I looked in wiki and I cant find why this means crazy. Any help?
I’ve never heard this expression. Any examples?
That said, “attic” is slang for the head (the top of a house compared to the top of the body), and toys could be regarded as either something childish, or something that looks right but doesn’t really work. So one with “toys in the attic” might have a childish brain, or a brain that doesn’t work.
Pink Floyd, The Wall:
And the obvious (great) Aerosmith song of the same name which you can Google.
And what Chronos said.
This literature buff may be way off, but what about a potential reference to the crazy woman in the attic in Jane Eyre? I’m certain this isn’t the only time either in literature or maybe in history that a “nut” was locked up in someone’s attic.
Every night at midnight the toys come to life and act out the story of how their owner grew up and went mad.
First published 1970, and widely performed since.
I think the old practice of locking severely handicapped or crazy people in the attic and never letting them out is a better match. Some people were locked in an attic almost all their life starting at a very young age.
But they aren’t toys, though.
But the attic was full of toys, especially with mentally handicapped. It was their play area as well as their prison.
An attic is also the topmost chamber of a house, and therefore analogous with the head; the phrase “toys in the attic” has a similar sense as “bats in the belfry.”
One might ordinarily expect to have objects of some utility in the attic - the metaphorical image is that a mentally defective person just has useless stuff rattling around up there.
…and I don’t know how I missed post #2.
If we are looking for a first use of the expression then Lilian Hellman’s 1960 play Toys in the Attic predates this by 10 years.
The theme is more obsession than madness, though.
I knew I cuold count on youse. And i’ve got lotsa useless stuff rattling around