How my childhood toys set unrealistic expectations about real estate

Once upon a time, there was an image macro doing the rounds online that read “Disney gave me unreasonable expectations about hair”, with a lineup of the most outrageous animated princess bouffants ever to grace the screen. 

While I can’t disagree per se (how did Ariel keep that massive kiss-curl fringe so buoyant underwater?), the sentiment feels much more real when applied to something else that gave me unrealistic expectations: the toy playsets of my childhood. Only in this case, the expectations were about houses.

Despite the horrific realities of her being a person no taller than 2.5cm who was forced to live inside glorified clutch purses, I was endlessly jealous of Polly Pocket’s variety of compact homes. 

To this day, I still dream about owning a home that has built in “starlight” lighting, thanks entirely to Polly’s “Starlight Castle” (the fact said Castle also came complete with the eminently eligible Prince Caspar, and a pet swan, probably didn’t hurt). The closest I’ve been able to manage to come to that dream was jamming a handful of solar-powered garden lights along the garden path. 

Similarly, the various Sylvanian Families houses sowed in me a desire to get back to the “good old days” of honest country chic. I was so taken by the braces of tiny plastic croissants and fruit baskets the “Sylvanians” sat down to in their playsets that I spent many afternoons, as an eight-year-old, sewing red and white gingham tablecloths for the little animals. I was certain that when I grew up, life would be as delightful as it was for the Sylvanians. 

My mother and I experienced the realities of “rustic country chic” when I moved in with her temporarily, in 2014, during her time in a 1930s cottage in the hills: the constant threat of falling tree branches, snakes in the long grass, unstoppable blackberry vines, and in summer, bushfire season. We did, however, in true Sylvanian Families fashion, often find ourselves dining alongside whole families of mice (uninvited, I should add). 

And while we’re on the topic, has there ever been a more monstrous falsehood than this Sylvanian Families ad, which illustrates a fantasy world in which “moving day” is fun for the entire family and not, as it turns out, cause for nearly irreparable psychic breakdown? 

I never owned a Barbie Dream Home myself, though I did often spend afternoons after school with my friend Kate, who owned a hand-me-down Barbie Bubbling Spa. 

To children growing up in ultra working class, pre-real-estate-makeover Port Melbourne, the Bubbling Spa was almost unbearably glamorous. Nobody we knew owned a spa bath (though we had heard urban legends about women being pulled beneath the water when their ponytails were sucked into the jets; to this day I’m still scared of them), and much less an outdoor pool and spa like Barbie’s. 

The realities of spa or hot-tub ownership were driven home when I lived with friends in Los Angeles in 2012 whose (geodesic dome!) house had an outdoor tub: every time the Santa Ana winds blew in the “lid” flew off down the hill – and then there were the mysterious “hot tub smells”. I’m fairly certain Barbie didn’t have to put up with this crap! 

As much as I’d like to blame the 1980s toy industry for my enduring real estate fantasies, however, in truth it all began well before I got my hands on any of Mattel or Tomy’s finest.

As the child of an architect, my first ever homemade doll’s house was a multi-level late-modern mansion with tall picture windows and a mezzanine master bedroom (at least, that was how I decorated it; it could have been an attic for storing dead bodies for all I knew). Even though it was just a box cut from plywood compared to some of my friends’ elegantly fitted doll’s houses, no Dream House could compete with mine for sheer breadth of floor space. 

How could any real life house hope to compete? I did, at the age of 26, manage to move into a late 1960s unit  – white painted exposed brickwork, white wooden balustrades, “busy single” kitchen – that looked quite a lot like my old doll’s house. Alas, unlike my doll’s house, there was a problem with the guttering and the carpet in the master bedroom went all squishy and smelled like cats’ wee. 

So, given the havoc toy houses wrought on my psyche, let the record state that if and when I have children, I will be supplying them with the hottest new toy in town: a serviced apartment playset with no mod cons and reasonable access to public transport. At least that way their real estate expectations will be lowered, and then any future house can become a Dream Home.