CHENNAI: Gowtham Senthilkumar is a 34-year-old medical representative who budgets his salary for groceries, bills, and other essentials. Then, after it’s all done, he sets aside ₹2,000 to buy action figures from his favourite anime shows — Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Demon Slayer, and Attack on Titan. “There was no way I could get my hands on them as a child. Now I have the money, and I also know where I can get them,” he says.
As a child, Paras R, now a 27-year-old PR professional, always dreamed of pasting glittery Barbie and Hello Kitty stickers on her scrapbook and cupboards. But she rarely got them as a child since her mum was strict about spending. “I never got pocket money as a child, and my mum felt spending on stickers was not worth it.” So the first thing she did when she started earning was to buy herself a Mickey Mouse collection of stickers. “I still buy these stickers whenever I get the chance and stick them on my phone case,” she says.
Like Gowtham and Paras, a whole generation of adults in Chennai is ‘kidulting’ — spending their money on action figures, cartoon stickers, puzzles, and toys to satisfy their inner child. ‘Kidulting’, trending for a while now, is all about adults engaging in activities, hobbies, and consuming products traditionally associated with children, often driven by nostalgia.
Shivasankar V, owner of The Baka Store in Egattur, which sells comic and anime-inspired toys and figurines, says most of his clients are adults between the ages of 22 and 45. People visit the store with friends and help each other pick out toys. “Many of them start playing with these action figures at the store. Some parents who come with children shop for themselves,” he says.
Other than action figures, some of the hottest selling toys are Mjolnir (Thor’s hammer), Iron Man’s helmet, Star Wars LED lightsabres, and Zoro’s katana from the anime One Piece, with prices ranging from ₹1,000 to ₹3,000, all bought by adults. Seeing how well these toys are doing among adults, Shiva says he is now planning to push nostalgia even more in his store by bringing out well-known Tamil channel Chutti TV’s Jackie Chan figurines (because of the popularity of the show ‘Jackie Chan in Sagasangal’) as well as Astro Boy and Gee Boom Boy.
At 41, Ashvitha Premkumar bought her first dollhouse this year, something she never had as a child. “I enjoyed building it step by step, but then, my eight-year-old nephew thought it was a toy and wanted it. Of course, I wouldn’t part with it.” Ashvitha has also started a new hobby, building pot fairy gardens, again something she yearned to do as a child. For it, she started collecting figurines of fairies and other dolls to place in the pots. “This time, I had to fight my niece. I tried finding the right figurines, but nothing was as good as the set of Disney princesses my niece owned, so I stole them from her.”
Game trading cards were once used to see which favourite Pokémon or WWE wrestlers were stronger than the other, but Salman Ayoob, a PR professional, recently found a whole new market that treats the collectible cards like assets globally. “After I started working, I began buying rare Pokémon cards. It was first about nostalgia, but I learned people were treating these cards like stocks internationally. Recently, one limited edition graded Charizard card was sold for more than ₹3 crore. I now own an ungraded Charizard card valued somewhere between ₹68,402 and ₹1 lakh,” says Salman, who has more than 2,000 Pokémon cards.
While some see kidulting as immature or an act of escapism, psychologists say it makes one feel youthful and even increases optimism. Vandhana S, a clinical psychologist at V-COPE, says today’s fast-paced lives often lead to the repression of emotions. Positive emotions are often triggered in adults by a childhood memory, which makes them feel free and happy. “When we indulge in activities we did as a child, it helps us process our emotions better. This behaviour can be seen among parents when they play with their children, when they become children themselves.” There’s nothing wrong with indulging in ‘kidulting’, says the psychologist, as long as one makes sure the behaviour is not excessive, at which point it becomes a sign of mental distress.