The Toy Box
by
Abstract: As a competition reality series, The Toy Box offers a productive site for analyzing the commercial partnerships between the toy and television businesses, as well as industry strategies relying on the transgression of boundaries between childhood and adulthood to determine the value of work. Exploring the partnerships among ABC, Mattel, and Toys “R” Us that drove the series, this essay reveals how reality television supports “transmedia” industry strategies based in licensing, cross-promotion, and intellectual property management, making these strategies legible through the “transgenerational” articulation of adulthood, childhood, and creative labor.
This essay may be found on page 307 of the printed volume.