NEWS FEATURE: Pray and Play: Religious Toy Market Niche Growing

c. 2003 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Perhaps it was only a matter of time. In January, the “Pray with me Mantis” moved into the marketplace of Christian children’s toys. The plush predatory insect sings and prays when pushed in the heart or squeezed in the sneakers; play with it often enough, the thinking goes, and […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Perhaps it was only a matter of time.

In January, the “Pray with me Mantis” moved into the marketplace of Christian children’s toys.


The plush predatory insect sings and prays when pushed in the heart or squeezed in the sneakers; play with it often enough, the thinking goes, and it could help instill a sense of God’s love and acceptance.

Early childhood experts, psychologists and plenty of parents have long proclaimed the importance of nurturing children’s spiritual _ not to mention physical and emotional _ growth. To accomplish such tasks, adults have told children stories, taken them on trips and provided them with games to play.

In 2003, as parents worry about which playthings to place before their children, they face a greater number of options than their parents ever did. The American toy industry is overflowing with action figures and trading cards, building sets and sports toys.

Within that $20.3 billion industry is a small but growing niche of religious toys, from dolls and board games to infant accouterments and preschool play sets.

The market is hardly new.

Miniature replicas of Noah’s ark were perhaps the earliest play sets made available to children, said Gary Cross, author of “Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood” and a professor of modern history at Penn State University.

While still beloved today, the toys were particularly popular around the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, Cross said.

“Religious people let their children play with it on Sundays,” the traditional day of rest, he said.

Five hundred years later, religious children’s toys fill store shelves by the boatload. But Dan Lynch, vice president of entertainment media for Nashville, Tenn.-based manufacturer Tommy Nelson, wants to see better products created and made available.


“There has always been, and continues to be, an absence of high quality toys,” Lynch said.

According to Lynch, the Christian retail market never has been able to sell high enough quantities to cover the investment involved in producing toys. “This definitely curtails development,” he said.

Cheryl Stolfo, the 35-year-old creator of the Pray with me Mantis, is well acquainted with the challenges involved in developing a quality Christian toy. She started work on her six-legged, 12-inch-tall toy in 1998; the toy is not for sale in stores, but is available online at http://www.praywithmemantis.com.

“I always wanted my own company,” said Stolfo, a fiscal specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration in Pomona, N.J. After a lot of prayer, Stolfo came up with the idea for the Pray with me Mantis, a plaything that simply “is what it is,” she said.

Stolfo said she thinks that people are “getting off-track and lost, morally.” She said she’d like her toy to help give kids hope during bleak times.

“I think people essentially have gone back to a more spiritual way of life,” said Stolfo, who was raised Catholic and now attends a variety of Christian churches. “I think especially after Sept. 11 a lot of people opened their eyes.”


Steven H. Mohler, director of sales and marketing for Indiana-based Dicksons Inc., said the toys his company sells _ including the pirate ship popularized in “Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie” _ are designed to convey the idea that “God is alive and watching over us. In times like these, people need this message.”

The toys also help express the “fun and lively” side of Christianity, he said.

“Those types of things are important to express to kids,” he said. “This isn’t all the fire and brimstone. … There is a softer side here, that Jesus came down and did love (us), and so does God. He’s not just here to rap on our knuckles with a ruler.”

But Barbara Kimes Myers, author of “Young Children and Spirituality,” said she’s not sure that parents’ toy selections make any difference in their children’s spiritual development.

“You can go into any toy store and spend a whole lot of money that may not be giving your children what you want them to have,” said Myers, who is also a professor of child development and early childhood education at DePaul University in Chicago. “If you want them to have a sense of faith (in) God that you believe and care about, you can’t do it with toys. It comes from the relationship that you have with that child.

“When you hold a child and read a book, or when you talk with the child about the beautiful things that you see in the world _ or maybe the things that trouble you _ those are things that are going to promote faith. What’s going to promote faith are parents who hold faith. Toys aren’t going to do it.”

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Regardless of whether a toy is advertised as having religious significance, Myers said parents should question what the toy means to them and to their children.


For example, she said, if a doll is tucked into bed with a child by a caring mother, then the toy might represent love and care to the child. But such religious values are not inherent to the toy itself, she said.

Stolfo said she doesn’t want to proclaim that playing with a Pray with me Mantis will singularly stimulate or alter a child’s spiritual beliefs. But she hopes it might augment parents’ teaching about God.

“If a child gets picked on, maybe this is his little friend,” she said. “Whether he’s hearing it, he’s subliminally getting a message: `You’re loved. You’re accepted.’… I think I can give them another outlook.”

DEA END CAMPBELL

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