4 ms·

It's surprising how non unique the toys. The Switzerland boy had a Disney "cars" car, a batmobile, and a Spider-Man costume. The two girls from zanizabar had a

It's surprising how non unique the toys. The Switzerland boy had a Disney "cars" car, a batmobile, and a Spider-Man costume. The two girls from zanizabar had a skelator. The boy from Australia had Brio trains and Thomas the tank engine. I see barely any toys that are uniquely native to their home country. I don't know if this is good or bad, but globalization is real.

zaat 7y ago
This is only partially true - you focused on the global and universal and missed the more local. For example, two kids have baseball bats, but except for America and Japan most kids in the world won't have bats, many haven't even seen one ever. The kid from Alaska with his snow sleds and the Italian girl with the cows are two prime examples of a local, native culture childhood style.
- frankbreetz 7y ago
  Cows are everywhere, and sleds are everywhere where there is lots of snow. Cows are not local or native to Italy, if anything it shows there is a larger divide between urban and rural areas then what country you live in. To me it's interesting that kids are not only playing with similar toys, but the exact same brand of toy. Of course there are some differences, but compared to 50 years ago childhood around the world is starting to look the same.
woodpanel 7y ago
Good point, though I'm not sure how important it is to have locally unique toys. Certainly not for the kids. Probably, you could have said the same thing 50 years ago, how nation-wide toys are taking over stuff that was only available in your town. I think the real differentiator is that 50 years ago kids didn't had that many toys at all. I'm not sure if that plentiness is always a good thing. AFAIK there's usually a very small subset of toys that are really important to them, anyways. So I wouldn't overestimate the importance each of the pictured toys holds. Maybe todays "uniqueness" comes from which of the toys was acquired in this sea of ubiquity. Analogous to today's plentiness of great cloud-tv-series, each with an earned addicted fan-base, where it is impossible for one to view them all. But what is still unique to each child is which of these acquired toys are really important to them.

zaat 7y ago

This is only partially true - you focused on the global and universal and missed the more local. For example, two kids have baseball bats, but except for America and Japan most kids in the world won't have bats, many haven't even seen one ever. The kid from Alaska with his snow sleds and the Italian girl with the cows are two prime examples of a local, native culture childhood style.

frankbreetz 7y ago
Cows are everywhere, and sleds are everywhere where there is lots of snow. Cows are not local or native to Italy, if anything it shows there is a larger divide between urban and rural areas then what country you live in. To me it's interesting that kids are not only playing with similar toys, but the exact same brand of toy. Of course there are some differences, but compared to 50 years ago childhood around the world is starting to look the same.

woodpanel 7y ago

Good point, though I'm not sure how important it is to have locally unique toys. Certainly not for the kids. Probably, you could have said the same thing 50 years ago, how nation-wide toys are taking over stuff that was only available in your town. I think the real differentiator is that 50 years ago kids didn't had that many toys at all. I'm not sure if that plentiness is always a good thing. AFAIK there's usually a very small subset of toys that are really important to them, anyways. So I wouldn't overestimate the importance each of the pictured toys holds. Maybe todays "uniqueness" comes from which of the toys was acquired in this sea of ubiquity. Analogous to today's plentiness of great cloud-tv-series, each with an earned addicted fan-base, where it is impossible for one to view them all. But what is still unique to each child is which of these acquired toys are really important to them.