Paper short abstract:

Keshigomu figurines were emblematic of Japanese toy culture during the Shōwa fifties (1975-84), miniaturized playthings born from the austerities of oil shock petrocapitalism. This paper theorizes their agentic role in shaping children's play during a time of convergence in the culture industries.

Paper long abstract:

Keshigomu (“eraser”) figurines were emblematic of Japanese toy culture during the Shōwa fifties (1975-84), a category of plaything that came into being when the culture industries collided with the austerities of 1970s oil shock petrocapitalism. Colorful, affordable, and highly collectible, these miniature toys appealed to children through their ability to actualize the objects and affects of popular media franchises, while also covertly doubling as “erasers” that could be brought to school. Typically manufactured out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a pliable yet highly durable polymer, keshigomu figurines rarely had any practical use as erasers. But their nominal function, as objects that are supposed to be able to remove written text, offers epistemic potential for thinking about their capacity to efface official media-driven narratives and open up spaces for transformative play.

This talk theorizes the material agency of keshigomu within transmedial systems, taking as case studies the Takara/Maruka line of keshigomu released with the American space opera Star Wars in 1978 and the Bandai line of kinkeshi (“muscle-rasers”) released during the first-wave serialization of the Japanese manga Kinnikuman (Muscle Man, 1979-1987). These two case studies allow for multi-faceted perspectives on the agency of keshigomu in transmedia systems during a time of increasingly interconnected cultural production between Japanese and American media and toy industries. Moreover, they stake out a transformative period in the materiality of media, when, to paraphrase Jeffrey Miekle (1995), the complex chains of molecules in plastics were being replaced by the strings of binary code in digital media. Working with hundreds of plastic artifacts, this paper consolidates two critical frameworks in its mattering of keshigomu. The first is a new materialist cartography of plastics that draws on theories of assemblage by Ian Buchanan and Jane Bennett to posit their agency in the ordering of transmedial objects and affects. The second is a ludological exploration of miniaturized toys, one that draws upon the work of Bob Rehak, Seth Giddings, and Katrina Heljakka to theorize toyetic affordances. In doing so, this paper gives a new materialist spin on the corporate slogan of Takara Toys during the 1970s--"Play is Culture" (asobi wa bunka).