I’ve heard of this on various TV shows: poor kids that grow up and start earning money want the popular toys of their childhood, and thus pay a lot of money for them about 20 years later. I’m wondering if there is a textbook, article, or other scholarly paper that has addressed this issue, and what search terms I would use.
Thanks.
I don’t know of any scholarly papers, but I believe you just summarized Herb Barker’s life story.
I believe that we rememeber an experience and how we felt while experiencing something as clearly as we do a smell or a taste posibly even more so. many tend to grasp as much as they can of things they relate to that particul good feeling in an attempt to recreate it. It would make an interesting study to see how much impact this may have on our lives and even society for that matter.
Very true. For me, it’s books. Quite often I’ll pick up a book or magazine that I haven’t read in decades, and my memories will go back to the day I first read it. I can clearly visualize where I was, what the the weather was like, and often even conversations I had and other things I did on that day.
I found this by Googling “Michael Jackson Syndrome”—
Maybe so, but surely the OP is talking about something quite different: cases when the adult wants the old toy because they did not have one when they were kid, because their family was too poor to afford it.
… And although that may be a real phenomenon, I do not think it quite counts as nostalgia: you can’t reallybe nostalgic for something you have not ever experienced. I am afraid I do not know of any more apposite expression, however.
You’re right. That’s why I brought up Herb Baker. Though the link I provided doesn’t go into it, I’ve been told that he was brought up in a family which, while maybe not poor, discouraged “frivolous” pastimes. When he got old enough and rich enough, he decided he wanted to start collecting the things his parents wouldn’t let him have as a child. When the collection got too big for his home, he created a museum to store it all.
The phrase that I think expresses it best is: reclaiming a lost childhood.
Hmmm… I dunno. How did he lose what he didn’t have?
I think the experience of sensory recall is called déjà vu. Nostalgia is when you buy or collect things from your childhood.
I know that for myself, whenever I read the “child of the 80’s/90’s” lists on Buzzfeed (and they abound) my first thoughts for most things are “I remember wanting that.” Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, cool Trapper Keepers, Star Wars, Starting Lineup, all the Lisa Frank stuff, clothes, toys, electronics, you name it.
So I mean, I still have the memory of the stuff and the time period. I still remember how I felt about it at the time. I have nostalgia for it…the nostalgia just doesn’t include me possessing it.
Now I’m old and cheap so I have very little of that stuff I so coveted. Heh.
No, déjà vu has nothing to do with specifically recalled memories. It is an odd and inexplicable feeling that an experience you are currently having has already occurred in the past.
Anyway, mass market nostalgia seems to be a phenomenon tied to mass culture - everyone knowing about the same goods/music/events at the same time. The universal experience seems to be fracturing to the point where group nostalgia may not outlive the boomers, or perhaps, gen X.
In the seventies, when my brother and I watched Saturday morning cartoons together, we would torment each other during the toy commercials:
“I bet you want that.”
“I do not!”
“Well, you can’t have it.”
“I don’t want it, butthole!”
“Yes you do.”
We turned out fiiiiiiiine. 
I’m curious about whether there’s a trigger or not. When I was young, I really really wanted a TRS-80, the portable computer by Radio Shack. However, as an adult, I have no desire at all to have it. On the other hand, my first real car was a Honda CRX, and I would love to get another one if I had the chance, even if it doesn’t run. Why would I buy the honda but not the trs-80?