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The Return of Toys
valdean writes "With videogames becoming so ubiquitous, it sometimes seems like kids have less and less time for toys these days. Toy makers, however, are pushing back with high tech toys designed to be more compelling than a game of Supreme Commander. The New York Times reports that remote controlled vehicles in particular seem to be up for some friendly competition. As one designer suggests, 'navigating well-designed vehicles in the physical world... is vastly more compelling than steering a virtual vehicle in a computer-generated universe.' Will toys ever be able to compete with videogames again?"
My mom gave me a brick and told me to go play outdoors
-Eod
"I think, right now, that there is a push back from our industry to get kids off the couch where they're playing video games," Mr. Khasminsky said in a telephone interview from his office in Toronto.
so he works for nintendo on the wii?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The all-mighty lego!
34486853790
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Sorry, I don't think so. Toys are timeless and they can take you places where you cannot normally go. They encourage and develop the imagination, thought, and reasoning. Toys can take you into a mental journey where you can craft your imagery. Conversely, a computer game is an artist's conception of a theme as reflected in its graphics. You may or may not agree with that theme but you are, however, stuck with it. Toys are an extremely important part of development that also build fine motor skills and coordination at the early childhood level while a video game simply teaches automatic reaction. Toys teach us reflective thinking and problem solving. Now granted, toys do break, but that may simply be a fault of design or an absense of quality in the construction. I, for one, lament that toys are taking backseat to video games and high technology stuff and I'm only 29. Whatever happened to simple, whole-hearted pleasures?
my son's favorite present this christmas was also the least expensive. it was a set of plastic discs that had hook-n-loop stuff on it that you could strap to your hand. it came with a tennis ball that you throw - and then catch by letting it stick to one of the discs. he's 4 and he'll do that for longer than he'll spend on just about any other single activity. we have a great time playing catch at the park. his sisters enjoy it too - so i picked up another set. i think a set with two discs and a ball was right around 3 bucks at wal-mart.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I used to play a lot with GI Joe's. Now, I am killing iraqi terrorists. It's cool.
The reviews on that helicopter are hilarious. I own one, so does my brother. He's experienced with flying r/c models; I'm not. Even for me, it was a matter of a few minutes use to get the hang of it. It flies VERY easily, but isn't *quite* so easy to steer in a specific direction you want - once you get the hang of it, though, which doesn't take long for anybody with the slightest knowledge of physics, you can pretty much fly it right to the point in the room that you desire.
Given that it can be bought elsewhere brand new, with LiPo battery and remote (which doubles as a charger), for just $30 - and it can crash over and over without the slightest damage to the helicopter - it is an amazing value.
Far, far more fun (and easier to control) than the $150 beginner's R/C copter I bought a month or two before it.
This helicopter is made by a Hong Kong company called Silverlit, the same people behind the i-Cybie robot dog (a much cheaper equivalent to Sony's Aibo, with surprisingly sophisticated capabilities for the price), and behind a line of tiny $30 R/C planes which are even easier to fly than the helicopter is.
Silverlit quite obviously have some rather talented designers working for them...
I grew up with video games, and so have my kids. I collect arcade machines and console, and we wholeheartedly love them. But a video game is never a match for a good toy, and the best multiplayer games we've played have never been as enjoyable as a good round of monopoly. There's no real person-to-person interaction playing Mario Party or Halo 2.
It *is* vastly more fun to play with RC cars than video game cars. I was looking at the RC aisle at Target not too long ago, milling around waiting for my wife, and got really jealous of my kids. When I was a young, cars like these were the realm of Tamiya, and required a fair amount of investment and work and model making. We'd spend hundreds crafting and honing our cars, and treat them like they were made out of gold and eggshells. Now you can get a 14V crazy honker car that does backflips for 29.99. Zip zaps are a blast, etc. A sub 50 dollar "RC car" in my youth was one of those dumb things that always went forward, and had one button that made it back up and turn right. Serious RC enthusiasts may scoff at such silly toys, but for just pure fun factor, these kids have it made.
They're two different markets.. Video games can never replace real world toys, and I feel sad for anybody who lets them.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In other news:
For the 1,000 consecutive year the ball has won best toy of the year again.
Kids go through phases.
One week everyone is racing around the streets on their bikes, the next its football.
Then someones grandma will get a new console or a skateboard or anything else.
Inevitably, along the way, some kids will become wizards at the fad and join a school team or they will enrol in a club and the heroes of tomorrow are born.
liqbase
Yeah, except that's one of the fakes. See here: http://www.silverlit-flyingclub.com/UrgentAnnounce .htm
Those guys make the real one that has been knocked off about 100 times. The worst part is that NYTimes who wrote the article referenced one of the fakes instead of the real one. Silverlit actually has sued Hobbytron (maker of the articles referenced copter) over making and distributing a knock-off.
I played with my sister's Barbies. It didn't affect me at all. I became an actor.
Check me out in my latest movie, "Broke Mast Galleon"
Avast ye matey, get ready to swap my poop deck, there be gold in dat booty!
No matter how good the games are, most kids (given the opportunity) would rather play baseball, basketball, or soccer. It's too bad that because of fear of kidnappings, etc. kids are not allowed to just "Go out and play in the yard" like when I was a kid. At least not until they are older. But by then I think a lot are 'hooked' on video games and would rather stay indoors.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Even the fact that Toys do break is an important part of a child's development. It teaches them to take care of their stuff (as long as the parents are not stupid enough to quickly replace toys they abuse) Realizing that not everything can be easily replaced, learning the long term enjoyment of playing with the toy is much better then the short term abusive play. Also is a precursor for them to understand difficult concepts like death, how some things cant be easily fixed. It is one of those life lessons that people need to learn. Not to say though toys should be made shotty and break easily, they should be designed for some hard use... But they can break. Video Games (the games them selves, not the media or hardware) is basically completely restorable, You can completly be abusive in the virtual world then when you run the game again everything is back to normal. Hence kids learn less.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Bricks are cool. Lego never went away....
I recently took my kid to a place called "the treehouse" in Ogden, UT. She discovered a toy called "Kapla" It's brilliant- nothing but a wheelbarrow filled with sticks measuring 1" x 4" x 1/4" each. About 2000 of them. She made a tower over 3 feet tall, then had a blast knocking it down by throwing things at it. Tactile toys have their own appeal.
In fact, I make a living by selling kids a set of plans that can turn a brick, a stick, and some string into a machine that hurls eggs. It's called a trebuchet. There is a market for old school stuff. Just look at http://www.catapultkits.com./ Then there's the toy guns, pogo sticks and skateboards - http://www.ballistictoys.com/ - that help a kid get an intuitive feel for ballistic motion, the foundations of physics.
Here's the appeal- Kids learn real physics, not simulated physics as in a computer game. With the catapult kits, they get to do simple math to predict how far it will throw, then (and this is the part that gets them hooked) they go outside, into the field to test their work. When they see the connection between the math and the real world machine, one that hurls an egg about 200 feet, then they get excited. They see how to apply math to do something fun, outside, away from the CPU and CRT, LCD, etc.
Real toys are an important part of a kid's total education. Even if it's a piece of string, a stick and a brick.