From Displays and Dioramas to Doll Dramas Adult World Building and World Playing with Toys • Katriina Heljakka and J. Tuomas Harviainen Toys both guide and foster the play—and stimulate the imaginations—of players of all ages. e authors investigate adult use of toys as a point of entry to the world play of both transmedia-connected and stand alone toy characters—dolls, action figures, and soſt toys. ey point to how adult toy players engage actively in world building in their world play and suggest that play better describes the object relations of adults with toys than such notions as collecting or pursuing a hobby. ey discuss how adults use world playing with toys to develop toy industry back stories and replay—and sometimes revolutionize—original story lines familiar from popular fiction. And they highlight how mature audiences for character toys employ these physical objects to explore their capacity for imaginative, spatial, and hybrid world play. Key words: adult play and creativity; object play; object relations; photo play; social media and adult play; social play; toys; toy play; world building; world play Introduction This article examines adult toy play as a type of world building, which the World Building Institute (n.d.) says “designates a narrative practice in which the design of a world precedes the telling of a story; the richly detailed world becomes a container for narrative, producing stories that emerge logically and organically from its well-designed core” (n.p.). More oſten toys are defined solely as objects related to childhood, not as playthings for all ages (Heljakka 2013). Toy play, as a type of object play, has been traditionally associated with children’s use of various physical materials in their play. To many, adults and toys therefore seem a strange combination. A body of research concerned with adult play in such forms of behavior as collecting (e.g., 351 American Journal of Play, volume 11, number 3 © e Strong Contact Katriina Heljakka at katriina.heljakka@utu.fi