I am a software engineer and I have a 16 month old daughter. For now she plays a lot with MegaBlocks (and off-brand Duplo that's safe for <1 year) and colorful

I am a software engineer and I have a 16 month old daughter. For now she plays a lot with MegaBlocks (and off-brand Duplo that's safe for <1 year) and colorful building blocks. Her favorite toy is a cardboard box my wife brought home from her store. No joke, she loves that thing. For the future I nabbed her a copy of Robot Turtles. (My wife and I play a lot of board games - my wife owns a brick and mortar hobby store.) I have a few of the neat things off of Kickstarter, like 3D printers and some other oddball contraptions, but I think my childhood collection of Legos will go a long way towards helping her build skills necessary to be creative and imaginative. Stay away from electronic toys - overloading, no creativity - and screen devices - degrades eye contact, hurts imagination. This is just my observation based on seeing my friends perform how _not_ to raise a child, and its an American pastime to critique others on how they raise their children so take my advice with a grain of salt.