BBC 6分钟英语 成年人购买儿童玩具

6 min English from BBC Learning english com.

Hello. This is six minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Phil and I'm Beth. Action figures, building bricks, stuffed cuddly

animals. There's a whole world of toys that many of us have forgotten since we were children.

Do you still have any toys from when you were a boy?

Phil Um, a couple, but I gave them to my kids.

Well, nowadays, grown ups playing with toys is more common than you might think.

Recent estimates suggest that adults spying kids toys for themselves account for between 30 and 40% of the entire toy market, so many that advertisers have come up with the term for them adults, adults who are interested in toys and games intended for children.

Between last October and December alone, american adults spent over $1.5 billion on toys for themselves.

Among the most popular were plush toys, or Plushes, for short, toy dolls, or animals made from cloth and filled with soft material.

And like other recent trends, the toy trend is being driven by online shoppers and social media.

In this episode, will meet a children's toy maker and an online influencer, who were both involved in the increasing trend of adults interested in kids' toys.

We'll also learn some useful new vocabulary, and remember, you'll find a transcript for this episode, along with all the new words and phrases, on our website, bbc learning english dot com.

But 1st, I have a question for you, beth, lego remains one of the most popular and expensive children's toys.

So according to msn news, what was the most expensive Lego set ever made?

Was it a The Lego Harry Potter Hogwart School Be the Lego Star Wars Millennium Fulkin, or see the Lego Eiffel Tower.

I'm going to guess Hoggarts, because I like Harry Potter.

OK, well, we'll find out the answer later in the program.

Lisa Li is a toymaker based in Vancouver and the owner of Leather Monsters, a brand of leather plushes, which he advertises online.

Here, lisa tells BBC World Service program Business Daily how she reconnected with her love of toys as an adult.

Once I kind of had a stable job with disposable income, I kind of rediscovered my love for soft toys, and I started buying them again, because I've always loved collecting things because, you know, they bring me happiness, they bring me joy.

And I think also a big pillar of my channel and my content is reconnecting with my childhood and healing that inner child.

And I think the toys also play a pardon that Lisa started collecting toys as an adult with a job and disposable income.

Disposable income is the money you have left over after paying all your expenses.

You can use it to buy whatever you like.

Soft cuddly toys make Lisa happy and help her reconnect with her inner child.

A term from psychology, which describes the part of your adult personality that still feels and reacts like a child.

Besides the adults who sell kid stories are the adults who buy them.

Jay Gladfelter is an enthusiastic toy collector and influenza who makes youtube videos under the name Geek Dad Life.

Here's Jay talking about the link between Covid lockdowns and the rise in adults toy collecting.

To BBC World Services Business Daily.

And then what happened was a whole bunch of new collectors kind of jumped into toy collecting.

And for those of us that were into it before, we saw the prices, the secondary market, prices like explode once the pandemic account because you had people that had time on their hands.

Maybe they had extra money because they're not spending it by going out, and now they're putting it into collecting toys.

During the pandemic, people had time on their hands, an idiom, meaning to have a lot of free time, nothing to do with it.

Many adults went online, hoping to find the toys they remembered from childhood.

As a result, a whole bunch, meaning a large number of people started collecting toys, and slowly but surely, demand increased and prices went up.

Yes, it seems that the feeling of rediscovering your childhood, reported by many adult toy collectors, comes at a price, with the cost of collectable items like Pokemon cards and Jevy cap plushes increasing dramatically during the pandemic.

And speaking of expensive toys, phil, isn't it time you reveal the answer to your question?

Ah, yes. I asked you what was the most expensive Lego set ever made?

You said it was the Lego Hogwart School.

While I'm afraid the answer is actually the Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon, which had a UK retail price of £734.99,

according to fsn News. That's crazy.

OK, it's time to recap the vocabulary we've learned, starting with kidalt, an adult who likes playing with toys and games

intended for children. PLUSY is short for plush toy, a toy doll or animal stuffed with a soft cloth.

Filling your disposable income is the amount of money you have left to buy whatever you want after paying your expenses.

Someone's in a child refers to the part of their adult personality that still feels and reacts like a child.

A bunch is a number of things, often a large number of things.

And finally, the idioms to have time on your hands means having free time and nothing much to do with it.

Once again, our 6 min are up, but remember, you'll find episodes about plenty more trending topics, along with a quiz and worksheet for this episode, on our website, bbc learning english dot com.

See you there soon. But for now, it's goodbye bye from BBC learning english dot com.

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