I finally met a well-known child ultimate. His name is Tristan Wigglesworth but he runs Top Pops on YouTube, where he posts videos about his collection of Funko Pops (vinyl figures of everything in pop culture), and has an audience of over three million subscribers. Twenty-five-year-old Tristan was wearing sweatpants and a baseball cap, which perfectly framed his boyish, round face. “Maybe ten or fifteen percent of my views come from a younger audience,” he said, bouncing up and down on his heels. “I think the majority are between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four.” This prediction, based on YouTube’s user demographic data, was supported by his experiences at other conventions such as Comic-Con, where he was frequently approached by adult fans.
Tristan has over five thousand Funko Pops, and his videos cover every possible angle on the subject, documenting, for example, what happens when you leave a Funko Pop in Prime (Logan Paul’s signature energy drink) for a week. In one he discusses what he calls “R-rated” Funko Pops, or character figures like Borat and Satan. The video opens: “Funko Pops are mostly for all ages, but there are definitely some exceptions.”
Like Labubus or Pokémon trading cards, certain Funko Pop models are available in limited editions, creating rare items that collectors can compete with. These toys have relatively good value on the secondary market, leading customers to view them as a type of investment known as a “passion asset.” (A study by the School of Economics found that some unopened Lego sets earn an average annual return on investment of eleven percent, much better than the return on investment for Beanie Babies.) For some older shoppers who view their toy collections as part of their financial portfolios, “infantilism” is perhaps their version of being a financially responsible adult.
At Toy Fair, I had an appointment with Maddie Michalik, the Toy Association’s trend expert. We sat next to a number of dancing mascots, including an anthropomorphic watermelon and a dog with flying goggles that I later learned was a major character on “PAW Patrol.” Michalik listed several motivations that the Toy Association has observed among children’s children. “It’s the nostalgia factor for some products,” he said. “For some products, it’s impression value. It’s a collection of items from your favorite fandoms.” He continued, “It’s no longer something to be ashamed of. There’s no longer the cultural stigma that toys aren’t cool.” Looking to the future, he added: “We’re really focusing on the idea that toys aren’t something that will get old and wear out.”
Some observers see a connection between the “coming of age” of childhood pursuits and the erosion of typical milestones that mark adulthood. As Sharon Price John has previously alluded to, the marriage rate in the US fell to a record low in 2019, and couples are having children much later. Nearly half of adults under thirty live with their parents, and many estimate they will never be able to pay for their own home; this also allows for a kind of permanent puberty. “Life stages began to collapse on top of each other,” Keith Hayward, social theorist and author of “Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood,” told me. “Buying a house is hard,” he added. “You might say, ‘Oh, these are out of my reach. Fuck it. I’ll buy that lightsaber.'”
Hayward’s book argues that arrested development has become common among adults and that increasingly society is “driven by childish preoccupations and pretend distractions.” This trend can be seen in the fact that most young-adult fiction readers are much older than the target audience, and in stories about “Adult Disney” going into debt to visit their favorite theme parks. Hayward sees some of this as escapism: “An alternative reality really comes in handy when the current reality isn’t so good.” But he places most of the blame on companies that have long operated under the logic that it’s easier to sell things to children. But the problem with this strategy is that children grow up. “Advertisers and marketers are deliberately trying to prolong childhood,” Hayward explains. It looks like they were successful.