Kids’ toys these days

2011-11-21 07:27

Georgina Guedes

I’m sure that what I’m about to say is a refrain that has been sung by every generation since time immemorial. Kids’ toys these days just ain’t what they used to be.

I’m not even going to start talking about whether the LeapPad is the ideal toddler gift this Christmas. My focus is on the nuts and bolts toys that we give our children to play with from the moment they are able to hold on to anything.

In my day (she quavered, dentures chattering), things were made out of fairly solid plastic, the generation before probably had wooden toys as a matter of course. The standard toys for our children are made out of such flimsy plastic you can practically leave a fingerprint in it.

Instead of being lovingly passed down to the next kid, or handed to a friend with a new baby, these toys are generally ready for the trash after one enthusiastic toddler has had a chance with them.

The prime example of this is the classic shape-fitting toy. When I was a child, the blocks were sturdy and solid; now they’re hollow and made out of the thinnest plastic. Before, you’d try to avoid standing on one because you’d probably shatter your food; now it’s the toy that would suffer from being trampled on.

Quality aside, there’s something about today’s toys that stifles rather than promotes imaginative play. They’re just too detailed. Fisher-Price figurines, which used to be little rudimentary, cone-shaped people, are now full-blown cartoon characters wearing accessories and clutching cell phones, milkshakes and pet frogs.

In much the same way as we were required to imagine or create these items as children, our children are now required to imagine them away if, for instance, a character in their fantasy was going to bed (I suppose they could take the frog with them if they really wanted to).

Another disappointment for me in reliving my childhood games through my children has been fuzzy felt. I remember creating universes out of a few circles, some rectangles and a couple of dots of brightly coloured fabric.

When I finally found a set for my daughter, it was a crying disappointment – it came replete with a clothed farmer with painted-on features, three pigs in a wallow, and a milkmaid carrying a bucket. About the only creative licence that a child has with this set has is the placement of the sun in the sky.

Fortunately, my aunt stumbled across an older set in the charity shop, and my daughter loves creating abstract alien forms and other delightful creatures. And then my mother found another set in Europe that’s far less dictatorial than others of its ilk.

The joys that my child gets from creating her own world far surpass the commentary she offers on observing detailed, “functional” toys. And so, I join my forebears in tut-tutting the diversions on offer to the youth of today with the hope that I will continue to make good on my intention to encourage creative play.

Apparently it only gets worse from here on out, because she’ll be demanding a cell phone by the time she’s four.

- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. You can follow @georginaguedes on Twitter.

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