4 ms·
Reminds me of going through my old toy chest with my parents. Most of what I found I just tossed - my mom wanted to offload to goodwill but I was sure few of th
by digging 2y ago
Reminds me of going through my old toy chest with my parents. Most of what I found I just tossed - my mom wanted to offload to goodwill but I was sure few of them were worth it.
The items I wanted to keep were mostly either silly figures of animals I like (old-school dinosaurs, etc), or creative stuff like Bionicles. In fact, I took home the Bionicles and spent a few weekends actually playing with them, creating new figures. I'm certainly not neurotypical, but I feel that a decent barometer for toys that will truly engage a child is "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?"
I have some young children in my life and agree the landscape of toys-and-their-ads is insane these days. Especially with the crisp unboxing videos, it's so hard not to want to get the weird (and, truthfully, often quite creative, on the designer's part) stuff that's coming out. I sympathize with parents; it's never going to be easy to say no even once you've identified that a badly desired toy is actually going to be a waste of money 6 hours after purchase.
- matthewfcarlson 2y ago> "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?" That's a very good metric. I've had friends ask me when I come up with an activity or toy, "how did you think of x?" The answer is "it sounded fun to me if I was a kid."
- bluGill 2y agoMany of your odd toys don't even meet modern safety standards and so should be either tossed or put in a collectors display cabinet where kids won't touch them. Sure we survived, but that doesn't make them toys safe.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoOh no, "You'll shoot your eye out kid"
- mikestew 2y agoYou jest, but if that kid weren’t wearing glasses… I was thinking more of lawn darts. One look at those, and you just know that one is eventually going to end up in the back of someone’s skull.
- BeFlatXIII 2y agoI feel like I missed out by being born too late to enjoy those.
- bluGill 2y agoI was old enough to see them, but my dad looked at them and said that can't possibly be safe and so refused to let us have them. It was almost a decade latter (or so I remember) before they were recalled.
- digging 2y agoThat or lead poisoning will deliver steady doses of irreversible brain damage.
- MrMcCall 2y agoYeah, I wonder how horrible the plasticizers were in the Playtex baby bottle nipple-tops of the 1970s. First they heated up the Similac in a little plastic pouch/bag, then slapped that nipple on top, then we sucked it all in.