First question, why dig up someone's blog post from last summer?
Second question, what gives with defining "toys" to so consistently mean "branded icons from franchised fiction?"
This is precisely what I kind of hate about yuppie culture. You can't have a model railroad, you have to have Thomas The Tank Engine. You can't play with your mom's broomstick and be a wizard, you need a Nimbus 2000 (no, wait, make that a 3000). It goes on and on, and even toys that used to have malleable generic purposes by design, like LEGO, need to be branded and defined and limited and explained and attached to some existing, trademarked, copyrighted, closed universe of predefined meaning.
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of this, sure. I have nothing against a couple Transformers or GIJOEs or Barbies or whatever. But if anything those kinds of toys should be "a sometimes food" for the imagination, and certainly not an all consuming obsession.
What kids need most of the time are real toys, the opposite of these sorts of things. Some blank pages to color on, some simple building blocks, a train that doesn't necessarily "go" anywhere...a racetrack whose races haven't already been run.
If there's a nostalgia to be had for something "lost" in youth, that's where it lies for me...not about anything I've lost, but rather what today's kids are having stolen from them before they even have a chance to miss it.
"... First question, why dig up someone's blog post from last summer? ..."
reasonable question from someone who has only been here 154 days. Because it fits the "Anything that good hackers would find interesting".
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My parents got it for me (an expensive gift!) When I found out it didn't actually talk, but instead had a cassette tape with "conversations" pre-loaded onto its back, I never picked it up again.
Though I was really young, I still remember the disappointment and anger it caused me. "But the commercials...they said it talked!"
I do think we could use some of our tech genius to make better toys that delight and transform kids. What sort of programming would a real sorting hat require? And wouldn't that be way more fun than Yet Another Social Network? Food for thought.
Toys associated with the super-stimulant fantasies depicted on TV are always going to fall short. You won’t be able to make toys good enough. Instead the answer is to address the deception that these fantasies can ever truly be realized.
If that sounds depressing don’t forget that life is full of fantastic amazing things that do really exist and can really be experienced. As such, some of the best toys are not toys at all, they are the means of expressing our own imaginations. Why not get your children to grow a garden, find and classify animals and observe their behavior, paint, compose music, build robots, cook, write, program, etc.
For me intelligence is very much a function of the amount of time spent mentally incubating on an issue with the ability to frequently test your ideas against reality. Think of the hours of mental incubation (spanning over years) that a child loses to dead-end make-believe. This exposure must serve to keep the child in a state of confusion about how the world actually works.
Now hold on there. Make-believe is an important component! While you certainly don't want the kid to spend their entire life in a fantasy world, it's been demonstrated that make-believe basically improves your creative abilities later in life.
Chris O'Shea (http://www.chrisoshea.org/) is a British designer in that space who did a fun little app recently called MakeGo which got great reception.
Keita Takahashi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keita_Takahashi), who comes from a video game background, did some interesting work on playgrounds (how to make a 21st century playground?)
Yes, this is something I'm quite passionate about :)
Oh I was kidding - kinda. We applied to do exactly this for YC W12 and we got an interview, but didn't get selected for funding. We've got decent traction and are continuing regardless. Focused on iOS for now, but with plans to extend to physical toys as we grow our user base. So far, so good.
I had this Toontastic App idea. It is platform which lets kids to become more imaginative and unleashes creativity. Many more apps should come like this for kids.
I can't speak for you, but when I was a child the toys with staying power for my brothers and I were always the least complicated of all. Stuffed animals, lego, card games.
Well, early video games were the one exception. Other than them though, "re-play" value was almost inversely related to technological complexity.
In my family, it was always the toys you built things with: wooden blocks, Tinker Toys, Lego, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets, plus clay. Also drawing and painting tools.
I think a lot of the comments are going to focus on how to make "more toys, better toys", and maybe that's inevitable given the audience, but I think that misses the point a little.
All children need is a prop and imagination; the more vague the prop the more things it can be. Realistic toys are, frankly, an adult obsession, because they will always fall flat in the face of what a child's mind can conjure up.
I read this post this morning and had the day to put it through "the hopper". Having done so, I think the key take away about "toy" value is the critical necessity of a difficulty curve (though versatility certainly helps).
When my parents moved, there are three types of toys I saved from the donation bin. The first were, of course, Legos. Legos (unlike the author's examples) don't reduce immersion, rather they expand the "set and props" available. Better yet, you can always modify building plans to create unique creations or even build entirely new creations unrelated to the original intent of sets.
The second set of toys I still have are a cabinet of magic props. The illusion of being able to perform impossible feats certainly agrees with the authors assertion that toys are a form of escape for individuals who due to their age are relatively helpless to control their plight. Further, a very real difficulty curve exists in magic beginning with the ability to convincingly perform a trick and fool an audience. Farther along the difficulty curve would be applying techniques in unexpected ways and designing your own illusions.
The final toy that I still adore is my Rubik's Cube. Like Lego's it is a branded product-- gasp..shock-- but it possesses an outer simplicity that quickly transforms into an unending pursuit of faster times. Anyone can solve a Rubik's cube with a few simple algorithms. But, to solve one in under twenty five seconds starts to demand a significant amount of memorization, focus, and spacial awareness. Thus, you can solve the cube in a day but never truly finish solving it if you continue to seek faster times (by the way, current world record is 5.66 seconds I believe).
Programming of course falls into this category as well. On the intro end of the spectrum you can adjust others programs and build simple choose your own path games. But, if you choose, there is always something more to learn, and apply to the game.
P.S. Fun boardgames work in the same manner. The more you play, the better you get and the more complex the strategies. Catan being a prime example.
I don't know that I'd call Catan an example of complex strategies. It's far more complicated than chutes and ladders, but there is still a big chance element, and most of the technique is dynamic and social. (concealing your goals, misdirection, negotiation)
At the risk of sounding cliche: to me making software is like a toy that delivers what the author described. Sure, I sometimes get disappointed (hours spent hunting a dumb bug) but in the end it is as close to magic as the real world allows. And it has real effects on the real world. I hope this never wears off.
Just as modern toys prescribe a specific form of interaction, a specific game to be played science prescribes a specific causal relationship between the parts of the world. If toys or scientific theories describe a fixed link between 'what is' and 'what can happen' the opposite process fails. Kids are not able anymore to just invent a new meaning for the toy, a new way to play it just as we are not able to form spiritual belief-systems. And that's frustrating. That's why people say 'old toys were better, you could play with them how you wanted' or 'science is bunk, explaining everything down to the molecular level doesn't give me meaning in my life'. And that's why a new religion is needed which is built on science. Which gives explanations of the world that are not in direct conflict with scientific theories but also rooted in human imagination instead of observation. Which makes them meaningful. Also new toys.
I don't really remember being disappointed with toys, but my parents do remember me taking them all apart almost immediately. I had a vast assortment of parts, which I used to build and rebuild and rebuild again all sorts of little robots and Rube Goldbergish things.
Care to hazard a guess as to what I did with my first car at age 16? Yeah, pretty much the same thing. Every computer I've ever owned? Yes, those as well.
As an adult (technically) I manage to collect and routinely discard massive heaps of techno-garbage.
Actually, I may never grow up; I create video games.
I guess I'm still searching for the magic; I know it has to be in there somewhere.
Oh and James, turtles are amphibians (not reptiles) :p
I really enjoyed that read, well done. I didn't find toys to disappoint me very much. I love love loved my action figures when I was a kids. But my nephews boredom with his toys fits right into the picture you've written.
Kids some how like super powers. They always need a hero who saves everyone from evil. My son always asks bedtime stories which has got evils, Thieves,dragons etc and ultimately a hero rescues everyone from these with arrows, guns and some tricks.
Second question, what gives with defining "toys" to so consistently mean "branded icons from franchised fiction?"
This is precisely what I kind of hate about yuppie culture. You can't have a model railroad, you have to have Thomas The Tank Engine. You can't play with your mom's broomstick and be a wizard, you need a Nimbus 2000 (no, wait, make that a 3000). It goes on and on, and even toys that used to have malleable generic purposes by design, like LEGO, need to be branded and defined and limited and explained and attached to some existing, trademarked, copyrighted, closed universe of predefined meaning.
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of this, sure. I have nothing against a couple Transformers or GIJOEs or Barbies or whatever. But if anything those kinds of toys should be "a sometimes food" for the imagination, and certainly not an all consuming obsession.
What kids need most of the time are real toys, the opposite of these sorts of things. Some blank pages to color on, some simple building blocks, a train that doesn't necessarily "go" anywhere...a racetrack whose races haven't already been run.
If there's a nostalgia to be had for something "lost" in youth, that's where it lies for me...not about anything I've lost, but rather what today's kids are having stolen from them before they even have a chance to miss it.