Is it weird to like toys as an adult?

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I'm 23, turning 24 next month....but I have a slight problem I'm worried about.

I still love buying those plastic army men toys.

I love setting em up for display, painting em to fit historical soldiers in battle and I've been making short films about battles playing tribute to movies I love like Windtalkers.

I'm worried about people judging me for playing with toys at my age, what should I do?

Anyone else on the spectrum still like toys as an adult?

I love toys.

I can't really play with toys any more, but I still get mesmorized by them because of the bright colours.

If I had the money and the room, I would try to collect every toy I owned as a child and put them all on display in a spare room, (available for any child relatives that come round).

"The difference between men and boys is the size of their toys."
When people would come to me wanting to learn to make jewellery, I would give them some pliers and tell them to play with some wire. Scrap wood can be a tremendous amount of fun on it's way to becoming firewood. In both cases, we will play "too hard" and break things, which teaches important lessons the only way they can be learned.

I had a friend who drew an excellent map of Middle Earth, so I asked him to paint a 1/8 scale head for a model of mine for a product promotion. One of the best museum displays I've seen is a vastly enlarged model of living topsoil.

Your PR hazard is probably the proximity of your topic to "playing with dolls." Can you branch out, possibly with an eye to doing it professionally? If you can manage that, you'll never have to work.

Do not worry about it. It is completely normal. I have enjoyed toy trains which as an adult we call model railways since I was a toddler and now I am in my 40's I still am just as fond of them as I was when I first set my eyes on them!
It is completely normal. Those who are not so normal do not have hobbies and I am not saying this to cause offense. What I am saying is that it is normal to continue ones hobbies into adulthood where one then refines ones skills to use them on them. This it turn really develops our skills for potential employment as well, because if one goes for a job interview and one can talk about ones hobbies for a while, it gives an employer a real sense of who you are and what you are capable of, and how you can adopt those skills for the work they want you to do.
Think of the skills you have. Many an army general has a hobby of miniature figures which they use to work out stratergies that they can use on the battlefield against the enemy, and this is used to great effect, and such skills are just as effective today as they were in the past, especially the logistics of supplies to ones troops and how to plan surprize attacks and decieve the enemy into sending their troops the wrong direction or finding says to trap and capture the enemies troops etc.
And ones skills in painting and making the models. These demonstrate good abilities and workmanship. Ones character and style. It all comes in mightliy useful as a headstart into many careers.

If you search on the internet for AFOL you will see there are many "Adult Fans of Lego". Army men I think started out as tools for generals to plan battles - and I have seen scenes of battles in museum so I think your particular special interest is a very adult one. Adults tend to use words like "having hobbies" or "being a fan". I once knew someone who collected cereal boxes with pictures of sports stars on them. These kind of things can be very valuable collectables. He had a whole room of his house dedicated to them and he kept it dark to avoid the light fading the artwork on the boxes. "antiques" and "artwork" are other things adults like to call their toys. The cereal box collector had a job as a financial advisor and his wife was a eye doctor. Another good word to use is "recreation" or "re-creating" we all need to create ourselves again by doing something we "just enjoy".

For me the real concern is keeping my hobby or special interest in perspective. If the rest of my life is in balance and I am not neglecting my health or my family or my job then my hobby is just fine and really helps. I have Lego bricks on my desk at work that I like to arrange into patterns while I think. I also have a "robotics" hobby. Working on projects with my son is sometimes an excuse to "play" like doing things with my son and the Boy Scouts. Another way is to volunteer. I volunteered as a Judge for a robotics competition in our area last year. As long as I can keep these things in good balance I think I am alright. My wife once have me a R2D2 robot kit made of Lego. My kids were much too young to play with it - it was just for me. I did enjoy sharing it with my kids when they got old enough. My nephew also liked it - he now works for SpaceX as a computer scientist.

When I got married, my wife had a few toys left over from when her kids were young. I became fascinated with some of them, particularly a chain of triangles that could be posed like a snake. I think I would have liked transformers and super soakers. I wish I had someone to play frisbee with, and help launch kites.

Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come and smile the smiles
And sing the songs
It won't take long
Somebody come and play today

Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play my way
Somebody come and rhyme the rhymes
And laugh the laughs
It won't take time

Somebody come and play today

Somebody come with me and see the pleasure in the wind
Somebody see the time is getting late to begin

Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come and be my friend
And watch the sun 'till it rains again
Somebody come and play today

from the album: The Sesame Street Book & Record

My solution is to play with your toys when no one is around----but put them away if you have a visitor who doesn't know you play with toys.

I don't see anything really "wrong" with playing with toys---but people have this odd attitude about it.

I believe there are many adults who are closet "toy players."

A fondness for play is how Ma Nature gets us educated. Humans remain more playful as adults than most critters. Most of us at least dabble in sports and music as children, and then idolize the adults who continue into excellence. There is an expected age range for most toys because we should be developing adult skills before we need them. Getting stuck is a sign of trouble. When I was eleven, I went back to playing with simple wooden blocks. Now, I see that I was hoping to pick up on the emotional lessons I missed when I'd played with them earlier.

Not an adult yet but I still like plushies which are generally seen as for little kids. I won't judge you

<_<

Looks at secondary closet full of toys. I should sell them to collectors.. nut.. kek
I still play with them
Looks over at my threadbare teddy who is 3 months older than me sitting on bedtable looking like the Evil Undead overlord of the play chest.
https://imgbox.com/gallery/edit/Wahkosp ... mvsVZKEZAv

In the eyes of the society, it seems to be a little weird.

I'm 26 and I like toys. I don't play with them, but I like to arrange them like some would arrange flowers. Here I'm counting my plastic figures of cartoon characters as toys, even though I'm pretty sure that they are meant to be decorations and not toys since they're stuck in one position and don't have any moving limbs or anything.

Since you're worried about people judging you for it, one option is simply to keep your toys hidden and not to tell people. There's no rule that say everyone should know all your hobbies.

If it's wierd, then I'm wierd. Small collection of Transformers, for fiddling with; much, much larger collection of Lego for low-pressure creativity. And the sight of toys just cheers me up, which is much needed. Oddly enough, it seems to get more respectable in middle age, where you become viewed as a"hobbyist" or "collector"! By customising and filming them, you're well into crafts-and-hobbies territory. I don't think there'd be anything wrong with just playing with them, though. There are many web communities entirely devoted to different kinds of toys, so we're far from alone. Toys were an interest I denied myself in my '20s. But I spent my '20s pretending not to like a lot of the things I really enjoyed, and I can't say that did me any good.

There's nothing wrong with liking toys, as many adults do collect toys and other things. Even playing with those toys as an adult is fine since it's good for creativity and one's mental health.
"People don't stop playing because they get old, they get old because they stop playing." (George Bernard Shaw)

Playing video games is sort of like playing with toys.

Nobody hassles adults about playing video games, unless someone spends all their time playing them in their parent's basement or something.