Kids Toys Suck (2011)

http://jesda.com/2011/02/10/kids-toys-suck/

by ctoth • 3 years ago

37 60 3 years ago

ioseph• 3 years ago

A trend I've noticed is a tendency toward beige, dull pastel palettes, soft organic shapes and timber in toys (and clothes) for babies ala montessori. I believe this is driven by parent's sense of aesthetics opposed to user research.

We've been gifted a bunch of things, by far our daughter is way more into the fluro coloured garish plastic toys that are pointy and make loud noises.

878654Tom• 3 years ago

This phenomenon even has been named "sad beige parenting/room".

An overuse of all Instagram/tik tok families of the beige color as beige is the current hype-color.

While research shows that babies during their first months/years can mostly only differentiate between bright primary colors.

nikoraisu2• 3 years ago

Certainly one of the things that surprised me most about parenting was having to distinguish between toys that were designed for the children (that are actually fun to play with) vs toys that were designed for the parents (which are aesthetically pleasing but dull as ditchwater to play with)

com2kid• 3 years ago

There is actually a lot of discussion around avoiding sensory overload in kids with too many bright flashy toys.

That said, you will likely enjoy this short video https://www.tiktok.com/@sadbeige/video/7197135994779340075

and here is the channel https://www.tiktok.com/discover/werner-herzogs-sad-beige-toy...

nicolas_t6• 3 years ago

We have a 20 months old son and I've been rather appalled by some of the toys. There's a brand vtech that specializes in toys that makes random sound and light and even worse, makes some sort of callback sound a few minutes after the last interaction with the toy to make sure the toddler comes back and continues playing with it.

I don't get why anyone would think those toys are good. It doesn't teach anything, pressing a button will result in completely different sound randomly so there's not even a cause and effect relationship between an action from the toddler and the light/sound coming out of the toy.

That said, coming back to this article, we did get some metal toy cars for our son and he happily makes vroom sounds while moving them around (he has learned that from the older kids in our apartment building). So at least imagination influenced by seeing other kids hasn't completely disappeared.

zzleeper• 3 years ago

Vtech is pure evil, they are the most useless annoying toys; I would prefer giving kids YouTube than let them play with those unless it's with a hammer

sam_lowry_• 3 years ago

You mean, the now banned RGB cartoons or the still kicking Ukrainian family with kids making indecent sounds while doing random stuff?

nikoraisu2• 3 years ago

We did well out of these:

https://www.smartgames.eu/

At 20 months you’re still a bit early, but some of the games for younger ones make a nice transition from ‘playing with blocks’ to puzzle solving. Plus they go up through the ages nicely - our oldest is 7 and there are plenty of good ones for him.

Also they serve as a good gateway drug to board games…

nicolas_t6• 3 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation, those look good. For the gateway to board games, we're planning on getting the my first orchard game from haba when he's a few months older. Later on, I stocked up on the discontinued lego board games :)

Cyphase• 3 years ago

Sad to hear this and my sibling comment about VTech. I have (vague) fond memories of the VTech toy laptop that I had when I was a kid. Lots of fun was had. And today computers are my favorite toys.

This is the one I had (or if I'm wrong, another SKU or something, because this is extremely familiar): https://web.archive.org/web/20230413054933if_/https://i.pini...

I'll specifically point out the letter keys that are half red, showing musical sounds (do re mi, etc.). Definitely not random.

hluska• 3 years ago

Vtech is fucking evil.

When my kid was around 20 months old, she got really into Brio. This kit gave us hundreds of hours of entertainment- she’s seven now and still plays with it:

https://www.brio.us/products/all-products/railway/classic-ra...

It’s a well made wooden train set. It was great for helping with her fine motor skills, taught us a lot about working together and was genuinely a lot of fun…even for her old dad.

e-master• 3 years ago

[+] for Brio, though it’s so expensive that i often joke I have half of my savings in these brio train sets.

isoprophlex• 3 years ago

If you also have duplo, search for duplo-brio connectors. Quadratic fun combining both toy sets!

gambiting• 3 years ago

I don't understand the extremely negative comments about VTech here - they have some great toys. Our little boy loves the line of cars they have(toot toot drivers), we have an interactive car garage that's really fun to play with, and also in a lot of cases I find their toys offer better money/value ratio than Fisher Price.

And they still do educational laptops: https://www.vtech.co.uk/brands/brand_page/electronic_learnin...

We've had their walker as well, the buttons definitely weren't random on that.

peepee19822• 3 years ago

I like some of the Vtech toys. I bought my youngest a Vtech Marble Rush recently for his third birthday and we build a lot of stuff with it together.

My oldest son (8 now) got a toy laptop when he was around that age, and he learned shapes, counting, and letters with it. It's looks really beat up now, but it still works and it wasn't too annoying or stupid.

In general I don't think electronic toys for toddlers are a good idea. But those two things from Vtech turned out to be allright.

nicolas_t6• 3 years ago

Yeah, I'm also sure the toys targeted at older kids might be better too, I've mostly had experience with toys for younger toddlers that were given to us by well meaning friend and family.

So far for toys targeted at toddlers, we've been extremely happy with the lovevery toys.

newaccount743• 3 years ago

Some toys aren't educational, they are just there to distract your toddler for a few minutes.

Maybe you don't have a use for them, because your kid will happily look at a picture book while you fold the laundry, but not all kids are like that. One of my kids wants almost constant attention and won't let me get any housework done, so I've really learned to appreciate the few annoying toys that are interesting enough to keep him engaged for a few minutes.

nicolas_t6• 3 years ago

We're lucky in that he's happy to try to "help" folding the laundry, it does result in it taking at least 4 times as long but it's a nice educational task.

But yes point taken, although at that point, I think some of the better tv shows (like numberblocks) might be better than those toys with callback function.

esalman3• 3 years ago

We can't afford a house with yard and garage in the Bay area so living in an apartment complex with our 2 year old.

Most of the days he gets an hour of outside time at the daycare and that's it. All of us are more miserable the longer he is inside the apartment. It'll probably obliterate out finances but he's the reason I am looking for a house possibly within a block of a children's park.

ignormies2• 3 years ago

The issue isn't purely house vs apartment. It's a symptom of our neighborhood design.

Not Just Bikes has a really good video on why suburbia (usually single family housing) is often worse for children than denser environments.

https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw

onlypositive• 3 years ago

Definitely agree it comes down to design, this video is really just about one type of suburbia, the type without any shops or recreational facilities of any kind or even footpaths to get around.

The suburbs I grew up in were full of kids running around from house to house to park to shop to tree to trains to busses to school to tennis court to basketball court to skate park etc.

Urban areas where I grew up tended to be kind of concrete filled jungles. Similar facilities but nowhere near as exercise encouraging.

Now we live in a country where suburbs lack footpaths and there isn't much to do locally. We're considering moving back to another suburb in a nearby city that was urban and apartment filled but at least had a local mall, parks and rec centre that was extremely popular and well utilised.

nicolas_t6• 3 years ago

Don't the apartments in the Bay area have children playground nearby? Here in HK, there's almost always a children playground within 5 minutes walking distance of any apartment tower. Just next to our place we have 3 different playgrounds, it's been great because even though we live in an apartment, our son has met a lot of his neighbours by playing at the playgrounds.

esalman3• 3 years ago

You're right, there are nearby playgrounds. As the other comments put it, it is more about the walkability/design of the neighborhoods that's the issue.

fxtentacle• 3 years ago

Italy does this extremely well. There's public town squares pretty much everywhere and in the evening people walk there with their kids. You get to gossip with all your neighbors and your kids can play, run and scream until they're tired.

Pamar• 3 years ago

This is because Italy has lots of small towns/villages. Large cities (e.g. Milan) are an entirely different story.

Also, if you live outside of large cities... you can't do much without a car, which implies another set of problems.

nradov• 3 years ago

The birth rate in Italy is down to 1.24 so I don't believe your claim that they're doing anything extremely well. How much of Italy have you actually visited? Most of it seems like a miserable place for parents of small children to live.

spaceman_2020• 3 years ago

Having a baby makes you realize how anti-baby all of modern life is. From the lack of space in cities to the silent pressure at work to put in extra effort to “make up” for your maternity/paternity leave.

No wonder birth rates are falling off a cliff.

esalman3• 3 years ago

Absolutely. We were international students to the US, so we waited for a long time trying to sort out our future before having a baby- studies, immigration, employment among other things.

bink2• 3 years ago

The great thing about those old metal dump trucks was that if your friend brought his over you could use them as roller skates and crack your skull open like your parents did when they were kids.

hackernewds• 3 years ago

Sounds like a personal story?

bink2• 3 years ago

It is. But the stories about throwing lawn darts over the house trying to hit each other is more exciting.

PhasmaFelis• 3 years ago

I'm sure there's some good arguments for why toys suck now, but the complaints about the Tonka truck are pure nostalgia goggles. I had one of those metal Tonka jobs as a kid, too. I loved and I pushed it around and I split my brother's face open with it by mistake (he healed up fine). I very much doubt I would have had any less fun if it had been plastic and used a slightly less realistic design style, of all the things to get upset about. I'm not saying the metal truck was too dangerous for kids, but I also don't think being able to cut my brother's face open was an upside like this guy seems to.

Also, I'm about the same age as him, and I'm not sure how he thinks toys that don't do anything but light up and bleep obnoxiously are new. Those things were huge in the '80s.

lcw• 3 years ago

It was surprising to me, but my kids like going into retro toy stores and getting things more than getting newer stuff. Some things can be more expensive but generally these places have a bunch of cheap used toys that come from franchises and brands my kids understand and like. For instance, transformers, star wars, power rangers, and ninja turtles.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

Vertibird [0] was my nostalgic toy of a bygone era. I guess (older) kids have drones now, so that's cool, I guess.

[0] https://youtu.be/FojzXSa6bxk

Pxtl• 3 years ago

I distinctly remember my first child prioritizing toys by heft. He ranked his choices almost wholly based on their effectiveness as a bludgeon.

dajonker• 3 years ago

I have a 1.5-year old and we bought 25 kilograms of used Duplo (toddler safe, bigger Lego from the same brand). There are bricks from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and they all still click together well and have barely faded in colour. The quality of this stuff is amazing, and it still is judging from the brand new bricks we got as a gift.

plufz• 3 years ago

I agree, we are big lego/duplo fans in my family as well.

Just a little safety warning that old legos, especially 70s (and older I guess) can contain toxics in the colors like cadmium. I am not qualified to say how large a risk that poses. The risk of choking is probably larger?

A more positive side note, have you seen that you can order separate bricks from all newer lego/duplo kits? You just search for the name of your kit and get a list of all the parts it contains in the lego support. It is not cheap, but a great service.

myrion• 3 years ago

Incidentally, Lego and Duplo are compatible!

So eventually you can use the Duplo blocks as large building blocks under more intricate Lego designs.

verall• 3 years ago

The top comment says:

compare the new tonka dump to the caterpillar 797F mine truck.

It looks exactly the same. Pretty interesting how quickly it's dismissed as unreasonable.

pb060• 3 years ago

For my 20 months old daughter i’m only getting mechanical toys possibly made of wood, or simple dolls with no electronics. Trying to keep her away from modern cheap animations and songs, especially from the Baby Shark saga which washes your brain and leaves it empty.

dusted3• 3 years ago

you make real mistakes on a smaller scale and learn from them rather than being sheltered, so you don’t grow into an incompetent idiot as an adult.

This. It might sound rough, but in a lot of "accident scenarios" kids don't break as easily adults.. They don't break their bones and hips as easily.. They're shorter, so their tiny cute little heads don't get banged as hard on the concrete when they fall..

Yes, of course we need to protect them from danger, we don't want them to lose fingers, eyes or lives.. We want to limit the head-banging to especially teachable moments.. But still, I want my kid to learn balance and inertia and all the physical things that comes with being in a human body, while he can do it without the same serious consequences as someone in their 20s would suffer.

I don't wish him pain, but I want him to be comfortable with himself, not be scared of everything because he don't know what will happen or how to do anything, and the other hand, know what things are unrealistic and shouldn't be attempted, because they already tried it while they were flexible enough not to break too much.

rtpg• 3 years ago

One valuable trait of most humans is that we are able to have experience and consequences transmitted to us without experiencing it first hand.

I understand that falling from high up is painful, not because I have fallen, but because I have seen other people fall, or have had people tell me. I have never broken a bone in my body, but I still understand that it is a thing that I want to avoid!

First-hand experience teaches people things, but it neither guarantees the lesson (people make the same mistake over and over all the time!) nor is necessarily the best way to learn a thing.

I think it's good that kids toys (mostly) no longer can cause lasting damage to children.

Aeolun• 3 years ago

we are able to have experience and consequences transmitted to us without experiencing it first hand

Speak for yourself. I don’t think I really learn anything without trying it out for myself.

Still have no broken bones though. It makes me a bit anxious about the day that it’ll finally happen because I have no idea what to expect (and it’ll only get more likely as I get older).

imiric• 3 years ago

First-hand experience is the best way to learn _anything_. It doesn't guarantee learning, of course, but it sure beats reading about it, or, if you're a kid, getting advice from grown-ups you rebelliously distrust. Small children before they've reached the age of reasoning just can't learn from sage advice anyway.

I think it's good that kids toys (mostly) no longer can cause lasting damage to children.

We're not talking about lasting damage here. We're talking about a few scrapes and bruises that will (hopefully) teach them to avoid making sillier mistakes in the future. This is what the article is lamenting kids toys don't provide anymore.

newaccount743• 3 years ago

They sell safety latches that are supposed to prevent your kids from pinching their fingers with drawers and cupboard doors. They are completely useless. Yelling "careful!!" a million times does not teach your kids anything, since they don't understand what "careful" means if they never hurt themselves.

Pinching their fingers with a drawer teaches them rather quickly. Even the slowest learners realize very quickly how to close drawers after they do it the wrong way once or twice. (They might even learn what "careful!" means...)

dusted3• 3 years ago

One valuable trait of most humans is that we are able to have experience and consequences transmitted to us without experiencing it first hand.

Yes, and no.

Try as you might, but you can't simply explain to someone how it feels to drive a bicycle, how it feels right before you're falling off, you can teach them theory, and they might be able to use that to reduce risk, but in the end, the sensory experience that comes with being in a body cannot yet be transmitted simply by explanation and demonstration. It must be felt and experienced.

You might understand that falling from up high is painful, and is to be avoided, but you know what painful means from having fallen from less dangerous heights, and other similar experiences. You may know that falling from the gap between two buildings will most certainly kill you, but if you've never cleared any gaps, you won't have the slightest idea what kind of gap you can clear. You won't know if you're running the right speed, so you won't know if you should go for it or abort.

You can explain that "the typical human can run so and so fast" and theory about inertia, wind resistance and whatnot, but you can't get a SENSE of what you in your own body can do, without doing it.

I can't explain to you how it felt the first time I hit a ramp with too much speed on my snowboard, it'd probably feel different for you anyway.. I could tell you "don't do jumps on snowobards, it is dangerous unless you practice it", I can tell you not to do anything, because it's dangerous if you're incompetent. But I can't explain to you how to become competent with your own body at physical activities, only tell you to avoid it, and then hope you'll never need it for any reason (be it leisure or some actually dangerous event).

It's generally good that toys don't cause lasting damage to children, the risk, and type of damage delt should be in proportion with the kind of game being played. Nobody should be a complete accident get their fingers chopped off when buttering bread.. On the other hand, getting a reasonable understanding that things made out of metals can have sharp edges, to a degree, is probably pretty damn healthy..

Being in a maximally safe environment all the time makes for very ignorant, uncareful people, and when something goes slightly out of the ordinary, they sustain much more damage than people who's grown up knowing that there are some slightly sharp corners in the world know that paying a little attention goes a long way.

Again, a little cut in your finger from a metal toy is a valuable lesson towards being more careful around the circular saw.

Now, you've never broken a bone in your body, lots of people haven't. But to build competence in many areas, you need to risk that, and that risk is better placed when you're younger and will heal more easily. This does not mean seeking to break something, only that doing certain things will increase the risk.. I'm nearly 40 now, I'd _NEVER_ begin learning to do jumps on snowboard now, because.. I fall harder than I used to.. But I have jumped since I was 12, I broke the bones back then, and it wasn't bad really.. It'd be bad now.. Now I can have fun being competent enough that the risk of breaking something makes up for the increased damage it would do, and I can have fun. Try learning to jump at 40, sure it's doable, but it's much more dangerous.

peepee19822• 3 years ago

Sounds like any run of the mill complaint that everything used to be better.

I romanticize my childhood as much as the next guy. But I recommend looking at all the ways our childhoods were worse than those of our children. Makes for a much more balanced comparison.

jbm• 3 years ago

I was a child in the 80s as well; the idea that we spent a lot of time outside does not jive with my memories. I had the same dump truck as in the article, but this did not inspire me to go out and explore the neighborhood alone.

Other than my backyard and a local park, there literally was nowhere worth going where I lived (a suburb of Montreal). There were no kids in the immediate neighbourhood, and everyone seemed to be living in their bubble. Suburban isolation was very real, at least for me.

The quality of everything then was much worse than people seem to remember. Recessions bit harder, schools were worse in every way (activities, teachers, handling bullies, etc..). I really don't know why people miss the 80s, it was an awful, ugly place. My friends at the mosque and my friends on BBSes were literally the only bright spots in an otherwise dull and dreary childhood.

On a semi-related note, my daughters used to spend a lot of time in the house, but recently they started going to the park more often. Having friends in the neighborhood is huge.

Brian_K_White• 3 years ago

I grew up in the same 80's, 70s and 80s actually (born in 70), in a few different locations without this overall memory.

I had other kids, yards, woods sometimes, city blocks other times. Tonka trucks in particular were never my most favorite thing although I did have them. But I had, did, and loved all manner of other equivalent outdoor and slightly dangerous things.

There was nothing intrinsically terrible about the 80's as a kid as far as I would say. Economic problems were the parents problems, even though that means you don't get to have the flashy stuff from the Sears catalog, it didn't actually matter. And I was a geek that didn't easily make friends with the normies, especially later in high school when I really started to have my own firm (and differrnt) personality. I too found my true community on bbs's.

If you grew up in a kid-desert, and you were not good at amusing yourself, neither of those problems are "the 80's".

I spent countless hours amusing myself alone working on random nothing projects with nothing but some pieces of wood in the yard or something. A kid doesn't really care what there is to play with, they will play with it. In the country it was everything found in the woods, or fishing, or working on minibikes that spent 500 hours apart for every hour running, in the dreary city with no yard then it was busted appliances from the curb etc. I lived in both worlds, and both under and over 10 yrs, and so you can't say I just was lucky to live anywhere especially good by chance. We moved a lot and some places were shitty little apartments in a city, and some were single family houses not very near any other houses let alone ones with kuds let alone ones with kids that liked me.

One absolute change from the 80's is in the 80's, and this is in the city too not just the country, I could bike myself all over the place. I don't know but I just assume that today parents either don't allow that, or the rest of society doesn't allow it even if a parent wanted to. Which is a shame.

euroderf2• 3 years ago

My Tonkas (1960s) were solid all-metal stuff.

Is it really so expensive nowadays to bend and shape metal into toys ? All this plastic crap disintegrates (or just frays into uglitude) under realistic use.

4ggr0• 3 years ago

My childhood is not that far away. Favorite toys were my plushies and action figures, which I'd used to roleplay big fights while voicing every single character. Also really loved Playmobil(is this an european thing, or do y'all also have Playmobil?). Matchbox and Hot Wheels were also used a lot. Basically, I think I just really liked to roleplay. Maybe because I grew up as an only child, so I had to come up with different characters on my own to entertain myself :)

Then, one day, I was gifted a computer. That's the day I almost completely stopped playing with toys :)

ctoth• 3 years ago

I posted this because I was looking at Tonka trucks for a friend's kid and noticed how they were all plastic now, and wanted to find something about this. This was from 2011, so the rot must have set in quite a bit earlier. Does anyone have more information about what changed in, like, late 1999? Did we all get plugged into the Matrix and the robots don't want us to get hurt as kids? More seriously, was there a sudden wave of lawsuits or something then that changed things?

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 3 years ago

I mean, in the end if you are the parent, choose wisely the toys you buy.

We spent a lot (really a lot!) of money on: duplo, brio, a wooden toy kitchen, an enormous set of duplo animals, a set of magnets.

Our children use those, yes we have garbage toys from friends and parents, but our children use those, exception for cars. Any car is fine.

We also have 4 different garbage trucks (one for the sand, 2 rideables, 1 for playing at home), since we have a passionate guy. The plastic of all 4 is good, yes they are not metal unfortunately (but he is still 2).

Train and duplo are still going really strong, the kitchen a bit less because we had to remove some pieces since they made such a mess that they wouldn't know how to cleanup, and I got frustrated doing it myself every time.

For videogames, stoo giving garbage videogames and give them quality stuff. We skip tv for children and tablet videogames are not a thing, instead I let my children play yoshi's crafted world and kirby star allies. My daughter (almost 5) is really strong by now, my 2 year old is still getting started.

I am very passionate of toys, I am very fond of my old ones (I have a very large lego collection, as well as mechas from power rangers).

Aside from that, yes toys are mostly crap quality nowdays. I struggle to find good stuff, we'd rather skip a birthday and find a good more expensive toy to buy later on, if needed at all.

Kids Toys Suck (2011)

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