Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, it was released on 25 July 1987 and became the fourth single in her self-titled debut album, which came out on 26 December of the same year.

It was inspired by a tabloid newspaper article about the singer's love life, and Sinitta wrote the rap.

[5] When reviewing the parent album, Nancy Culp from Record Mirror considered that songs like "Toy Boy" "can hardly taken seriously, and certainly have no pretensions whatsoever to being state of the art.

album, Richard Lowe of Smash Hits called "Toy Boy", along with "GTO", "splendidly trashy classics".

[7] Retrospectively, in a 2015 review of the parent album, the Pop Rescue website called "Toy Boy" an "exceptionally catchy, bouncy and fun" song.