey in the late 1970s.  What a toy is made from affects what gets preserved.  While we have a ton of glass or ceramic marbles, we don’t have the delicate, organic clothes or hair that went with the dolls, or even with Aqua-man from the 1970s.  Some toys don’t end up where archaeologists can find them.  Instead they end up in homes, passed down as heirlooms.