The introduction explains the book’s arguments, methods, and sources while setting the stage for the transformation of the toy business in the 1960s and 1970s. The politicization of playthings during these years was underwritten by a series of new historical developments, cultural and commercial, that redefined the status of children’s toys in American life after World War II, including the baby boom, a new age of televised promotions, a discount store revolution, and a new democratic family ideal. These developments combined to make good toys and good childhoods practically synonymous. This democratization of toys made for record profits, but it also inspired and enabled the new progressive politics of toys. Ironically, then, the industry’s successful takeover of American childhood would be responsible for the most embattled period in the history of the toy trade.