From the Barbies and Batmobiles of the primary school to the cuddly pups and bulldozers of the preschool, an impressive amount of pretend play happens with objects designed to be used in pretense. On one day, the rage is for Cabbage Patch dolls and Ninja Turtles and on another Beanie Babies and Nano fighters. Some modern toys are promotional and come with an adult-authored story line. Others represent generic characters (babies or pets) or real creatures from field, zoo, or farm.

Representational toys have been found in archeological digs, pyramids, and ancient graves (King, 1979). They have found their way into museums recording the development of playthings throughout the ages. Dolls were once made of corn husks or banyan leaves; toy canoes were scooped from fallen tree limbs; horses and tigers were fashioned from mud or carved from stone. Human culture has endowed these representational objects with immense significance as though these artifacts of childhood hold clues to the beginnings of human thinking, expression, and feeling. As early as the second year of life children spontaneously talk to and for these inanimate representations of real or imagined creatures; children make these objects act upon things and with one another. From an early age, human children gleefully attribute life, feeling, and thinking to inanimate things.