关键词: 准成人期, 潮流玩具, 文化表征, 身份认同

Abstract:

Trendy designer toys integrate aesthetic principles from design, painting, sculpture, and other elements, embodying artists' interpretations of original art and serving as a bridge between popular culture and artistic aesthetics. This study focuses on Chinese youths experiencing "emerging adulthood", examining their toy consumption patterns to understand contemporary young consumers' preferences and lifestyles, thereby exploring their identity formation. The findings indicate that the culture representation and emotional narratives of trendy designer toys serve as guiding factors in contemporary youths' identity construction. Youths' toy consumption is characterized primarily by inward-oriented self-gratification, constructing identity through group belonging and self-expression. Youth identity formation results from continuous interaction between past and future identities through progressive emotional gratification, identity projection, value compensation, and social interaction, ultimately allowing youths to achieve "value-emotion" objectives through toy consumption.

Key words: emerging adults, trendy designer toys, cultural representation, identity