Clowns In My Coffee

Quick! Name the necessary conditions for something to be a “toy.” What turns on your answer? Why, money of course.

This is rough terrain. On the one hand, I can see the argument that figurines are generally traded between adults for real adult money, and, if you assume the “toy” designation is significant to the tribunal because the motivation is to give some sort of break for things relating to children, the decision makes a certain amount of sense. On the other hand, there are more subtle ways of playing than flinging things hither and yon, and you don’t need to be a juvenile to be juvenile:

“They want to convey the idea that they are intelligent and so, you know, you have — someone comes in your office and you have this Star Trek mini bell jar [figurine] sitting on your desk and they go, ‘Oh, you’re a Trekkie, I’m a Trekkie too,’ and it conveys a feeling that you are intelligent,” Franklin Mint official John Mark Morton told the CITT during hearings last December.

I don’t think that particular example helps his case, though: if “conveys a feeling that you are intelligent” (err, really?) is a sufficient condition for toyhood, a framed copy of your degree is a toy.  I don’t think that’s gonna fly, for some reason. Although it probably would make a bitchen paper airplane …