Fans, play knowledge, and playful history management

Three empirical case studies with an interest in character toys—Barbie dolls, Star Wars action figures, and Forest Families figurines—provide insight into the practices of prime players of contemporary toy cultures focusing on their activities as fans and historians of particular toy brands. Adult toy fans preserve and produce new play knowledge as they remember, recreate, and replay historical narratives of the objects of their fandom. Play knowledge, a relevant resource in current toy fandoms, helps describe the diverse ways fans act as historians through playful history management, thus contributing to existing research on fans' strategies to preserve play

Aesthetics · Art · Fandom · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Sociology · Visual arts · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media, Gender, and Advertising