Grown-ups have long looked to childhood playthings for nostalgia(怀旧)，comfort or value as collections, inspiring a nickname within the toy industry: kidults. This market came of age during the pandemic as many Americans looked to reconnect with their past as a way of reducing stress, becoming a key driver of new sales of everything from games to trading cards.People aged 18 and up accounted for 14% of U.S. toy industry sales for the 12-month period ended June 30, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc., up from 9% in 2019. The $5.6 billion in sales to this group was up 26%, the second-biggest rise after customers aged 12 to 17. The most popular items for older consumers were building sets (think Legos),traditional plush (think stuffed animals) and action figures (think Star Wars and Marvel characters).

Toy executives and analysts see this moment differently than other periods of nostalgia-based buying. Instead of storing toys unopened on a shelf, adults are actively engaging with the dolls, stuffed animals and toy weapons many had previously put away after childhood. There is also broader social acceptance of kidult preferences, they say. A 2021 survey of 2,000 adults by the U.S. Toy Association found that more than 50% of adults bought toys and games for their own use.

Some of the world’s biggest toy companies are making a play for this emerging audience by creating adult-only e-commerce websites. One is Hasbro Inc., which makes everything from My Little Pony to Marvel and Star Wars action figures. Adults are also a newer focus for American Girl. When the company released the first six American Girl dolls in their original outfits in May 2021,roughly half went to grown-ups buying them for themselves.

Jamie Cygielman, the company president, says American Girl has only scratched the surface of future plans to attract more mature audiences into the stores. She saw the progress firsthand while seeing three separate groups of adult women celebrating birthdays with their dolls, no kids in sight.

Parents usually teach their children how to cross the street safely, by looking both ways for cars. But do they also teach them to put away their cell phones?

【小题1】Texting while crossing the street will soon be banned in the city. Beginning on October 24, you could be fined from $15 to $99 if you step into a Honolulu street while looking at your phone. Honolulu is the first major U.S. city to ban what is called “distracted walking”. It recently passed a law in a seven to two vote. The law says: “No pedestrian shall cross a street or highway while viewing a mobile electronic device.” In other words,【小题2】

The law’s creators hope it will lower the number of people hit and killed by cars in the city. Mayor Kirk Caldwell told Reuters news agency, “We hold the unfortunate reputation of being a major city with more pedestrians being hit in crosswalks, particularly our seniors, than almost any other city in the country.”

The law includes all electronic devices with screens: cell phones, tablets, gaming devices, digital cameras and laptop computers.【小题3】 Pedestrians may use such devices in the street to call emergency services and rescue workers, such as firefighters and police officers.

【小题4】 The state of Washington was the first to outlaw distracted driving back in 2007. Now, 46 other states as well as D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have laws against texting while driving reports the GHSA.

If you still want to text while walking, you could avoid being fined in Honolulu (and be safer, in general) by using a voice-controlled digital assistant such as Siri or Google Assistant. 【小题5】

Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertiser, hoping to sell their products.

The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed at which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is smart phones, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.