Oľga Danglová
Supposedly, the oldest toys could have been any little objects or materials. With the help of a child’s fantasy, they could have become anything the child wished to play with in a given moment. Toys have always reflected and imitated life of adults, becoming, on the crossroads of culture in certain space and time, its miniature copy of some sort. In a child’s mind, such objects represented a world of values belonging to a certain social group, becoming a media through which children could enter the world of adults, learn about it and, as a result, use it confidently. Slovak children from villages and countryside had lived in harmony with Nature. As they possessed very few toys, they substituted them with little stones, small pieces of wood or twigs, fragments of cloth, cones, bark, fruits or leaves growing on trees, as well as straw. Occasionally, children played with toys produced at home by their parents, grand parents, relatives or family friends who had used easily workable and readily available materials found on a daily basis across their households or farmsteads. Today, the beauty of a wooden horse toy or a cloth doll can serve as an inspiration for souvenir production and merchandise.