Susan Stewart, in her book On Longing, refers to the toy as “a self-invoking fiction” because the toy functions as the“…physical embodiment of the fiction: it is a device for fantasy, a point of beginning for narrative. The toy opens up an interior world, lending itself to fantasy and privacy in a way that the abstract space, the playground, of social play does not.”(Stewart 56) Here Stewart treats the toy as a medium for a narrative, later which she calls, “an entirely new temporal world, a fantasy world parallel to (and hence never intersecting) the world of everyday reality.” (57) Essentially, the toy is a medium of a fictive narrative—a myth. Just as film functions, so too does a toy, allowing the player to animate the inanimate object by participating in a ritual of play. The player become immersed in the realm of the toy, or as Stewart calls it “a kind of “dead among us” where “the toy ensures the continuation, in miniature, of the world of life “on the other side.” (57)
Biro helps us understand how a simple form (such as a toy) works as a mode of myth, "Mythical form also simplifies, reducing the range of original meanings. But this is how otherwise hard-to-reach contents are made available for everyday use. In less friendly terms: with a gesture to ward off complications, myth vulgarizes and prepares for consumption cramped and tensely charged reflexes." (Biro 106) Where film was a medium animating the myth with the visual, the toy is a medium which animates the myth with the physical. They function similarly—allowing the individual to interact with the myth through personal immersion with it.The dynamic of the movie toy is created with Star Wars action figures where the toy is an extension of the film—an extension of the myth- yet the toy itself is a mythical form.