Introduction : without training wheels : the ride into another century of capital -- 1. Cradle to grave : children's marketing and the deconstruction of childhood -- 2. Lost kingdoms : little girls, empire, and the uses of nostalgia -- 3. Of cowboys and Indians : Hollywood's games with history and childhood -- 4. Obsolescence and other playroom anxieties : toy stories over a century of capital -- 5. The children who need no parents -- 6. The burdens of time in the bourgeois playroom -- 7. Free market, branded imagination : Harry Potter and the commercialization of children's culture -- Conclusion : all that is solid melts into air.