“Toymaker” as a job description in fairy tale fiction is one of my favourite bullshit occupations. “Dollmaker” is fine, “carpenter who makes wooden toys as a side hustle between jobs” is fine, but so many stories have a character whose entire occupation is described as “toymaker” and is heavily implied if not explicitly confirmed to have made all of the toys in their shop, from wood boats to plush animals to porcelain dolls to music boxes to tin soldiers, all made under the tiny hammer of one person.
And it’s not impossible for one person to be at once a highly talented seamstress and tinsmith and carpenter and clockwork engineer and every other talent in the world that would allow you to build everything from china dolls to rocking horses, but to be all that and then single-handedly supply the whole stock of an entire toy store? In a rural whimsical little fairy tale village?? By themselves???
No? Of course not, they have elves on staff. It's like, a legacy thing. In the same way the nicest restaurant in town is an upgrade from the humble street meat stall, so is whatever Santa has going on a grander version of the average toy shop. But they ALL have elves in the back. Elves love making toys. The 'toymaker' is just there to man the front and do the accounting and market research and keep the supply chains running. Maybe they do a little carving on the front porch to entice the customers, but it's elves all the way down.
That's why everyone made such a big deal about the elves working for that shoemaker - that just never happens. Only real rebels ever do work outside of toycrafting. Like that one elf that wanted to be dentist-
