A Complementary Element of Culture and Tourism Cities: Toy Museums

Play and toys hold an important place in children's education. Children learn by seeing and doing rather than by reading, listening, and comprehending. Play is an important "job" for a child. In fact, it is also a beneficial pursuit for adults, but its functions differ. The primary function of play is to facilitate the child's adaptation to the world. A child understands what the real world is by playing. They cope with situations they dislike through play. They build the cornerstones of language and conceptual development through play. They try out different social roles through play. They find stimuli that they cannot always readily find in the real world through play.

A toy is one of the fundamental elements in a child's life and serves as their most important friend, even a confidant. Through play, children learn to self-regulate, establish rules, and adhere to them. Children experiment in play to understand and learn by experiencing things they cannot do in real life. For a child who assigns meaning to toys and objects, play and toys are a serious business. Situations that are initially imaginary enable the child, after a while, to learn rules, move one step ahead of their developmental domain, and form their own zone of proximal development. All children acquire an imaginary playmate at a young age. In this process, which is a normal developmental pattern and a beneficial activity, the playmate is usually a toy. Play and toys are not merely a pastime and educational pursuit for the child; they are an activity that supports mental health development and aids in the initiation and advancement of emotional relationships. Utilizing play and toys is used as a method in the early detection of disorders such as learning disabilities and autism in children. At a time when we are seeking solutions to digital addiction, play and toys emerge as a very important alternative.

Toys and play have a very close relationship with history, geography, sociology, psychology, politics, industry, and tourism—in short, with culture. Cities that stand out for their tourism and cultural activities worldwide and in our country have entered a race to create new tourism areas alongside their traditional accumulations. One of the most important of these is the activities carried out within the framework of play, toys, and toy museums. Toys are actually the future vision of a country because they are designed by adults. There are researchers who state that the "German soldier toy set," released by Hitler in 1933 years before World War II with the mindset that "thoughts grow with children" and produced today by the company that manufactures Barbie dolls, created a perception and motivation 6 years before the war, contributing to victory. Toys are the common language of all children and an important indicator of the educational system. The small pinwheels once held in children's hands have now become an important energy source as wind power plants. Robot toys, much loved by our children, are heavily used in many sectors in daily life today. Transforming remote-controlled toy cars have become a reality today. This means that play and toys are very important materials that harbor the codes of a country's future.

Exhibiting play and toys—which significantly affect children's abilities to think, produce, and be creative—in a venue, introducing them through various events, and producing them are indispensable activities for education-, culture-, and tourism-focused cities. It is observed that cities prominent for their cultural and touristic aspects worldwide (such as Nuremberg, Paris, Istanbul, etc.) invariably create a distinction with their play, toy, and educational infrastructures. In our paper, which is a theoretical study, we attempted to demonstrate that establishing a Toy Museum in Sivas is an essential need, and that it will make a serious contribution to the promotion of our city and university, the upbringing of creative children, and tourism.