I don’t always dream about toys, but when I do, I dream about a lot of toys.
The location is usually different. Sometimes it will be an actual store where I once bought toys—Best Department store is probably the most-visited dream store—but most of the time it will be a store I’ve never stepped foot in.
One time in a particularly vivid dream, I found a huge selection of vintage Star Wars figures in a ramshackle little five-and dime-type store. But the problem was that these weren’t the usual suspects of vintage Star Wars, but some kind of unreleased wave from a movie that was never part of the Original Trilogy. There were aliens that I had never seen, and a lot of Droids…a lot. And they were multicolored droids, like purple Droids and orange Droids. In this dream I kept picking them off the rack and loading them into a cart, and as I picked and picked, they continued to multiply, with more and more brand new characters revealing themselves on the pegs. It got to the point where I knew—in the bizarre dream logic—that I’d never be able to afford them all, so I decided to start hiding them under the floor.
Because of course I did.
I think at some point in this dream I became so exhausted by the growing pile of toys that I had no other option but to wake up, leaving them behind for some other poor fool to discover.
These toy dreams usually take place in the time period those original toys would have existed in, but I’m usually not a child in the dream. So, adult me somehow time travels to a store in the early 80s, and it all seems to make absolute sense.
I think the most annoying type of dream is the dream where I’m looking for a very specific toy, maybe a toy that I never ended up with as a kid, and I still end up not able to buy the toy. Let’s use Super Powers Brainiac as an example. In the dream I’ll see a peg full of Super Powers figures, and Brainiac will be right there on the front peg.
I’ll feel that momentary burst of familiar excitement, but then something in the dream will divert my attention for an instant. It could be a loud noise, or somebody pushing their way down the aisle, or any number of things. All that was important was that I looked away from the figure for half a second.
When I look back, the figure—that one figure I wanted but never got–will be gone. I’ll search through the pegs, but all I end up finding is an endless supply of anything and everything but the figure I wanted. The longer I look, the more the toy section seems to morph into a completely different beast. I’ve started off a dream looking through pegs of toys and ended the dream looking through racks of socks.
Racks and racks of black socks.
What the hell, man?
The common denominator among my toy dreams is that I never actually make it to the checkout counter with what I’m trying to purchase. Of all the toy dreams I’ve had over a life full of collecting toys, I’ve never actually dream-purchased a single toy. Something always manages to stock-block me, whether it’s so many toys that I can’t decided what to buy, no toys at all (why black socks? Why?) or the elusive quality of that one figure I wanted. Sometimes the entire toy aisle will turn into stacks of towels.
I’ve had a toy aisle turn out to be a painting of a toy aisle. That’s just…that’s just cruel. I’ve gone into toy stores that have ended up being abandoned buildings on the inside, with empty charred aisle like there was a fire.
Apparently, my waking self is cheap as hell, because it just doesn’t want me to buy any more toys. Freud would probably have something to say about that, but Freud can go to hell; poppa wants his toys.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s to never take my eyes off the toy in my dream, because the next thing I know I’ll standing in front of one of those novelty shampoo bottles with Fred Flintstone’s head or something.
That may be fun, but it’s no toy.