Never Had Toys

"I'll rid them of every plaything, oh, it thrills me to my bones!
No red rubber balls, no dainty dolls, no tiny telephones
If I did without such rubbish, why shouldn't everyone, n'est-ce pas?
We'll live in a toyless world at last, hurrah!"

—Barnaby, Babes in Toyland

Most of us think of childhood as a time for playing with toys, whether they be building blocks, fancy train sets, or even just a plain old teddy bear. On the other hand, some characters Never Had Toys — nope, not even as a kid. Reasons may be:

• Their parents were strict, neglectful, or even abusive and couldn't be bothered to give their children toys, thought they were a waste of time, or even didn't want their kids to have fun (and thus might have given away any toys the child received). These cases may be a Hilariously Abusive Childhood if Played for Laughs.
• Their parents were very poor and simply couldn't afford to buy toys.
• They've always been very serious, unimaginative, or dull, and not playing with toys was one of their Early Personality Signs. In these cases, the parents often tried to give their kid toys, but they threw them away or dismantled them. The kid may have had some boring or unorthodox pastime instead.
• They were raised in a culture that doesn't have toys or were Raised by Wolves.

If the reason was due to poverty or abuse, it's often a Dark and Troubled Past, and they often will have wished for toys all their life, or possibly had no friends either. They may have also played with random objects in lieu of proper toys (sometimes to Companion Cube levels, though not always) or been given boring gifts. They may still want toys or play with them even as an adult (in a downplayed, justified case of Manchild, or, if a villain, Psychopathic Manchild.)

If it's due to poverty, choice, or culture, and the character is elderly, they may tell it as a When I Was Your Age... story.

This trope may be a Freudian Excuse for a Fun-Hating Villain, or even a Wicked Toymaker. If someone gives such a character a toy, it's usually Throw the Dog a Bone... provided they're not one of those cases where they don't want toys to begin with.

Not to be confused with Toyless Toyline Character. Compare Lost Toy Grievance and Never Had a Birthday Party. Contrast Tragic Abandoned Toy and Vengeful Abandoned Toy.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Gyutaro was born in extreme poverty to an abusive mother who worked as a prostitute. His only toy was a rusty sickle that one of his mother's customers had left behind.
• My Hero Academia: A variation — while Eri does have toys in her room at the Shie Hassaikai's base (and expensive ones, at that), she's too traumatized to play with or even open them, due to the abuse she is put through by the boss, Overhaul.

Comic Books

• The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner never had toys, or at least not for very long, before Brian Banner would break them in a drunken rage (usually on the "logic" Bruce was too young to be playing with them). At one point during Immortal Hulk the Hulk stops what he's doing simply to play around in a department store.
  Hulk: Hulk never had toys...
• Irredeemable: In a variation Played for Drama, Daniel Hartigan (the future Plutonian) never had toys because his Muggle Foster Father Bill Hartigan, in an act of Tough Love to mold him into a hero, made Daniel give them away to charity as soon as he got them to show him how there were people with greater needs than his. It's clear that Bill's Misery Builds Character and With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility mentality and harsh methods of teaching his adopted son selflessness and altruism and not allowing him to just be a normal kid every once in a while only added to the already long list of issues plaguing Daniel, setting the stage for his eventual Face–Heel Turn and violent rampage.
• In Minor Threats, Frankie "Playtime" Follis grew up as the daughter and reluctant sidekick to the toy-themed supervillain named Toy Queen, but the only toys she got to play with were disguised weapons. According to her, the prison shrinks believe that the reason all her inventions look like toys is that she is subconsciously trying to make up for her lost childhood.

Films — Animation

• Babes in Toyland: In Barnaby's Villain Song, "A Crooked Man," it's explained that Barnaby wants to destroy Santa's toys and ruin Christmas because he never had any toys as a kid, so he thinks that no one else should have any either. The movie never explains why exactly he didn't have toys, but he doesn't sound too sad about it. In fact, he sounds rather proud about that fact, as if it makes him superior to everyone else.
• My Life as a Zucchini: Icare plays with the empty beer cans his alcoholic mother drops all over the apartment. Aside from that, he has only a little kite he did himself, with a drawing representing his Disappeared Dad as a superhero.
• The Rugrats Movie: In response to Stu bragging about the Reptar Wagon being a great toy for kids, Grandpa Lou claims that when he was young, he'd throw rocks as a game and says a bag of dirt is what children want, implying that he played with those as well.
• Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town:
  • Kris Kringle makes friends with stern Miss Jessica and the "evil" Winter Warlock when he gives them, respectively, a China doll and a train. Jessica confesses she wanted a doll when she was a kid but her parents never allowed her. About Winter, nobody ever gave him anything before, when he receives the train from Kris, he cries so much that his "ice heart" melts, turning him into a human.
  • In Sombertown, the Burgermeister Meisterburger banishes all the toys from the town, after he trips accidentally on one. Kris Kringle becomes an outlaw because he finds it rather unfair that children have to suffer because of a man's selfishness.
• In The Story of Santa Claus, the elf children don't know what toys are until Nicholas shows them because they don't have any.
• In Strawberry Shortcake: The Sweet Dreams Movie, Sour Grapes reveals that she never had a doll when she was little and says that her life would have been totally different if she had one.

Films — Live-Action

• Implied in The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. Although it's never specifically stated that Mr. Prune had no toys as a kid, he did turn evil after an incident where Santa Claus failed to bring Prune a toy sailboat one Christmas when Prune was a kid (Not out of malice, or because Prune was naughty, but because his letter was accidentally misplaced). It was the only thing that Prune asked for that year. Prune is shown to despise children because their parents pile so much love on them. (This is made especially clear in his Villain Song, "Kids Get All the Breaks," which was only featured on the soundtrack, and not in the movie.)
• A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!: Hugh J. Magnate's father forced him to spend his childhood learning how to be a businessman, never once allowing him a chance to play or have fun. In the present, Magnate has a lair filled with toys and games. After he gets his hands on Cosmo and Wanda, starts wishing for more, threatening to turn all of Dimmsdale into his own personal playground.
• In Ghostbusters II, Egon mentions that he never had toys because his parents "didn't believe" in them.
  Ray: You mean you never even had a Slinky?
  Egon: We had part of a Slinky. But I straightened it.
• The House That Dripped Blood: In "Sweets for the Sweet", John is a Fantasy-Forbidding Father who forbids his daughter from any contact with other children, or even to have any toys.
• In Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford throws her daughter Christina a huge birthday party with dozens of presents, but only allows her to keep one of them—a doll that Joan herself gave as a gift—and donates the rest to an orphanage just to make herself look good. In a later scene, Christina vents her frustration by imitating her mother with the help of her baby dolls. The next morning, Christina awakens to discover that Joan stole all the dolls as punishment for the imitation.
• Scrooged: When Frank was four years old, his father gave him five pounds of veal for Christmas instead of the toy train the kid asked for and told him to get a job if he really wanted it.
• Us: Red says that, while Adelaide received toys on birthdays and Christmases, she only received scissors to play with.

Literature

• In Rosamunde Pilcher's The Carousel, Mrs. Tolliver tells Prue and her aunt Phoebe that she can't keep her granddaughter Charlotte after the latter was abandoned by her parents, saying she donated her daughter's toys and children books long ago. Prue is shocked of learning that Charlotte always came to spend summer with her grandmother in a cold, unwelcoming house without toys. "No wonder Charlotte adored the carousel," she adds mentally, thinking of the old wooden toy that Phoebe's late boyfriend made for her when she was a child herself.
• Danny, the Champion of the World: Danny's father never gave him toys, but unlike most fictional parents who choose not to buy toys, he's not abusive. He just thinks it's easier to let Danny play with random everyday objects instead, which Danny does enjoy.
• James and the Giant Peach: While staying with his aunts, James wasn't given any toys to play with. All his aunts would do was make him work all the time.
• In Les Misérables, the only toy the abusive Thénardiers give to little Cosette is a tiny lead sword the size of her finger, which she uses to cut off the heads of flies. When Jean Valjean rescues and adopts her, one of the first things he does is buy her a beautiful doll.
• In Microserfs, Dusty's hippie parents only bought her a single store-bought toy; it was a Spirograph, and they only bought her it because she convinced them that it was an "educational" toy.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four: At one point, Winston has to write an obituary for a nonexistent person named Comrade Ogilvy as part of his job. Part of the biography for Comrade Ogilvy states that as a child, he refused to play with most toys — the few toys he'd play with were military-oriented, such as a drum, toy gun, and toy helicopter. It is also stated that throughout his life, Ogilvy had no other hobbies or forms of recreation other than serving Big Brother. Given the totalitarianistic form of government that the novel is set in, this style of life is actually idealized by the citizens of Oceania.
• One licensed book based on Rugrats has Grandpa Lou mention that in his childhood, the only toy he had was a stick and a piece of string.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: When the Baudelaire siblings are adopted by their evil distant cousin Count Olaf, he doesn't give them any toys to play with, only rocks, since he doesn't care about them.
• In The Thief Lord, Renzo had to work as a servant since he was little and spends the story trying to reassemble a Fountain of Youth to make up for it. He manages to use it to become a kid again, but then just feels bored when he gets a chance to play with a roomful of toys he hoarded. Realizing he can't get his childhood back even if he looks like a child, he has a Heel–Face Turn and helps the main characters.

Live-Action TV

• One episode of Eerie, Indiana had a toy factory owner whose Fantasy-Forbidding Father made him run the family toy business, but never allowed his son to actually play with any of them.
• On Friends, as part of Phoebe's Dark and Troubled Past, she often mentioned not having certain toys as a kid, such as a bicycle or a doll house.
  Phoebe: Wow, a house for dolls! That's so cool. When I was a kid, I had a barrel.
  Joey: Uh, Pheebs, you had a barrel for a doll house?
  Phoebe: No, just a barrel.
• Once Upon a Time: Malcolm told his son Rumplestiltskin that, when he was a kid, his father sold him to a blacksmith and his only comfort was to dream about Never Never Land at night. He eventually uses the magic beans Rumple won from the spinsters to take them there, but sends his son back because the place is only for children so he'll be able to stay there and be young again. On his turn, he actually gave Rumple only one toy, a doll, when he left the kid with the spinsters. Rumple called the doll Peter Pan but lost it when Malcolm expulsed him from Never Never Land. He keeps his son's doll and adopts its name.
• Jarod of The Pretender never received toys in the Center, to the point their discovery is part of major Character Development due to the discovery of the outside world.
• Scorpion: Happy tells her friends that her foster families always sent her back to the orphanage before Christmas so they wouldn't have to buy her toys. She gained calendars instead.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Booby Trap", Captain Picard describes the derelict Promellian cruiser they've found as being "in the bottle", to blank looks from Worf and Data. Picard explains the concept of a ship in a bottle and wonders if anyone besides him built them when they were boys. Worf replies that he never played with toys (befitting his gruff, stodgy personality), while Data points out that he was never a boy (being an android who was Born as an Adult).
• In Victorious, Jade alludes to the fact that she didn't have any toys growing up as proof that she didn't have a great childhood.
  Jade: I'm sick of this. Ice cream reminds me of my childhood.
  Cat: You didn't have a happy childhood?
  Jade: My favorite toy was a hammer. You finish the puzzle.

Magazines

• According to a Disney Adventures magazine, Al from Toy Story 2 was never allowed to play with toys as a child, which explains why he became a toy collector as an adult.

Theatre

• In Annie, the title character has grown up in Miss Hannigan's Orphanage of Fear, where she and the other girls are forced to work, not play. When she arrives at the Warbucks's mansion and the servants assure her that during her stay, she won't need to pick up any toys, she replies "That's okay, I haven't got any anyway!"

Video Games

• Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse: At the end of the game, it is revealed that the ghost that seems to be haunting the schoolhouse and stealing toys from the children is just two criminal sharks in disguise stealing toys on behalf of their criminal boss, the Squidfather. He commanded them to steal toys for himself due to never having one. Though the toys are returned, Luther gives up his action figure, saying that even the Squidfather "deserves one toy".
• Monster Tale: One of the Kid-Kings, Zoe, states that back in the human world, her parents would never let her have any toys because of her habit of breaking them. When she became one of the Kid-Kings, she put all the monsters in her kingdom to work making her toys, whether they want to or not.
• In The Royal Romance, the only toy Hana was allowed to have by her oppressive parents was a tea set, so that she could use it to learn to be a Proper Lady.
• Persona 4: At one point while griping about the teenagers of the modern day, Detective Adachi complains that his parents forced him to spend his childhood studying. It turns out that although he's not allowed to carry a gun off-duty, he does have a toy gun jury-rigged to act like a real one.
• Saints Row (2022): Kevin at one point asks the Boss to go with him to a new wing of FB's so that he can buy a collection of Bland-Name Product versions of Transformers, admitting that he could never get any of those toys as a child at the original release, due to growing up in a foster home. The Boss agrees to Kevin's request. Of course, this being a Saints Row game, they then find out that rival gang the Idols have stolen all the toys, so they decide to kill them for it. After this is accomplished, they decide to keep one for Kevin and donate the rest to an orphanage.
  The Boss: Fuck the toys. They made you sad.

Web Original

• In the Brazilian series of animated shorts Juro Que Vi (same as "I saw it, I swear"), the episode about the sacis tells the story of a cantankerous farmer feared even by his horses. A saci pulls pranks on him — and everybody else in the farm — until he finds an old photo album. Through the photos, the saci learns that the farmer had to work hard on the plantations since he was a kid. Subverted that he actually had one toy, a wooden horse, but never came to play with it, and now its head adorned his cane. He traps the saci in a bottle but accidentally causes a fire when he tries to escape with his prey from other angry sacis. In despair, he decides to release his small prisoner so at least one of them would survive; in gratitude, the sacis turn the farmer back into a child (physically and mentally), so he will have a happy childhood this time, raised by his former staff.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: As shown in "Bob Fires the Kids", Bob never had toys growing up (or any real friends, for that matter) due to his father Big Bob always making him work the grill at his restaurant and never allowing him to go out and do anything else. As such, the closest things he had to toys or companions were Mr. Brilly the scouring pad, a spatula, and Mr. Doglovich the dog-shaped bar of soap. In fact, he still talks to inanimate objects now, though usually when he's high or dealing with extremely negative moods, and only when he thinks nobody's watching.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Numbuh 3/Kuki's mother Genki mentions that she wasn't allowed to play with dolls or other toys when she was little (though it's never explained why), and the memory of it visibly saddens her. It is implied that this is why her daughters Kuki and Mushi have so many Rainbow Monkeys, as she wants them to have a happier childhood than she did.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Eddy states that he hates Christmas because all he gets are clothes. Sure enough, in the Christmas Special, he finds presents for him hidden in the attic and opens them, only to find clothes, much to his dismay.
• The Modern Madcaps short Fit to Be Toyed features a company CEO who is obsessed with toys, even during board meetings. Once brought to a shrink, the cause is determined to be his father not allowing him to play with toys in his childhood.
• Gumby: In one episode nonother than Ebenezer Scrooge tries to destroy Toyland, dismissing it as "humbug". Once Gumby and friends stop him, they have an idea on why he's such a miser. The last scene is Scrooge playing with a toy train, genuinely happy.
• In the Hey Arnold! episode "Back to School", Grandpa Phil tells Arnold that during his youth in the 1920s, he dreamed of getting his grade school diploma until The Great Depression came and that no one could afford toys for Christmas during that time, so he and the other kids had to make their own toys out of dirt. This is accompanied by a young Phil being shown playing baseball with a bat that disintegrates as soon as it hits the ball.
• Little Bear: In one episode, No-Feet the snake mentions that he's never even heard of toys and wishes he had them. This is because he is a snake, and snakes don't play with toys.
• The Mask: In "Santa Mask", Kellaway tells Doyle he stopped believing in Santa Claus when he was five because he asked for a clockwork train called Captain Choo-choo and got a lousy shirt, instead. At the end of the episode, he finds a Captain Choo-choo behind his tote bag in the office and sheds a tear, although he still refuses to believe in Santa openly.
• Mega Man (Ruby-Spears): As he's putting the finishing touches of Proto Man in the first episode, Dr. Wily murmurs to himself about how he never got toys as a kid and vows to make his own robot toys in the form of Robot Masters.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Subverted and inverted at the same time in the Christmas episode. Jenny meets a boy named Todd Sweeney who says he never got anything he wanted for Christmas, so she offers to act as his toy for the day. However, she soon discovers he has loads of toys, and he reveals that it wasn't toys he was ever wanting yet he always got toys with his actual want being a powerful weapon.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Pinkie Pie, the resident party animal, describes her upbringing on a rock farm this way. All she and her sisters ever did was work on the farm, until one day she swung hard in the other direction and devoted her life to bringing happiness to others.
• Robotboy:
  • In "Destroy All Robots", Principal Culpepper is a Fun-Hating Confiscating Adult who takes toys from children, seemingly with the intent of destroying them. Tommy later discovers that she actually takes them so she can play with them herself. She reveals that she does so because she was never allowed to play with dolls as a girl, and had to make her own out of chicken bones and tinfoil.
  • In "Kamispazi", while disguised as Tommy's mom, Constantine says that he didn't have any robot toys at the orphanage — which he quickly corrects to Tommy's grandmother's home. It's unknown if this is true since he most likely said this to get his hands on Robotboy. However, in "Kamikazi's Nightmare", he's excited by a robot toy that belonged to Tommy, implying that he might not have had these at the orphanage.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In their childhood flashbacks, Adora and Catra are never seen with toys, although they are allowed to run and play in the Horde corridors. Justified because not only were they adopted by an abusive witch, but they were also raised to be Child Soldiers in an environment whose creator is an alien clone that was Born as an Adult.
• The Simpsons: In "Homer's Enemy", Frank Grimes, as part of his Hilariously Abusive Childhood, never received toys because he was abandoned at four years old and instead delivered them to rich and loving families as one of his jobs. The only possessions he has to show for his hard life, aside from his physics degree from a remote college, are his briefcase and personalized pencils.
• The Smurfs (1981): Prince George spent three years shut in a dungeon by his sadistic aunt Imperia, who lied to everyone that he was very sick, so she could rule in his place and, afterwards, take the throne. She made him wear rags, eat only gruel, and didn't allow him to have any toys. After George escapes with the help of the Clockwork Smurf, Imperia has her troops searching for them, planning to "burn his toy doll".

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