Toys are universal symbols of childhood innocence and happiness. When a scene takes place in a playroom and is filled with brightly colored blocks, smiling dollies, and the laughter of children, it makes the viewer feel as if everything will be alright. Why, add a flowered china tea set on a pretty little table, some art supplies in the corner, and a box full of action figures, and it would be just perfect.
Now imagine the same playroom with the dollies' heads torn off, the colored pencils snapped in half and paint smeared on the walls, the tea set smashed into bits and the action figures stomped into little plastic shards. Clearly, something has gone catastrophically wrong. Did some intruder do this? No, a child did.
Enter the Troubled Toybreaker, a child with an unhappy home life who takes out their frustrations on toys—their own, and sometimes others'. Toys are some of the first objects that a child can do whatever they want with (as opposed to the many grown-up things they're not allowed to touch without permission), so this also has the side-effect of toys being some of the only things a frustrated child can cathartically destroy with no consequences—besides, of course, no longer having toys when they're done. Stuffed animals are popular for this kind of thing, as they can be punched, kicked, thrown about, etc. without being damaged.
This trope can be played for horror if the toys in question are Living Toys, who probably don't enjoy being smashed up and torn to bits. In this case, the child usually falls into Obliviously Evil, not knowing they're harming living things. Since this trope is meant to be at least somewhat sympathetic, it is rare for the child to be aware that their toys are alive while still gleefully destroying them.
This is Truth in Television. Children who are abused or have been subject to other traumatic events may sometimes take their anger out on their toys, whether this is actually breaking them or just using them to roleplay the situation they went through (such as name-calling to the toys, trapping them somewhere for "being bad", crashing toy cars into each other, etc).
Subtrope of Toy-Based Characterization, and related to Tantrum Throwing, Symbolically Broken Object, Percussive Therapy, and The Chain of Harm. A related concept is Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book, where a child draws scary pictures of something terrifying they've been exposed to. More distantly related is the Empathy Doll Shot, where an abandoned toy is used to imply that a child died. The Troubled Toybreaker may also overlap with The Dreaded, Kids Are Cruel, Obliviously Evil, and/or Troubled Abuser if the toys being destroyed are sentient.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- In this anti-child abuse ad
by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, a young girl treats her doll the same way her (unseen) abusive mother treats her.
Girl: There, there. Stop crying. I said, stop crying! Stop, I said, or I'll give you something to cry about! Look at you! You're filthy! (throws her doll in the closet and slams the door) Stay in there until I get back!
Anime & Manga
- The h-manga Bullied Revenge Hypnosis revolves around a bitter, vengeful Otaku who managed to hypnotize the most feared trio of girls into thinking they want to have his children as a way for him to have sex with them. In one of the chapters, it's revealed that their leader is a Spoiled Brat, whose parents ignored any warning signs of sociopathy, such as thinking it was cute when she gave them a devilish smile when she tore up her stuffed animals, and years later, when the story takes place, she and her two friends rule over the other students with put downs and Blackmail, and the group leader even takes sadistic joy in manipulating her teachers.
- Girls und Panzer: Subverted with Miho. When she's first introduced, her room has a bunch of stuffed bear toys that are shown bandaged or wearing casts or slings, giving the impression that she's got some sort of issues that she takes out on her toys. She's actually a perfectly normal girl for her age (if a touch lonely), and Girls und Panzer der Film reveals that the toys are actually sold like that because the character they depict is a Boisterous Weakling who's always getting beaten up.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Asuka has massive issues with adults, as a result of seeing her mother hang herself at 4, and before that, hearing her father cheat on her with his mistress, whom he later married. When she is Mind Raped by Arael, she has a vision of tearing a stuffed monkey that was a gift from her new stepmother. When her father asks her why she doesn't like it, her teenage self steps on the monkey and declares, "Because I'm not a child! I grew up faster than other people, I don't need a stupid stuffed toy!" This is immediately followed by a voice-only memory of young Asuka begging her mother not to stop being her mother, and then not to kill her.
Comic Books
- Jonas from Klaus (Grant Morrison) is the Spoiled Brat son of Baron Magnus. Under Magnus's rule, all toys are confiscated and given to Jonas, only for the boy to bore easily and destroy them in his tantrums. Later his mother teaches him how to play with the toys less destructively, showing that he's just a Lonely Rich Kid who behaves badly because his tyrannical father is the only role model he has.
Fan Works
- Pony POV Series:
- A symbolic example occurs in Fluttercruel's chapter of "Butterflies." When Fluttershy goes inside her own mind with Fluttercruel, she enters a part of her mind that looks like a Cloudsdale nursery. Its floor is covered in abused toys, including a shredded plush of Discord (Fluttercruel's Archnemesis Dad) and a stuffed Rainbow Dash with its head torn off. This room is the prison for Flutterrage, a repressed part of Fluttershy's personality that represents her bottled-up anger from various incidents, including her anger at the animals who ran away from her at the Grand Galloping Gala, and at Rainbow Dash for knocking her off a cloud during the race at flight camp and never asking if she was okay afterwards.
- After the Day of Discord where everyone went insane has passed, Diamond Tiara smashes the glass dolls in her room because they remind her of when she and Sweetie Belle turned into dolls and started exchanging body parts.
- Teen Idle: Fugo is a troubled teenager with anger issues due to abuse from his parents and sexual abuse from his college professor. After he joins Passione and moves in with Bruno, the older mafioso gives him a hippopotamus plushie as a welcome home gift. At some point Fugo destroys it during one of his rages, and is devastated when he realizes what he's done. Bruno secretly spends a month stitching it back together and then gives it back to him as a Christmas present, and Fugo is so overjoyed to have his plushie back, it makes him cry.
Films — Animated
- Toy Story: Sid Phillips is a mean boy who likes to destroy toys and glue their parts together to make scary hybrid toys, but it's subtly implied that he doesn't have the greatest home life. His dad is seen passed out in front of the TV surrounded by empty beer cans, and Sid's Angry Guard Dog, Scud, is terrified of him, not to mention that Sid has a ton of locks on his door.
Films — Live-Action
- Annie (1982): When Miss Hannigan, the owner of an Orphanage of Fear, sings her song about how she hates little girls, she vents her frustrations by squashing and decapitating a baby doll.
- Interview with the Vampire: During one scene, Lestat tells Claudia that she should get rid of some of her old dolls. She angrily agrees and starts smashing every toy to the floor, revealing a corpse in her bed. When Lestat scolds her for keeping a body, Claudia breaks into a furious rage about how much hates being an immortal, unchanging vampire—especially since she was transformed at eleven years old and will never look like an adult no matter how much time passes; she can't even cut her hair because she's permanently trapped exactly as she was when she was turned.
- Little Shop of Horrors: During Depraved Dentist Orin Scrivello’s Villain Song, he rips the head off of a little girl’s doll as he exits the waiting room.
- We Need to Talk About Kevin: Kevin is a sociopathic kid who has an icy relationship with his mother Eva. When she tells him that he might get a new brother or sister, he spends the entire conversation snapping his crayons in half. There's also an incident in the book (but not the film) where his classmate in kindergarten brings a porcelain tea set for show-and-tell and passes out teacups to have a tea party; Kevin smashes his teacup and gets everyone else to do the same.
Literature
- In The Berenstain Bears And Baby Makes Five, Sister goes through some Infant Sibling Jealousy when her sister Honey is born. In addition to becoming moody and withdrawn, she takes out her anger on her dolls, which remind her of the new baby.
- City of Thieves (1983): One of the places you can visit in Port Blacksand is the local Bedlam House, where upon entering first thing you see is a pair of mentally unstable, elderly women dressed as little girls in a room full of destroyed toys, and quarreling over which one of them gets to carve up a wooden duck. They're harmless and don't attack you, but you can offer them a random item to destroy and explore the asylum while they're distracted.
- Heralds of Valdemar: In Arrows of the Queen, 6-year-old Princess Elspeth is prone to wrecking her nursery during her periodic temper tantrums. At first it looks like there's no deep reason for it — she's just a spoiled brat who gets away with it because her mother the Queen is too busy (and young and inexperienced as a mother) to take care of her properly, and no one else dares to discipline the Queen's daughter. Well, no one dares until Talia, the new Queen's Own Herald, gets involved. It isn't until later that Talia (and the reader) discovers that Elspeth was being carefully manipulated into becoming a brat by her nursemaid, a woman in the pay of a traitorous noble who wanted to make sure Elspeth could never inherit the throne.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: After Arya Stark witnesses the betrayal and murder of her mother, older brother, and their House's soldiers at the Red Wedding, she comes very close to falling into the Despair Event Horizon. While she and Sandor Clegane are staying at a nameless Riverlands village, the village elder's daughter takes to following her around, no matter how many times Arya tells her to go away. When the girl shows Arya her soldier doll and boasts that it will protect her, she tears out its stuffing, throws it in the river, and snaps, "Now he looks like a real soldier!"
- Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: Title character Elisabeth Le Fanu was the neglected, Delicate and Sickly daughter of aristocrats in an Überwald setting. In a flashback, she's shown shredding her stuffed animals even before her Evil Uncle Vlad feeds her the heart of a demon, beginning her transformation into the Torture Princess.
- Wait Till Helen Comes: Molly's younger stepsister Heather is a malicious little brat who hates her new stepfamily and is also somewhat messed up in the head because she saw her mother die in a fire at 3 years old. When Molly thinks about her rejected attempts to be nice to Heather, she recalls the time she let Heather play with her old Barbie dolls, the ones she was saving for her future children, and came back to find out that Heather cut their hair off playing beauty parlor and tore their outfits into shreds. She also ripped up a family of paper dolls Molly made for her.
Live-Action TV
- Criminal Minds: When the BAU is called in over the abduction of a girl at a local mall, they do a search of her home. They discover severely disfigured dolls, which clue them in that the girl was being sexually abused by her paternal uncle, and that the girl's aunt blamed her for the troubles in her marriage and left her to suffocate and die. The girl is found in time to save her life but is implied to be severely injured from the murder attempt, on top of the abuse she's already suffered.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Sick", one of the child victims burns the genitals of his sister's dolls, as a sign that he's been sexually abused.
Video Games
- Red Alert 3: The Psychopathic Manchild piloting the Grinder (a road-roller that grinds vehicles, buildings, and people to pieces) will sometimes say "I break all my toys!" and sounds quite proud of it.
- TinkerQuarry: Once upon a time, there was a girl who had many toys, her favorite being Fido the Jumping Dog (who would later become Staya). They used to be sweet and innocent, but when her parents started becoming abusive to her, she started to abuse her toys in turn. She and Fido would beat up the toys together, but she also abused him by tearing out his fur, which she did so often that he looks like a robotic skeleton with a dog's head in the present day. As a result, Staya became Ax-Crazy, but still feels loyalty toward the Girl. He wants her to return to the Dollhouse so they can continue abusing the other toys together.
Web Original
- In the creepypasta Betsy the Doll by C.K. Walker, Laura is a little girl with an opiate-addicted single mother. Her only friend is her doll, Betsy, and they do everything together. One day, Laura asks her mother if she can have a party for her sixth birthday, and is coldly rebuffed. Laura gets so upset that when she sees Betsy smiling and lying on her bed, she beats Betsy to a pulp to vent her frustration and then shoves her into the toy trunk. Decades later, when Laura is an adult, she gets a call from her mother apologizing for being a bad parent...and for Betsy disappearing. Laura is confused and tells her mother that Betsy is in the trunk. Her mother asks, "What do you mean your sister's in the trunk?"
Western Animation
- Rugrats (1991): Angelica Pickles has a reputation for being a bully to Tommy, her baby cousin, and his friends. One of the ways she asserts her dominance over the babies is by breaking their toys, one notable example being "Doctor Susie", where she breaks the babies' toys when they aren't looking to make Susie look bad since she was able to fix them after Dil, her other baby cousin broke them. Karma catches up to her, as Dil breaks Cynthia, her favorite doll, and she needs Susie's help to fix her. She admits to the babies that she broke their toys to make Susie look bad out of jealousy since the babies liked Susie more than her, and didn't expect Dil to break Cynthia or think she'd need Susie to help fix her. Angelica also has to spend much of her time around Tommy and his friends in general because her parents spend a lot of their time at work and leave her Aunt Didi and Uncle Stu to look after her. Stu and Didi have a lot of time to spend with Tommy due in part to the former being the owner and founder of his own toy company.
