I, Breeder has an interesting post up called Dispatches from the Island of High-Tech Toys. In it he notes two opposite trends in new toys unveiled last week at the annual Toy Fair: toys driven by sophisticated technologies and "green" toys that hark back to an earlier era. Both are highly interactive, both are relatively expensive to produce and distribute (and in today's iffy economy that makes both pretty risky endeavors), but the techie-toys are clearly designed to appeal to kids, while the "green" or retro toys are targeted at parents.
I wonder if they are as mutually exclusive as they might seem at first glance? I think the two ends of the spectrum are moving together, and hopefully that is not just because I went to grad school with people who wired up ceramic pots and made them into robots.**
There is something so delightfully tangible about both a wooden toy that takes touch and imagination to come alive and a toy that lights up and changes and maybe even morphs into a new toy based on how you play with it.
There is something so delightfully tangible about both a wooden toy that takes touch and imagination to come alive and a toy that lights up and changes and maybe even morphs into a new toy based on how you play with it.
Which brings me to another great and thought-provoking piece, the NY Times Magazine article about the necessity of play. I love that there is a National Institute for Play! Go Stuart Brown (director), and go to the toy designers who are taking play seriously.
** in case you are wondering, I never thought that was a particularly good use of either technology OR ceramic pots
** in case you are wondering, I never thought that was a particularly good use of either technology OR ceramic pots
