The set of toys I spent the most time playing with was a big bag of wooden blocks my grandfather gave me when I was very small. They are well designed, with a good selection of different shapes, e.g. it has cylinders and arches and thin planks as well as cuboids. They got a lot of use because they're so flexible in combining with other toys, e.g. you can build roads and garages for toy cars, or obstacle courses for rolling marbles. The edges and corners are rounded and the wood tough enough that clean-up was just dropping them back into the bag.
I've since given them to a nephew and I'm happy to see he gets just as much entertainment out of them as I did. Plain wooden blocks can represent almost anything. There are no batteries or moving parts to fail. Mine got a little bit of surface wear but they still work just as well as they did when they were new and small children don't care about perfect appearance. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up getting passed down to another generation and continue to provide the same entertainment. I highly recommend this kind of simple toy for young children.
> I highly recommend this kind of simple toy for young children.
As a parent I very much agree. And for grown-up children too.
On my desk I have a small tin containing small wooden blocks and planks, arches, etc. I get lots of play value from them - when my thinking is blocked, or if I just want to fool around and not think at all. I'm in my mid fifties.
And over at my climbing club's off-grid climbing hut we have a big box of over-sized, home made jenga blocks. Pretty-much everyone plays with them: not only jenga, but also just building structures or giant domino runs or whatever.
Sticking to the magnetile theme of the OP, my kids and I have spent the most time and most occasions playing with the mangetile marble run kits. It works so well.
As an aside, there's an app out there is an app for the iPad called "Cuboro Riddles" which is a "how do you make the marble go from here to there using the blocks." Given that there are multiple ways that a block can channel a marble, this is a tricky one.
... and then if you get this over into the lego domain (not as "just something to fiddle with..." it gets you into the GBC. There is a standard for how one connects to another described at https://www.greatballcontraption.com/wiki/standard ... and then at lego conventions people hook them all up. https://youtu.be/avyh-36jEqA
Looks like their site links to a good number of US stores that sell them, many mom/pop. While there may not be a store close enough to you, perhaps there's one that would ship to you.
As an adult, I bought on impulse a set of wooden dominos intended for domino runs. It included a few other props. It was on clearance for almost nothing because the box was damaged.
With friends and family on occasion (individuals ranging in age from 27-70) , multiple hours have passed setting up and playing with this domino set.
I really believe that play is vitally important at all ages.
At one point way back then, my dad made something in the workshop that improved them tremendously: Wooden boards.
These were small, thin, very flat boards of oak -- about 3/16" thick and 3/4" wide. Their lengths varied in 2" increments, and the length of each board was written on it.
With boards added in, the blocks got a lot more interesting. Fastening was still limited to gravity, but things like cantilevers started happening.
Same. We had a kids’ play table (low to the ground and rectangular) that we’d prop up with a few blocks under one end to give it a slight incline. We’d spend hours covering the surface with blocks in different positions to simulate a pinball table.
Then we’d take a large marble and use two long triangular blocks as flippers to “play” on it.
100% agree. Box of blocks cannot be beat. My sister and I used the hell out of ours: we built towers, cantilevers, mazes, Rube Goldberg devices, houses for rodents, vehicles, elaborate locks, catapults, you name it. They're still in the same condition as day 1, ready for our children.
Bonus: You can roll a lot more down those long rubber racetracks than just cars.
I had such blocks as well. For a recent take on this, I can recommend Kapla, typically come in a large (a couple 100s) box of skinny rectangular cuboids. I had fun doing, ahem, preliminary testing, before gifting them to my niece.
I got set for my son after noticing he loves stacking Jenga blocks and generic Kapla gets 10x more usage than Lego.
Can it be that the moment Lego moved from mostly bricks to custom single use shapes for every kit the joy of combining them died? My kids build car, Dino, Harry Potter set once and then gather dust. Bridges, castles, towers and roads from Kapla get rebuild every day.
When I was young there were fewer types of shapes but a lot of new sets contained a lot of such specialized shapes. I rather played with the lego i found in the attic.
I’ve seen some sets that are blocks with random flat surfaces but still balanced.
However, I notice that many antique block sets seem far superior to newer sets.
(I’m sure someone must make an amazing new set, I see some suggestions in the comments).
Having made some wooden block sets from scratch, what I am always amazed about with a good set is balance / size of pieces, coupled with variety and quantity. The balance being a vitally important part that seems to be overlooked in “bad” sets.
Similar story for me but the blocks were just a few scraps of construction wood. Infinite possibilities even with a few short blocks of 2x4 and angle cut pieces.
I did my first programming with those wooden blocks.
I would build structures deliberately designed to gradually self destruct through a long sequence of actions. A cylinder rolls down a ramp and displaces a support that tips a tower that hits a lever that tips another ramp… endless fun.
Can confirm that Magnatiles, specifically, were maybe the best value for the dollar we ever got out of toys for our kids. Idk if the quality has held up but our kids abused the hell out of the things and it took them years to finally break just a couple of them (the largest ones are the most vulnerable). They have incredible range, good for babies but still seeing use as a supporting toy up to their tweens. Kinda pricey but if the quality is still as good as it was years ago (can’t say, the ~3 sets we bought over a couple years held up so well we never bought any more) they’re easily worth it.
We have tons of Lego too but these were far better play-value for the dollar. Not even close. Can’t say if the knockoff brands are as good.
(Can’t vouch for any of the rest of these but those giant magnetic tiles look potentially like a much better investment than dedicated e.g. kitchen playsets, way more versatile)
We just aged out of this as our youngest child is now 11, but I can affirm that magnatiles are fantastic and fun - and that is coming from someone who lionizes legos and considers them the ne plus ultra of toys for children.
That being said ...
We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":
A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.
My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".
I can confirm as someone that had these or a very similar kit as a kid that they were enjoyable and the knowledge proved useful when I started working with real circuits in high school and college.
The problem now is that there are a zillion knock-offs sold everywhere, both retail shops and online. We don’t buy them, but the kids get them as gifts. They all have something different, from the magnet positioning to the outer dimensions, presumably to try to dodge some patents. These become the weak point in bigger builds or throw off the dimensions in ways that add up and cause early collapse.
I’ve been quietly removing the gifted knock offs and replacing them with real ones because it makes the experience less frustrating.
We’re starting to have the same problem with LEGO now
This was the first toy I expected to see on the list. Can agree that, though they are somewhat expensive, our kids played with them frequently for the better part of a decade and then we passed them along to cousins who completed the decade of play and then some.
We got some fabric bins to store them in, which made cleanup a 2 minute affair if adults helped or 5 minutes if the kids did it alone.
Magnatiles are great for adults who want to play with their kids too.
The most fun my kid had was playing make believe games with me. Like I'd say "you're lost in a forest and you see a cabin up ahead and a trail that goes past it. What do you do"? And we'd go from there. Zero dollar cost and unlimited hours of fun until they grow up enough and don't want to play anymore.
I think this is worth worrying about, especially with knockoff magnatiles. The magnets are small enough to swallow. If a child swallows two they could die, for the same reason that "buckyball" magnet toys were banned: the magnets can snap together with intestinal tissue in between and perforate the intestinal wall.
Had to look up the rules on bows and arrows in the European Union when I got to [4.17.4] Bows and arrows. "bows offered for sale with arrows are to be considered as toys" Wait. What? Like, all bows and arrows?
This Christmas, after putting aside the push car, some books, and a few other little toys from the grandparents, my 1 year old has spent the past 30 minutes chasing a large beach ball one of his siblings brought up from the basement.
I can second the recommendation for magnet tiles, though; everyone in the family seems to enjoy the satisfaction of them clicking together, and finding new ways to build random stuff. The toddler just makes stacks of magnet tiles, which is fine for his development. The 8-12 year olds enjoy building relatively complex structures. Then watching the 1 year old act like Godzilla an destroy it.
Blocks is the top comment (for me); and yours is number two. Timeless classic. Another one could be plasticine clay. These toys afford play, they don't direct, restrict, or guide play. Other good toys like this: box, stick, the woods, paper (especially a big roll of butcher paper), and things to draw with (I find a black, red, blue, yellow and green sufficient).
I recently needed to make a mockup of something, so I got some plasticine from Amazon, since I remembered playing with the stuff when I was a kid. However what I received was quite stiff and left an unpleasant oily smell on my hands that I had to scrub off with a lot of effort. Is there a particular brand of plasticine that you have had a good experience with?
There were only two toys I never got tired of -- legos, and computers. Both encourage open-ended creativity. (I had older lego house sets which were quite flexible. Modern lego pieces seem more specialized.) Unfortunately, so many pieces took several minutes to clean up, so I would just leave them spread out across my bedroom floor for months at a time. These days when I want to play with legos I put a bedsheet down first.
Also, I read another article from the author and subscribed just based on how concisely she expresses her ideas. She just gets her point across, then quits. I love it.
I feel like this list says a lot more about what the author wants her kids to be interested in than a real survey of the whole toy market. There are a few stuffed animals that get tons of love, and the magnet blocks were a hit for a couple months but then they got old. This is going to trigger a deluge of unsolicited admonition, but the television and the Nintendo switch have by far the highest entertainment value per dollar spent.
I'm the author, and my husband immediately had the same feedback: iPad should be at the top of the list. I responded that iPad wasn't a toy, and he strongly disagreed.
From research on a comment in another area, the European Union at least says "no" on the toy claim. Things in the EU "not considered as toys". [Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] 14. "Electronic equipment, such as personal computers and game consoles, used to access interactive software"
Imo, there would be no value in writing something where an iPad would satisfy the requirements, and I appreciated the list, and we're thinking about the large magnatile things now.
Do you have an easel whiteboard paper roll thing? I think it fits this list.
I tried the easel and whiteboard paper roll when my kids were younger and it was not a great experience. But I think those things change with time. Cool to hear it fits the list for you.
These are all good toys, my middle elementary kid really likes magnatiles.
That said, I still think Lego runs the board. My 40yo Lego is still in use, I still get pleasure out of it and my kid gets even more. My kid and I just finished team building the UCS millennium falcon and now we're having a blast playing with it. Soon it'll start being scavenged for other projects. I've never seen another toy equal Lego in replayability or in the vast array of ways it can be used. As a crusty old coot I complain about the seemingly single use pieces in new Lego sets and then watch as my kid uses them in new and creative ways in MOCs. No other toy we have has the same staying power and much to my wife's chagrin it's the yardstick by which I measure every other toy.
The data in the graph from this next post shows an inflation adjusted per brick price of .40 USD in 1980 vs a little above $.10 now. Perhaps more interesting is the cost per gram analysis which also shows a large drop.
I think people tend to romanticize the past and underestimate the effect of inflation across decades. One thing that may contribute to the idea that Lego is now too expensive is that the average sets seem to be larger and more complex now. Even if the bricks are cheaper the sheer quantity of them will inherently raise the set price. That may explain why the data in the Reddit post shows average median set cost having risen even while per brick cost has decreased.
So true! Requires a prescription for anxiety after playing and stepping on a piece is beyond lego level pain. Thanks for scarring my otherwise happy Christmas day :D
Even kids who can't read yet will somewhat play with them outside of the rules. Except they're fragile, easy to lose, will bring fights and other troubles as they grow up, and cost a ton more money if they really get hooked.
1800s black powder revolver replica + starter kit of stuff. Noisy, messy, fraught with peril and danger, a little less expensive and much less cumbersome than a 1980s 3-wheeler. For ~$500 you can be the coolest uncle ever and if the parents take it the kid will resent that for life.
Usually cake baking of some kind. The kids will get bored after the initial mess making part, but will be expecting a yummy treat at the end, so the parent has to see the whole thing through, _and_ clean up the mess.
For an added bonus, the kid then eats the sugary treat, and they have that to deal with.
The ideal "fuck you, parents" present must be noisy, and yet must require no batteries. Drums & cymbals are a good choice, as is a vuvuzela or an Aztec death whistle.
Cant believe I have to answer these questions but here we go
- lego is a toy
- model plane that requires assembly is very likely a toy
- some drones a toy
if you meet a family with a baby or a toddler do not buy them a fucking toy, it is simple as that. it pollutes the planet and brings nothing good to anyone, not a child, not a parent and not you wasting money on stupid shit
As a parent I largely agree with this take. Most toys people buy my kids are essentially cheap plastic trash that won't last a season of interest but emotional toil to try and get rid of.
If you must get something outside of a donation to education savings, please either get a relevant book, something genuinely useful, or some kind of consumable. A pair of fun socks. A good a new backpack. Tickets to a sports game or a museum. A bag of snacks. A few sheets of stickers. New legitimate sports equipment (if they're into the sport and could actually use it). All of these are far better than some cheap plastic noise maker.
The things I listed aren't "cheap plastic noise makers". You can get good toys, most people don't bother.
They wouldn't bother with good snacks (they'll probably buy a huge bag of gummy bears or lollipops) or good socks (they'll get some funny 100% polyester socks).
Oh, and "few sheets of stickers" are also pollution, they're basically 100% plastic.
Expensive plastic, still a toy. Guess you're right it's not cheap. Definitely depends on the kid on this one. Legos can be OK toys, one of the few rare exceptions.
> Is a model plane that requires assembly a toy?
For the kind most people would just give as a gift? Absolutely just cheap plastic trash. It's definitely a hobby one can get into, but the quick gift stuff is pretty poor quality. And that model, once built, is probably fragile. Kids aren't often known for handling fragile things well.
you hope my childhood was filled with endless stream of useless play-with-them-2-hours-then-get-the-next-one toys followed by phones and tablets when I was strong enough to hold them? very happy to report my childhood was not wasted that way
Can confirm that Magna-tiles score high on replayability and are way easier to clean up than Legos. My kids are teens now, but were the right age when these came out.
Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys for a greener more affordable option.
Trivial Pursuit was like this too. Our family would chill in the den just randomly asking each other questions from the cards. I'm not sure we ever actually played it using the board game part.
I actually played mouse trap but my kid and their cousins do nothing with the game and love to just setup the trap. That game from the 80s has become a favorite toy of the gen alpha crowd when visiting the grandparents.
I think so many 90s kids had this same experience. The Rube Goldberg trap was so much fun to build and play with, nobody bothered to even try and learn the game itself!
Bonus adult points - how do they work? How is it the tiles always stick to each other no matter the orientation? Easy once you know, but it took me (and friends with physics degrees) a little thinking to get.
Yes! K’NEX [1] is based on spatial geometry. You connect plastic rods of different lengths into star-shaped connectors. This creates a "skeleton" or wireframe structure. It is much better than LEGO for building large-scale, open-air structures like roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and bridges. It is superior for kinetic builds. Interestingly, K’NEX has released "K’NEX Bricks" in the past that are compatible with LEGO studs, and some modern K’NEX sets include brick-compatible parts.
The toy with the most longevity from my childhood were those cardboard bricks. Could be used for anything from forts, towers, hamster mazes, throwable weapons...
Not the quickest toy to clean up, but still fun since it's a building activity of its own, stacking them against a wall or something.
I had the same experience, loved my cardboard bricks. My kid never connected with them the same though even though my kid is big on building toys. Now they mostly just take up space, should probably give them away.
Yeah but I'm glad you don't consider the ipad a toy. It's not a toy, i predict that we're going to look back at this time of 'ipad + headphone kids' and roll our eyes as much as we roll our eyes at bloodletting.
Screen devices can be a toy but it takes very intentional use of them.
My child has had an old iPhone se since 4yo. It has no network connection. I load music on it. It only has music, camera, and voice recorder apps. Like most toys it gets intense periods of play and then goes back in the toy box with a dead battery for weeks.
It's my assertion that the problem with tablets/phones as toys for kids is the endless stream of new content. It's addictive and never gets old. If you find a way to cut off the firehouse of new (and keep the addictive apps off) then they eventually become just another boring toy. Us adults could learn from this too.
> Maybe I feel the satisfaction of clicking them together as I clean them up. Cleaning becomes a little like playing.
My preschooler daughter got Magna Tiles for Christmas and she's cleaning them up herself, which is a first for her.
I'm surprised the Minecraft blocks feel less strong - Magna Tiles seem to be using standard AlNiCo magnets and I expected, given the price, that the Minecraft ones would be using neodymium magnets, but apparently they're not and this weakness comes from magnets being only at the corners.
I can't recommend enough ordering a $10 collapsible ball pen. My son understood even at age 2 that some toys needed to be played with in his play pen, and it means I can let him play with toys with hundreds of pieces and then scoop them all up at once.
The best toy my sister and I got is a now long-discontinued product called Omagles. They were brightly colored tubes and panels you connected with plastic clips. They were strong enough to stand and climb on. They even had wheels we could make vehicles out of.
They were so good I bought a used one for my own kid who had a great time with them.
After some Googling, I see that the rights to Omagles were bought and are now sold under the brand Tubelox.
Exact same for me! Just ten minutes ago my son opened his Xmas present, his first box of TubeLox. My expectations and hopes are high but he is currently distracted by the flashier presents.
He'll probably find it himself, but if he doesn't, just build something cool in front of him. He may not have unlocked all the possibilities in his brain yet.
There is also Quadro Toys. I have a couple of the large sets and have built a series of houses, climbing toys, and now a "castle" with a slide for my daughter.
It looks like the author examined every toy inspired by Lego, other than Lego itself.
For me the big problem with Lego was not clean up time. For me the big problem with Lego was stepping on them barefoot. How do these other toys compare?
Big problem with modern LEGO for me is that so many modern sets are almost all teensy-tiny pieces, so they look good on the box—the adult-aimed ones have always been like this since they started targeting that market, but now it’s like 95% of all their sets; also, they seem to hate exposed nubs, which is silly if the set is for play.
Larger (like tall 6x2) bricks are uncommon outside buckets, and a lot of larger pieces like dedicated wall-sections or big vehicle nose-bits or car undercarriages are now rare.
The result is that my old sets are a mix of everything from large contoured structural plates down to tiny pieces, but my kids’ bins of legos are like 98% tiny pieces. They use them less than I did, I think because it’s hard to sort through the loose pieces when they’re mostly very small, and with less variety there aren’t as many large pieces to use as jumping-off points to start a build, and making, say, a house-height wall or the front of a space ship is slower than when we had more bricks that could kinda short-hand those pieces and let you skip the middle, if you will, to focus on both the big-picture and fine details. I doubt I’d have liked Lego so much if mine had looked like theirs.
Unfortunately, LEGO has decided that they want to make mostly high-margin co-branded sets with Nintendo, Pokémon, Minecraft, Star Wars, Monster Jam, F1, etc rather than cool engineering sets with a lot of flexible pieces that can be built into lots of different things. Luckily Chinese vendors like Uncle Brick and Mould King have stepped in to offer huge sets of Technics compatible parts, including simple motors that LEGO simply does not make anymore, for not much money. It’s really too bad that Lego abandoned that market. I would certainly pay a premium for the original stuff but a lot of what I would like is just not available. Now, I still buy a lot of the branded LEGO stuff, but the Chinese stuff has also entered the rotation for the older kids who are interested in engineering.
You have to be so careful with that stuff though. Some of those knockoff legos are absolutely infuriating to assemble and don’t fit together right—not just with actual LEGO but even with themselves.
There is a definite element of “you get what you pay for” when it comes to that stuff. Unfortunately… because some of those knockoff kits look super cool.
In the late 1990s, Lego went the other way with those big single-purpose pieces, and were heavily criticised (particularly by older Lego fans) for "juniorisation" - over-simplifying sets so you just couldn't build anything different with the pieces. You can't build buildings out of big vehicle parts.
Sounds like it's gone too far the other way now and they're still not managing to find a middle ground? But it does depend partly on what age of kids we're talking about.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the classic line showing up on shelves and they seem a ton better, but I don’t recall seeing them several years ago when we were doing lots of Lego-buying. Really limited selection and mostly big, expensive sets too, not many mid-sized ones. But glad to see them releasing sets that seem more focused on play than sitting on a shelf.
This article is aimed at younger kids, before normal Lego is appropriate. I like Duplo more than magnatiles - slightly harder to clean up I suppose, but that's because they hold together better than magnatiles, which create quite fragile structures.
What I wish for would be a lego technics creative box with motors etc... Thats closer to what I had as a kid and I built a lot of fun things with that. Never liked the basic legos that much though
That's something I've run into myself. I just recently finished the Enterprise Lego set, and it was fun to build... but I doubt if I will ever take it apart and rebuild it. There were 30 bags in that set, and I don't much fancy the prospect of trying to sift through all the pieces at once rebuilding the thing.
when I was a kid I wanted some of the specialised sets simply because they had exciting new pieces like windshields, gears, dish antennas, etc. I don't think I ever made the actual thing the set was intended for, I just wanted to add new pieces to my lego bin.
We didn't see any of the toys in the article , but had a lot of other magnetic and combinable toys. The big advantage over Lego was building sizeable things with fewer blocks.
Duplo blocs come close, but they are pricey (hard to gift second hand toys) and you can only stack them when the other toys interlock in more interesting ways. For small kids, building an articulating shape the size of their arm with 4 or 5 blocs is really magical.
The best toys are the ones that your children love to play with. There isn't a formal method for finding it. The rule of thumb is don't buy noisy toys nor toys that have parts small enough to get lost under the car seats on first play.
After my daughter turned 4, the ‘toy’ with the most play time and lowest clean up time was a good pad of blank paper and colouring pencils. The bonus is that it takes up little room and is therefore highly portable. Furthermore, if you forget it, you can replace it easily and cheaply!
Ehrm, I beg to differ. My 4 year old daughter has recently also started loving to draw. But, she pretty much refuses to let go of her masterpieces, at least we conviced her to store them in a shoebox, so they're not spread all over the house. And the pencils... Well, I've been picking up an awful lot of pencils from all over the house.
So I'm not sure I agree with the "lowest clean up time", even though I'm really glad she's picked this up as a "hobby".
We have a specific area for
drawing so the ‘mess’ is confined to a small area. Our daughter is happy to likes to give the drawings away and isn’t overly attached to them after they’ve been displayed for a short while - I don’t personally see this as mess as I am also quite proud of her pictures. If I judge magnetic tiles by the same measure I should also include the storage space taken up by a large plastic box of magnetic tiles, the resistance to tidy away their tile creations and the frustration when younger siblings get involved!
I vote the cardboard box, especially if it is a large appliance box, Unfortunately you can't really give someone a large cardboard box, but oh boy are they fun.
Cardboard box demolition ideas for kids [1] I like where this video is going, letting kids explore the structural capabilities of different geometries.
Thank you for writing about parenting. Today was a tough day with the kids, and reading your blog after they’ve gone to sleep helped things feel a little better.
For small(ish) kids there is a certain correlation between play- and clean-up-time. If there was a toy which deviated, it would become blockbuster and there are hardly any such. Electronic screens are popular as nannies because of this.
Personally I choose all types in rotation. One toy of high duration is Play-Doh but afterwards needs a cleaning machine.
I also loved Playmobil. But they were so much better in the 80s, early 90s, when all the figures were exactly the same, except by the colors, so it meant they were all flexible to be dressed up as anything you wanted.
Nowadays each playmobil doll is extremely personalized which removes the flexibility to dress them as anything and limits the imagination and originality. Such a pity. No wonder Playmobil almost went bankrupt recently.
My experience as a parent, and the conventional wisdom of parents I've known, including my own, is that there's no predicting the influence of a given toy on a kid's development[0]. My hunch is that toys are better if they give the kid more agency to make up their own play and games without supervision, and many of the toys mentioned in the article are of that ilk. That could be because I still like toys, to this day, with that kind of built-in agency.
Also, growing up in a emotionally stable family culture that values curiosity and learning is probably a huge deal.
[0] Excluding cellphones and the Internet, which are their own discussion of course.
Another overlooked characteristic of a toy, especially a toy that takes up space, is "doneness".
Lots of free-play toys that my own kids use (4 and 7) can unconditionally be defended as still in use. They haven't been touched in an hour, but an ask to put it away is met with "I'm still playing with that". So: nothing gets put away until a parent pulls authority and overrules the kid's declaration that the game is still going. Understandably, the kids find this unfair and sort of demeaning.
A board game is different in so far as it has an ending. The kids never try to weasel out of putting Hungy Hungry Hippo or chess pieces or whatever back into a box.
This year the family favorite everyone was fighting to play including the adults was the new litebrite touch https://amzn.to/3MROaJs
Really satisfying to click the buttons and see the super bright lights as a young kid. The games like mirror were easy yet technical which had us all competing for high scores. Definitely well thought out
Everyone appreciated it didn’t involve cleanup of any little plastic pieces like the original litebright
It's one piece. Cleanup is picking it up and putting it where you want it. For playability, that thing kept each of our kids occupied for an unreasonable portion of their toddler-hood. We then passed it on to friends, and it did the same for their kids. They kept it, and gave it back to our kids when they had kids, and it's still delivering joy.
Something I'm wondering. My kids are grown now. When they were little, we got a toy with connecting magnetic pieces, don't remember the name. The magnets broke out of the brittle plastic easily and it was actually a pretty low quality toy although the concept was cool.
There was also some kind of recall or warning about the possibility of kids ingesting the magnets. That's about all I remember. Of course you never know as a parent whether the latest safety threat is serious or over-hyped. The claimed threat was that the magnets would click together in your intestines and wreak havoc.
I wonder what the present conventional wisdom is on those magnets.
The way it used to be, is if they come back with fasteners and nails attached after playing in the grass it's worth mentioning to the pediatrician on the next visit.
That might be it, and a quick search suggests that there were some recalls associated with it. Also, my kids didn't really gravitate to it. Their "construction" toys were a hodgepodge of blocks, some cheap "thomas train" knock-offs, stuffed animals, you name it, all combined into one giant mess. ;-)
We have some magnet tiles that have tubes and ramps for building marble mazes with - they are probably the most popular toy in the house. The thing about magnet tiles is there are several brands but they’re incompatible so it’s best to buy multiple sets from a single brand.
Connetix and magnatiles are pretty much fully compatible. Connetix is the only knock off I found that is higher quality than the original (and has great marble run)
Am I not loading all of this article? It basically stops for me after saying "magnet toys top the list" with 3 examples of such (well, really 2) for me, with no real investigation into other toys or exploration of why the variants like the Minecraft magnet toy scored much worse in cleanup (I assume it's due to the piece size?). Anything about toys other than magnet blocks?
Another type of toy I've seen fit this bill has been wooden/plastic train tracks (the solid larger pieces type, not flimsy model type, and simple sturdy trains to go on them). It still has the element of customization and playing with what you build but cleanup is "scoop the large pieces into a bucket" (and stepping on them usually isn't painful!)
The confusion was less on the author and more on the submission reaching the top of the front page - it wouldn't have been the first time the issue was my ad blocker or something. Thanks for confirming!
Has anyone had experienced with the giant magnet tiles? This article seems like suspicious affiliate marketing which places are beloved product that everybody has beside one that looks kind of similar.
When I read the title the first thing that came to my mind were Magna Tiles. Glad they made it on the list.
It's the only toy in the house that lasted the test of time from she 4-8 (and counting). Also I love tidying up Magna tiles, even that is fun!
My oldest kid got a small sample of Clixco and was surprisingly entertained even with a limited set of possibilities they offered. They're great fidget toys as well.
I annoy my wife by sorting magnet tiles away color type AND color. I do it as fast as possible with mock sorting algorithms. She shoves them back into the box.
As soon as I got first Minecraft block to my 5yo, the magnatiles were almost forgotten. And she never played Minecraft in her life, but saw the movie and some YouTube vids. The fact that the tiles have an image and purpose is a huge benefit, because she creates better stories with them.
But I got it only after i got kiddo to cleanup her toys from the floor regularly.
I never liked these sorts of construction toys, or legos. I'd rank any of my old action figures higher on the 3 dimensions. Sometimes some stuffed animals joined in the play. And of course as I got older, video games.
To me, game consoles were toys. Maybe they are a lot more now but the SNES and N64 felt like toys. The pc felt like a toy too.
I am very likely to be a father in the future. I am happy I have all my old consoles because it helps a bit with introducing kids to technology without them having access to all of it.
Soccer outside was fun too, there was a field nearby our house.
My parents literally just gave my daughter the alphabet puzzle for Christmas that was linked in the article as a terrible clean up vs play-time. I might send them this link!
You can teach a 4~5 yo kid to clean up. Below that it probably comes down to personality/level of awareness, and it's probably a lost cause for 2 year olds and below.
Then you'll want an adult to deal with the body fluids and other nasty stuffs.
PS; what I mean by "teach a 4-5 yo kid" is really spending a lot of time with them rehearsing cleaning and drilling it down. It pays dividends, but you'll be spending months and months, if not years, doing the cleaning with them at a slower pace than if you did it just yourself.
Board books. Adult reads, let the child turn the pages.
Simple kinetic toys, of the sort where you put a ball in a hole and it pops out somewhere else. Same pleasure as a marble run, without the choking hazard.
Adult mimicry toys, like play kitchen, doctors bag, etc. With the right setup and creative inspiration they can learn to putter about inventing simple tasks and executing them.
The set of toys I spent the most time playing with was a big bag of wooden blocks my grandfather gave me when I was very small. They are well designed, with a good selection of different shapes, e.g. it has cylinders and arches and thin planks as well as cuboids. They got a lot of use because they're so flexible in combining with other toys, e.g. you can build roads and garages for toy cars, or obstacle courses for rolling marbles. The edges and corners are rounded and the wood tough enough that clean-up was just dropping them back into the bag.
I've since given them to a nephew and I'm happy to see he gets just as much entertainment out of them as I did. Plain wooden blocks can represent almost anything. There are no batteries or moving parts to fail. Mine got a little bit of surface wear but they still work just as well as they did when they were new and small children don't care about perfect appearance. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up getting passed down to another generation and continue to provide the same entertainment. I highly recommend this kind of simple toy for young children.
> I highly recommend this kind of simple toy for young children.
As a parent I very much agree. And for grown-up children too.
On my desk I have a small tin containing small wooden blocks and planks, arches, etc. I get lots of play value from them - when my thinking is blocked, or if I just want to fool around and not think at all. I'm in my mid fifties.
And over at my climbing club's off-grid climbing hut we have a big box of over-sized, home made jenga blocks. Pretty-much everyone plays with them: not only jenga, but also just building structures or giant domino runs or whatever.
We all need to play sometimes.
Encountered these miniature wood marble runs in Switzerland. Still on my “wish list.” Sounds like you may enjoy them, too.
https://cuboro.ch/en/
Those look super cool, but I'm also not sure I'd be ready to throw down $340 for the 50 piece starter set.
Sticking to the magnetile theme of the OP, my kids and I have spent the most time and most occasions playing with the mangetile marble run kits. It works so well.
That gets you into the marble run world... which is segment of YouTube... and there are some very impressive setups.
https://youtu.be/qGsD19P16rs
As an aside, there's an app out there is an app for the iPad called "Cuboro Riddles" which is a "how do you make the marble go from here to there using the blocks." Given that there are multiple ways that a block can channel a marble, this is a tricky one.
... and then if you get this over into the lego domain (not as "just something to fiddle with..." it gets you into the GBC. There is a standard for how one connects to another described at https://www.greatballcontraption.com/wiki/standard ... and then at lego conventions people hook them all up. https://youtu.be/avyh-36jEqA
Very cool. I live in the US though. How can I order it?
Looks like their site links to a good number of US stores that sell them, many mom/pop. While there may not be a store close enough to you, perhaps there's one that would ship to you.
https://a.co/d/24vvgsO
Support mom/pop/local shops when possible.
https://cuboro.ch/en/where-to-buy/
Thank you.
As an adult, I bought on impulse a set of wooden dominos intended for domino runs. It included a few other props. It was on clearance for almost nothing because the box was damaged.
With friends and family on occasion (individuals ranging in age from 27-70) , multiple hours have passed setting up and playing with this domino set.
I really believe that play is vitally important at all ages.
Wooden blocks were great.
At one point way back then, my dad made something in the workshop that improved them tremendously: Wooden boards.
These were small, thin, very flat boards of oak -- about 3/16" thick and 3/4" wide. Their lengths varied in 2" increments, and the length of each board was written on it.
With boards added in, the blocks got a lot more interesting. Fastening was still limited to gravity, but things like cantilevers started happening.
Same. We had a kids’ play table (low to the ground and rectangular) that we’d prop up with a few blocks under one end to give it a slight incline. We’d spend hours covering the surface with blocks in different positions to simulate a pinball table.
Then we’d take a large marble and use two long triangular blocks as flippers to “play” on it.
Tilting was NOT advised.
100% agree. Box of blocks cannot be beat. My sister and I used the hell out of ours: we built towers, cantilevers, mazes, Rube Goldberg devices, houses for rodents, vehicles, elaborate locks, catapults, you name it. They're still in the same condition as day 1, ready for our children.
Bonus: You can roll a lot more down those long rubber racetracks than just cars.
Bonus 2: Why did these go away? https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/chubs-baby-wipes-stac...
I had such blocks as well. For a recent take on this, I can recommend Kapla, typically come in a large (a couple 100s) box of skinny rectangular cuboids. I had fun doing, ahem, preliminary testing, before gifting them to my niece.
I got set for my son after noticing he loves stacking Jenga blocks and generic Kapla gets 10x more usage than Lego.
Can it be that the moment Lego moved from mostly bricks to custom single use shapes for every kit the joy of combining them died? My kids build car, Dino, Harry Potter set once and then gather dust. Bridges, castles, towers and roads from Kapla get rebuild every day.
When I was young there were fewer types of shapes but a lot of new sets contained a lot of such specialized shapes. I rather played with the lego i found in the attic.
I have a love of wooden blocks.
I’ve seen some sets that are blocks with random flat surfaces but still balanced.
However, I notice that many antique block sets seem far superior to newer sets.
(I’m sure someone must make an amazing new set, I see some suggestions in the comments).
Having made some wooden block sets from scratch, what I am always amazed about with a good set is balance / size of pieces, coupled with variety and quantity. The balance being a vitally important part that seems to be overlooked in “bad” sets.
Similar story for me but the blocks were just a few scraps of construction wood. Infinite possibilities even with a few short blocks of 2x4 and angle cut pieces.
Are you referring to the "Builder DI-1"[0] from the USSR? I had it in my childhood, too.
[0] https://postimg.cc/phNBBTtS
I did my first programming with those wooden blocks.
I would build structures deliberately designed to gradually self destruct through a long sequence of actions. A cylinder rolls down a ramp and displaces a support that tips a tower that hits a lever that tips another ramp… endless fun.
Plus, wooden blocks look a lot nicer than plastic stuff. I try to avoid plastic items because they inevitably ruin a room’s aesthetic.
Something I like about Lego is that there are some small changes to available pieces, that result in large changes to play style.
Large flat bases to build on, or not.
Wheels, or not.
Little characters, or not.
Train tracks, or not.
Etc.
If you don't make all basic context-defining options available all the time, it keeps lego play fresh and fun.
Can confirm that Magnatiles, specifically, were maybe the best value for the dollar we ever got out of toys for our kids. Idk if the quality has held up but our kids abused the hell out of the things and it took them years to finally break just a couple of them (the largest ones are the most vulnerable). They have incredible range, good for babies but still seeing use as a supporting toy up to their tweens. Kinda pricey but if the quality is still as good as it was years ago (can’t say, the ~3 sets we bought over a couple years held up so well we never bought any more) they’re easily worth it.
We have tons of Lego too but these were far better play-value for the dollar. Not even close. Can’t say if the knockoff brands are as good.
(Can’t vouch for any of the rest of these but those giant magnetic tiles look potentially like a much better investment than dedicated e.g. kitchen playsets, way more versatile)
We just aged out of this as our youngest child is now 11, but I can affirm that magnatiles are fantastic and fun - and that is coming from someone who lionizes legos and considers them the ne plus ultra of toys for children.
That being said ...
We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":
https://elenco.com/
A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.
My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".
I can confirm as someone that had these or a very similar kit as a kid that they were enjoyable and the knowledge proved useful when I started working with real circuits in high school and college.
They blocked Japan IPs on product pages...
What age did you start introducing snap circuits to your child?
> Idk if the quality has held up
I can vouch for the quality of modern magnatiles
The problem now is that there are a zillion knock-offs sold everywhere, both retail shops and online. We don’t buy them, but the kids get them as gifts. They all have something different, from the magnet positioning to the outer dimensions, presumably to try to dodge some patents. These become the weak point in bigger builds or throw off the dimensions in ways that add up and cause early collapse.
I’ve been quietly removing the gifted knock offs and replacing them with real ones because it makes the experience less frustrating.
We’re starting to have the same problem with LEGO now
This was the first toy I expected to see on the list. Can agree that, though they are somewhat expensive, our kids played with them frequently for the better part of a decade and then we passed them along to cousins who completed the decade of play and then some.
We got some fabric bins to store them in, which made cleanup a 2 minute affair if adults helped or 5 minutes if the kids did it alone.
Highly recommend.
I never thought of playing make believe as just being the dm for kids but that’s really fun.
Can I suggest putting a strand of Christmas lights inside the completed structure? They get a little diffused and look really cool.
For bonus points, get pics of your kids' faces lit by only that light.
Boom: next year's card.
Magnatiles are great for adults who want to play with their kids too.
The most fun my kid had was playing make believe games with me. Like I'd say "you're lost in a forest and you see a cabin up ahead and a trail that goes past it. What do you do"? And we'd go from there. Zero dollar cost and unlimited hours of fun until they grow up enough and don't want to play anymore.
I would be worried that they break, the magnets fall out and the kids stick it in some orifice
I think this is worth worrying about, especially with knockoff magnatiles. The magnets are small enough to swallow. If a child swallows two they could die, for the same reason that "buckyball" magnet toys were banned: the magnets can snap together with intestinal tissue in between and perforate the intestinal wall.
The brand-name ones are surprisingly durable. Can’t speak to the cheaper knockoffs.
The EU's safety rules for children's toys are impressive -- I read them out of curiosity when I was 3D printing a toy.
e.g. dropping a 1kg steel block onto the toy, and checking it doesn't break in an unsafe way (section 8.7 in the link).
https://law.resource.org/pub/eu/toys/en.71.1.2014.html#s8.7
Section A.51 is about magnetic construction toys.
Had to look up the rules on bows and arrows in the European Union when I got to [4.17.4] Bows and arrows. "bows offered for sale with arrows are to be considered as toys" Wait. What? Like, all bows and arrows?
[4.17.4] https://law.resource.org/pub/eu/toys/en.71.1.2014.html#s4.17...
Took a bit to find, yet eventually [Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] "List of products that, in particular, are not considered as toys"
9. "bows for archery over 120 cm long"
[Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Pfew. Not, quite that crazy.
We have bought a bunch of them secondhand. They arrive already scratched up, but who cares.
FWIW I bought some 2 years ago and the quality is still very high.
14 points but 211 comments and hasn't been auto flagged for flame war detection is a first, in the almost 15 years I've been on HN.
For some reason comments were moved from the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315583
For a younger kid, a ball is often a good option.
This Christmas, after putting aside the push car, some books, and a few other little toys from the grandparents, my 1 year old has spent the past 30 minutes chasing a large beach ball one of his siblings brought up from the basement.
I can second the recommendation for magnet tiles, though; everyone in the family seems to enjoy the satisfaction of them clicking together, and finding new ways to build random stuff. The toddler just makes stacks of magnet tiles, which is fine for his development. The 8-12 year olds enjoy building relatively complex structures. Then watching the 1 year old act like Godzilla an destroy it.
For all the toys my kids received until they hit 3+, they probably got the most enjoyment out of cardboard boxes.
Blocks is the top comment (for me); and yours is number two. Timeless classic. Another one could be plasticine clay. These toys afford play, they don't direct, restrict, or guide play. Other good toys like this: box, stick, the woods, paper (especially a big roll of butcher paper), and things to draw with (I find a black, red, blue, yellow and green sufficient).
I recently needed to make a mockup of something, so I got some plasticine from Amazon, since I remembered playing with the stuff when I was a kid. However what I received was quite stiff and left an unpleasant oily smell on my hands that I had to scrub off with a lot of effort. Is there a particular brand of plasticine that you have had a good experience with?
Just make your own play dough. https://www.iheartnaptime.net/play-dough-recipe/
Why not Playdoh?
There were only two toys I never got tired of -- legos, and computers. Both encourage open-ended creativity. (I had older lego house sets which were quite flexible. Modern lego pieces seem more specialized.) Unfortunately, so many pieces took several minutes to clean up, so I would just leave them spread out across my bedroom floor for months at a time. These days when I want to play with legos I put a bedsheet down first.
Also, I read another article from the author and subscribed just based on how concisely she expresses her ideas. She just gets her point across, then quits. I love it.
I feel like this list says a lot more about what the author wants her kids to be interested in than a real survey of the whole toy market. There are a few stuffed animals that get tons of love, and the magnet blocks were a hit for a couple months but then they got old. This is going to trigger a deluge of unsolicited admonition, but the television and the Nintendo switch have by far the highest entertainment value per dollar spent.
Parents who are analyzing the problem like you would do well going straight to the iPad with unlimited access to YouTube.
You can get an old iPad cheap and your kid will spend every waking second on it till they're old enough to drive. Or even longer!
I'm the author, and my husband immediately had the same feedback: iPad should be at the top of the list. I responded that iPad wasn't a toy, and he strongly disagreed.
I agree. I'm not sure about "toy", but something that gives the child zero agency definitely falls hort of the definition of "play".
From research on a comment in another area, the European Union at least says "no" on the toy claim. Things in the EU "not considered as toys". [Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] 14. "Electronic equipment, such as personal computers and game consoles, used to access interactive software"
[Directive 2009/48/EC, Annex 1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
Only exception is stuff that's kind of a "specially designed personal computer" meant to "have a play value on their own".
Weirdly, even specially designed console like a Switch, Playstation, or XBox are not really legally a "toy" in the EU.
Imo, there would be no value in writing something where an iPad would satisfy the requirements, and I appreciated the list, and we're thinking about the large magnatile things now.
Do you have an easel whiteboard paper roll thing? I think it fits this list.
I tried the easel and whiteboard paper roll when my kids were younger and it was not a great experience. But I think those things change with time. Cool to hear it fits the list for you.
Dolls, cars, and balls weren't even mentioned...
Couldn't help but think: #1 is probably an ipad, and lego is probably last place because of that one time a parent stepped on one barefoot.
but the toys in the article actually seem nice.
These are all good toys, my middle elementary kid really likes magnatiles.
That said, I still think Lego runs the board. My 40yo Lego is still in use, I still get pleasure out of it and my kid gets even more. My kid and I just finished team building the UCS millennium falcon and now we're having a blast playing with it. Soon it'll start being scavenged for other projects. I've never seen another toy equal Lego in replayability or in the vast array of ways it can be used. As a crusty old coot I complain about the seemingly single use pieces in new Lego sets and then watch as my kid uses them in new and creative ways in MOCs. No other toy we have has the same staying power and much to my wife's chagrin it's the yardstick by which I measure every other toy.
They are just too expensive nowadays.
That's a common refrain that frankly just isn't backed up by analysis of the inflation adjusted price of Lego over time.
https://www.pricing-evolution.com/p/surprising-trends-in-leg...
The data in the graph from this next post shows an inflation adjusted per brick price of .40 USD in 1980 vs a little above $.10 now. Perhaps more interesting is the cost per gram analysis which also shows a large drop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/15flwte/is...
I think people tend to romanticize the past and underestimate the effect of inflation across decades. One thing that may contribute to the idea that Lego is now too expensive is that the average sets seem to be larger and more complex now. Even if the bricks are cheaper the sheer quantity of them will inherently raise the set price. That may explain why the data in the Reddit post shows average median set cost having risen even while per brick cost has decreased.
As an uncle, is there an opposite version of this list?
Yes. It's starts and ends with Perfection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfection_(board_game)
So true! Requires a prescription for anxiety after playing and stepping on a piece is beyond lego level pain. Thanks for scarring my otherwise happy Christmas day :D
Pokemon cards.
Even kids who can't read yet will somewhat play with them outside of the rules. Except they're fragile, easy to lose, will bring fights and other troubles as they grow up, and cost a ton more money if they really get hooked.
If in doubt, buy a musical instrument.
Or paint. Or glitter.
Kinectic sand is the modern subtle version of glitter.
Kinetic sand does get a lot of playtime though. It is banned from our house though.
Warning: once glitter enters your home it will never leave. You may have to move.
Some glitter comes anyway. My wife figure skated. It's been years, more than a decade, and several moves. Still find it from time to time.
1800s black powder revolver replica + starter kit of stuff. Noisy, messy, fraught with peril and danger, a little less expensive and much less cumbersome than a 1980s 3-wheeler. For ~$500 you can be the coolest uncle ever and if the parents take it the kid will resent that for life.
If you don't like your siblings, how about a drum kit?
that dispenses Thai energy drinks
A cooking kit.
Usually cake baking of some kind. The kids will get bored after the initial mess making part, but will be expecting a yummy treat at the end, so the parent has to see the whole thing through, _and_ clean up the mess.
For an added bonus, the kid then eats the sugary treat, and they have that to deal with.
Anything that makes noise; squeaky toys, fart sound generators, lazer guns, etc
Any sort of goo or slime.
Don’t forget noisy. Have you considered an Otamatone?
The ideal "fuck you, parents" present must be noisy, and yet must require no batteries. Drums & cymbals are a good choice, as is a vuvuzela or an Aztec death whistle.
A vuvuzela is mean. I'm not even related to you (I think), and I want to disown you for that suggestion.
the absolute best fuck you present is no present at all, there is nothing parents like more than kids that have nothing to do
As a parent: no. We have way more toys than necessary, and yet keep getting more from all sides. All the parents I know have the same situation.
There are five stuffed tigers on the floor of our living room right now, liberated from their packages.
There are 37 more in the child's bedroom.
I am 51 and have never (nor will ever) buy a toy for a human - pets only
I'm confused. Are you bragging that you never gifted a toy in 51 years?
aha, I am. and everyone should strive to be like me
I guess on what you define as a toy. Is a Lego Technics set a toy? Is a model plane that requires assembly a toy? Is a drone a toy?
Also... if you ever meet a family with a baby or a toddler, I guess you'd gift them clothes?
Cant believe I have to answer these questions but here we go
- lego is a toy
- model plane that requires assembly is very likely a toy
- some drones a toy
if you meet a family with a baby or a toddler do not buy them a fucking toy, it is simple as that. it pollutes the planet and brings nothing good to anyone, not a child, not a parent and not you wasting money on stupid shit
> and brings nothing good to anyone, not a child, not a parent and not you wasting money on stupid shit
You really don’t understand people at all.
As a parent I largely agree with this take. Most toys people buy my kids are essentially cheap plastic trash that won't last a season of interest but emotional toil to try and get rid of.
If you must get something outside of a donation to education savings, please either get a relevant book, something genuinely useful, or some kind of consumable. A pair of fun socks. A good a new backpack. Tickets to a sports game or a museum. A bag of snacks. A few sheets of stickers. New legitimate sports equipment (if they're into the sport and could actually use it). All of these are far better than some cheap plastic noise maker.
The things I listed aren't "cheap plastic noise makers". You can get good toys, most people don't bother.
They wouldn't bother with good snacks (they'll probably buy a huge bag of gummy bears or lollipops) or good socks (they'll get some funny 100% polyester socks).
Oh, and "few sheets of stickers" are also pollution, they're basically 100% plastic.
> Is a Lego Technics set a toy?
Expensive plastic, still a toy. Guess you're right it's not cheap. Definitely depends on the kid on this one. Legos can be OK toys, one of the few rare exceptions.
> Is a model plane that requires assembly a toy?
For the kind most people would just give as a gift? Absolutely just cheap plastic trash. It's definitely a hobby one can get into, but the quick gift stuff is pretty poor quality. And that model, once built, is probably fragile. Kids aren't often known for handling fragile things well.
> Is a drone a toy?
The cheap ones? Absolutely.
Are you saying you only give pets as gifts?
Do you want to expand on that?
for kids, only money for college/investment fund. nothing else, ever
I sure hope this was not your childhood
you hope my childhood was filled with endless stream of useless play-with-them-2-hours-then-get-the-next-one toys followed by phones and tablets when I was strong enough to hold them? very happy to report my childhood was not wasted that way
Maybe you might have been a little more pleasant if you had wasted a little more of your childhood.
doubt it
As the Bard said (paraphrased) “Some are born miserable, some achieve misery, and some have misery thrust upon them”.
Can confirm that Magna-tiles score high on replayability and are way easier to clean up than Legos. My kids are teens now, but were the right age when these came out.
Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys for a greener more affordable option.
> The worst toy is one with many pieces that my kids dump on the ground and then play with for only 2 minutes.
One of my favourite toys was Mouse Trap. I never once actually played the game. Building it and setting it off once or twice was plenty.
I agree with some of the sentiment of this blog but I also think it’s discarding a perfectly valid side to toys and play.
Trivial Pursuit was like this too. Our family would chill in the den just randomly asking each other questions from the cards. I'm not sure we ever actually played it using the board game part.
When my wife and I have a date night, one of our go-to spots is a bar with a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards next to the napkins.
I actually played mouse trap but my kid and their cousins do nothing with the game and love to just setup the trap. That game from the 80s has become a favorite toy of the gen alpha crowd when visiting the grandparents.
I think so many 90s kids had this same experience. The Rube Goldberg trap was so much fun to build and play with, nobody bothered to even try and learn the game itself!
Magna tiles are my favourite of my kid’s toys.
Bonus adult points - how do they work? How is it the tiles always stick to each other no matter the orientation? Easy once you know, but it took me (and friends with physics degrees) a little thinking to get.
Also, did you see the huge tiles? Wow! I had no idea but my kids would love building forts and rooms
I know! I definitely need those. For the kids, of course.
Right
I’m surprised no one mentions Knex. By far my childhood favorite, and for me, far more creative opportunity when comparing to something like lego.
Yes! K’NEX [1] is based on spatial geometry. You connect plastic rods of different lengths into star-shaped connectors. This creates a "skeleton" or wireframe structure. It is much better than LEGO for building large-scale, open-air structures like roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and bridges. It is superior for kinetic builds. Interestingly, K’NEX has released "K’NEX Bricks" in the past that are compatible with LEGO studs, and some modern K’NEX sets include brick-compatible parts.
[1] https://www.basicfun.com/knex/
The toy with the most longevity from my childhood were those cardboard bricks. Could be used for anything from forts, towers, hamster mazes, throwable weapons...
Not the quickest toy to clean up, but still fun since it's a building activity of its own, stacking them against a wall or something.
I had the same experience, loved my cardboard bricks. My kid never connected with them the same though even though my kid is big on building toys. Now they mostly just take up space, should probably give them away.
I was expecting to see a tablet/phone in the top place: repeatability = 5, length of play = 5, clean up ease = 5.
I know it's bad to give a kid a tablet, but the scoring used in the article is that bad it didn't award any points for how good it is for a child...
Yeah, my husband told me after I published that I missed the iPad as as the clear #1.
Yeah but I'm glad you don't consider the ipad a toy. It's not a toy, i predict that we're going to look back at this time of 'ipad + headphone kids' and roll our eyes as much as we roll our eyes at bloodletting.
Screen devices can be a toy but it takes very intentional use of them.
My child has had an old iPhone se since 4yo. It has no network connection. I load music on it. It only has music, camera, and voice recorder apps. Like most toys it gets intense periods of play and then goes back in the toy box with a dead battery for weeks.
It's my assertion that the problem with tablets/phones as toys for kids is the endless stream of new content. It's addictive and never gets old. If you find a way to cut off the firehouse of new (and keep the addictive apps off) then they eventually become just another boring toy. Us adults could learn from this too.
> Maybe I feel the satisfaction of clicking them together as I clean them up. Cleaning becomes a little like playing.
My preschooler daughter got Magna Tiles for Christmas and she's cleaning them up herself, which is a first for her.
I'm surprised the Minecraft blocks feel less strong - Magna Tiles seem to be using standard AlNiCo magnets and I expected, given the price, that the Minecraft ones would be using neodymium magnets, but apparently they're not and this weakness comes from magnets being only at the corners.
The Minecraft blocks have some strength but not much so you can easily take them apart. But they are very sharp. Way worse than Lego to step on.
This should be a graded metric.
I can't recommend enough ordering a $10 collapsible ball pen. My son understood even at age 2 that some toys needed to be played with in his play pen, and it means I can let him play with toys with hundreds of pieces and then scoop them all up at once.
The best toy my sister and I got is a now long-discontinued product called Omagles. They were brightly colored tubes and panels you connected with plastic clips. They were strong enough to stand and climb on. They even had wheels we could make vehicles out of.
They were so good I bought a used one for my own kid who had a great time with them.
After some Googling, I see that the rights to Omagles were bought and are now sold under the brand Tubelox.
Exact same for me! Just ten minutes ago my son opened his Xmas present, his first box of TubeLox. My expectations and hopes are high but he is currently distracted by the flashier presents.
He'll probably find it himself, but if he doesn't, just build something cool in front of him. He may not have unlocked all the possibilities in his brain yet.
There is also Quadro Toys. I have a couple of the large sets and have built a series of houses, climbing toys, and now a "castle" with a slide for my daughter.
Great recommendation. I'm definitely getting that for my son next birthday
It looks like the author examined every toy inspired by Lego, other than Lego itself.
For me the big problem with Lego was not clean up time. For me the big problem with Lego was stepping on them barefoot. How do these other toys compare?
Big problem with modern LEGO for me is that so many modern sets are almost all teensy-tiny pieces, so they look good on the box—the adult-aimed ones have always been like this since they started targeting that market, but now it’s like 95% of all their sets; also, they seem to hate exposed nubs, which is silly if the set is for play.
Larger (like tall 6x2) bricks are uncommon outside buckets, and a lot of larger pieces like dedicated wall-sections or big vehicle nose-bits or car undercarriages are now rare.
The result is that my old sets are a mix of everything from large contoured structural plates down to tiny pieces, but my kids’ bins of legos are like 98% tiny pieces. They use them less than I did, I think because it’s hard to sort through the loose pieces when they’re mostly very small, and with less variety there aren’t as many large pieces to use as jumping-off points to start a build, and making, say, a house-height wall or the front of a space ship is slower than when we had more bricks that could kinda short-hand those pieces and let you skip the middle, if you will, to focus on both the big-picture and fine details. I doubt I’d have liked Lego so much if mine had looked like theirs.
Unfortunately, LEGO has decided that they want to make mostly high-margin co-branded sets with Nintendo, Pokémon, Minecraft, Star Wars, Monster Jam, F1, etc rather than cool engineering sets with a lot of flexible pieces that can be built into lots of different things. Luckily Chinese vendors like Uncle Brick and Mould King have stepped in to offer huge sets of Technics compatible parts, including simple motors that LEGO simply does not make anymore, for not much money. It’s really too bad that Lego abandoned that market. I would certainly pay a premium for the original stuff but a lot of what I would like is just not available. Now, I still buy a lot of the branded LEGO stuff, but the Chinese stuff has also entered the rotation for the older kids who are interested in engineering.
You have to be so careful with that stuff though. Some of those knockoff legos are absolutely infuriating to assemble and don’t fit together right—not just with actual LEGO but even with themselves.
There is a definite element of “you get what you pay for” when it comes to that stuff. Unfortunately… because some of those knockoff kits look super cool.
In the late 1990s, Lego went the other way with those big single-purpose pieces, and were heavily criticised (particularly by older Lego fans) for "juniorisation" - over-simplifying sets so you just couldn't build anything different with the pieces. You can't build buildings out of big vehicle parts.
Sounds like it's gone too far the other way now and they're still not managing to find a middle ground? But it does depend partly on what age of kids we're talking about.
Buy the ‘classic’ line, the big boxes are great value also.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the classic line showing up on shelves and they seem a ton better, but I don’t recall seeing them several years ago when we were doing lots of Lego-buying. Really limited selection and mostly big, expensive sets too, not many mid-sized ones. But glad to see them releasing sets that seem more focused on play than sitting on a shelf.
This article is aimed at younger kids, before normal Lego is appropriate. I like Duplo more than magnatiles - slightly harder to clean up I suppose, but that's because they hold together better than magnatiles, which create quite fragile structures.
Our problem with modern lego is that the sets are so cool and complex that the kids don’t want to take them apart after they’re built.
The 11yo wants few new sets now because he doesn’t know where he would put them, and declines to swap out his assembled sets.
You can get brick sets that are just a bunch of bricks - look up Creative Brick Box or Creative Vehicle Box
Feels just like Grandma's ole box o bricks
What I wish for would be a lego technics creative box with motors etc... Thats closer to what I had as a kid and I built a lot of fun things with that. Never liked the basic legos that much though
That's something I've run into myself. I just recently finished the Enterprise Lego set, and it was fun to build... but I doubt if I will ever take it apart and rebuild it. There were 30 bags in that set, and I don't much fancy the prospect of trying to sift through all the pieces at once rebuilding the thing.
Finish a set? Lego Enterprise? Don't want to build anything else with it?
I see that the Lego I remember and the Lego of today are two vastly different things.
It’s still there; it’s just nowhere near as popular. The Classic theme is what you’re looking for.
when I was a kid I wanted some of the specialised sets simply because they had exciting new pieces like windshields, gears, dish antennas, etc. I don't think I ever made the actual thing the set was intended for, I just wanted to add new pieces to my lego bin.
We didn't see any of the toys in the article , but had a lot of other magnetic and combinable toys. The big advantage over Lego was building sizeable things with fewer blocks.
Duplo blocs come close, but they are pricey (hard to gift second hand toys) and you can only stack them when the other toys interlock in more interesting ways. For small kids, building an articulating shape the size of their arm with 4 or 5 blocs is really magical.
Those Minecraft blocks or the cheap Chinese knockoffs are sharper than a blade and a real pain.
Skill issue. You should try to not step on Lego bricks.
Yes, and I've perfected that skill against sidewalk cracks, ants, and bubble gum for quite some time.
You heard of Duplo? It’s like Lego but big.
The best toys are the ones that your children love to play with. There isn't a formal method for finding it. The rule of thumb is don't buy noisy toys nor toys that have parts small enough to get lost under the car seats on first play.
After my daughter turned 4, the ‘toy’ with the most play time and lowest clean up time was a good pad of blank paper and colouring pencils. The bonus is that it takes up little room and is therefore highly portable. Furthermore, if you forget it, you can replace it easily and cheaply!
Ehrm, I beg to differ. My 4 year old daughter has recently also started loving to draw. But, she pretty much refuses to let go of her masterpieces, at least we conviced her to store them in a shoebox, so they're not spread all over the house. And the pencils... Well, I've been picking up an awful lot of pencils from all over the house.
So I'm not sure I agree with the "lowest clean up time", even though I'm really glad she's picked this up as a "hobby".
We have a specific area for drawing so the ‘mess’ is confined to a small area. Our daughter is happy to likes to give the drawings away and isn’t overly attached to them after they’ve been displayed for a short while - I don’t personally see this as mess as I am also quite proud of her pictures. If I judge magnetic tiles by the same measure I should also include the storage space taken up by a large plastic box of magnetic tiles, the resistance to tidy away their tile creations and the frustration when younger siblings get involved!
By my measure, ever since we started taking in art supplies 5+ years ago we have yet to finish cleaning up.
I vote the cardboard box, especially if it is a large appliance box, Unfortunately you can't really give someone a large cardboard box, but oh boy are they fun.
Cardboard box demolition ideas for kids [1] I like where this video is going, letting kids explore the structural capabilities of different geometries.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABHhzIJ18gQ
I can't convince my wife to let my kids keep the big cardboard box, even though they love it!
Cardboard box is a good one.
Thank you for writing about parenting. Today was a tough day with the kids, and reading your blog after they’ve gone to sleep helped things feel a little better.
For small(ish) kids there is a certain correlation between play- and clean-up-time. If there was a toy which deviated, it would become blockbuster and there are hardly any such. Electronic screens are popular as nannies because of this.
Personally I choose all types in rotation. One toy of high duration is Play-Doh but afterwards needs a cleaning machine.
Electronics are popualar also because there's a higher proportion of only child and parents have only so much time to dedicate to child play
True, not only for single child but for many with different sex, large age difference or simply careless parents.
As a former child my favourites were Playmobile, Lego, Duplo, wooden blocks and those little matchbox cars.
For cleaning we just dumped everything into a big box. Repeatability is endless
I also loved Playmobil. But they were so much better in the 80s, early 90s, when all the figures were exactly the same, except by the colors, so it meant they were all flexible to be dressed up as anything you wanted.
Nowadays each playmobil doll is extremely personalized which removes the flexibility to dress them as anything and limits the imagination and originality. Such a pity. No wonder Playmobil almost went bankrupt recently.
> I score my toys across 3 dimensions
What about kid’s development? The whole point (okay, not while but the biggest) of a game is learning something.
First time parent? Just kidding.
My experience as a parent, and the conventional wisdom of parents I've known, including my own, is that there's no predicting the influence of a given toy on a kid's development[0]. My hunch is that toys are better if they give the kid more agency to make up their own play and games without supervision, and many of the toys mentioned in the article are of that ilk. That could be because I still like toys, to this day, with that kind of built-in agency.
Also, growing up in a emotionally stable family culture that values curiosity and learning is probably a huge deal.
[0] Excluding cellphones and the Internet, which are their own discussion of course.
Another overlooked characteristic of a toy, especially a toy that takes up space, is "doneness".
Lots of free-play toys that my own kids use (4 and 7) can unconditionally be defended as still in use. They haven't been touched in an hour, but an ask to put it away is met with "I'm still playing with that". So: nothing gets put away until a parent pulls authority and overrules the kid's declaration that the game is still going. Understandably, the kids find this unfair and sort of demeaning.
A board game is different in so far as it has an ending. The kids never try to weasel out of putting Hungy Hungry Hippo or chess pieces or whatever back into a box.
This year the family favorite everyone was fighting to play including the adults was the new litebrite touch https://amzn.to/3MROaJs
Really satisfying to click the buttons and see the super bright lights as a young kid. The games like mirror were easy yet technical which had us all competing for high scores. Definitely well thought out
Everyone appreciated it didn’t involve cleanup of any little plastic pieces like the original litebright
Also makes it usable for a smaller child! Great rec, thank you
When our kids were little we got them a wire bead rollercoaster, something like: https://www.ebay.com/itm/304637213979
It's one piece. Cleanup is picking it up and putting it where you want it. For playability, that thing kept each of our kids occupied for an unreasonable portion of their toddler-hood. We then passed it on to friends, and it did the same for their kids. They kept it, and gave it back to our kids when they had kids, and it's still delivering joy.
Something I'm wondering. My kids are grown now. When they were little, we got a toy with connecting magnetic pieces, don't remember the name. The magnets broke out of the brittle plastic easily and it was actually a pretty low quality toy although the concept was cool.
There was also some kind of recall or warning about the possibility of kids ingesting the magnets. That's about all I remember. Of course you never know as a parent whether the latest safety threat is serious or over-hyped. The claimed threat was that the magnets would click together in your intestines and wreak havoc.
I wonder what the present conventional wisdom is on those magnets.
The way it used to be, is if they come back with fasteners and nails attached after playing in the grass it's worth mentioning to the pediatrician on the next visit.
Magnetix?
That might be it, and a quick search suggests that there were some recalls associated with it. Also, my kids didn't really gravitate to it. Their "construction" toys were a hodgepodge of blocks, some cheap "thomas train" knock-offs, stuffed animals, you name it, all combined into one giant mess. ;-)
We have some magnet tiles that have tubes and ramps for building marble mazes with - they are probably the most popular toy in the house. The thing about magnet tiles is there are several brands but they’re incompatible so it’s best to buy multiple sets from a single brand.
Connetix and magnatiles are pretty much fully compatible. Connetix is the only knock off I found that is higher quality than the original (and has great marble run)
Am I not loading all of this article? It basically stops for me after saying "magnet toys top the list" with 3 examples of such (well, really 2) for me, with no real investigation into other toys or exploration of why the variants like the Minecraft magnet toy scored much worse in cleanup (I assume it's due to the piece size?). Anything about toys other than magnet blocks?
Another type of toy I've seen fit this bill has been wooden/plastic train tracks (the solid larger pieces type, not flimsy model type, and simple sturdy trains to go on them). It still has the element of customization and playing with what you build but cleanup is "scoop the large pieces into a bucket" (and stepping on them usually isn't painful!)
They're a parent. They probably don't have enough time to write a comprehensive article if this article isn't paying the bills.
The confusion was less on the author and more on the submission reaching the top of the front page - it wouldn't have been the first time the issue was my ad blocker or something. Thanks for confirming!
Parents looking for a quick break on Christmas morning
Minecraft: weak magnets
Has anyone had experienced with the giant magnet tiles? This article seems like suspicious affiliate marketing which places are beloved product that everybody has beside one that looks kind of similar.
Author here, I don't think I did affiliate market links.
just encountered these in a local public library a week ago. toddlers loved them.
First I’m seeing them, but that means very little. Every preschool we used had the normal magnet tiles though so I’m familiar with the concept.
Fair to question this. Most things are fake and… lame.
When I read the title the first thing that came to my mind were Magna Tiles. Glad they made it on the list.
It's the only toy in the house that lasted the test of time from she 4-8 (and counting). Also I love tidying up Magna tiles, even that is fun!
My oldest kid got a small sample of Clixco and was surprisingly entertained even with a limited set of possibilities they offered. They're great fidget toys as well.
I annoy my wife by sorting magnet tiles away color type AND color. I do it as fast as possible with mock sorting algorithms. She shoves them back into the box.
A phone would get perfect score in all of OP's metrics, so I feel there is some stuff missing to identify really good toys.
Your mileage may vary…
As soon as I got first Minecraft block to my 5yo, the magnatiles were almost forgotten. And she never played Minecraft in her life, but saw the movie and some YouTube vids. The fact that the tiles have an image and purpose is a huge benefit, because she creates better stories with them.
But I got it only after i got kiddo to cleanup her toys from the floor regularly.
I never liked these sorts of construction toys, or legos. I'd rank any of my old action figures higher on the 3 dimensions. Sometimes some stuffed animals joined in the play. And of course as I got older, video games.
To me, game consoles were toys. Maybe they are a lot more now but the SNES and N64 felt like toys. The pc felt like a toy too.
I am very likely to be a father in the future. I am happy I have all my old consoles because it helps a bit with introducing kids to technology without them having access to all of it.
Soccer outside was fun too, there was a field nearby our house.
Ah. So they are federated with minimal compatibility issues. There may be a lesson here.
My parents literally just gave my daughter the alphabet puzzle for Christmas that was linked in the article as a terrible clean up vs play-time. I might send them this link!
Question from a not-parent: why not teach kids to clean up for themselves?
You can teach a 4~5 yo kid to clean up. Below that it probably comes down to personality/level of awareness, and it's probably a lost cause for 2 year olds and below.
Then you'll want an adult to deal with the body fluids and other nasty stuffs.
PS; what I mean by "teach a 4-5 yo kid" is really spending a lot of time with them rehearsing cleaning and drilling it down. It pays dividends, but you'll be spending months and months, if not years, doing the cleaning with them at a slower pace than if you did it just yourself.
Low cleanup time is even more important for kids doing it than grownups.
It would have been helpful if I had seen this BEFORE Christmas. lol
On the bright side, you have 365 days advance notice!
I really wish people would declare ages when talking about kid toys. Anywho, any banger toy recommendation for a 1yo?
These little wooden shaker eggs went over quite well with my 18mo nephew:
https://www.amazon.com/HABA-Musical-Eggs-Acoustic-Germany/dp...
He's also enjoying the Mega Bloks someone got him though he's mostly just sticking them together and throwing them.
Literally something to bang, like a toy hammer.
Or take them to a library that has toys, see what they play with, and then go buy that.
Board books. Adult reads, let the child turn the pages.
Simple kinetic toys, of the sort where you put a ball in a hole and it pops out somewhere else. Same pleasure as a marble run, without the choking hazard.
Adult mimicry toys, like play kitchen, doctors bag, etc. With the right setup and creative inspiration they can learn to putter about inventing simple tasks and executing them.
can confirm. we just got the kids those giant magna-tiles. they’ve played with nothing else today.
I tell my kids to imagine they have the toys they want.
It's good for their development and the clean-up-time can't be beat.
That's what the magnatiles are for. The toy they really want is a rocket ship, so instead we give them a cheap little tool to imagine it with.
Magna tiles are easy to clean up in the they stick to each other sense, but I still find them all over the house.
smartphone. but everyone here is psychologically against this even though it's true.
Hot take - Along these lines video games score incredibly well.
Arguably not a “toy”, but it’s interesting to think about.
Tiptoi
This is just an ad..
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46315583
tl;dr:
- play-time and clean-up-time are 2 dimensions of toys, and you can use these dimensions when you are considering to buy a toy
- author likes magnetic building toys (???)
- amazon ref links to buy those magnetic building toys
I'm not following the implication/purpose of this post.
I don't get it? Isn't this how "tl;dr" posts work?
I've read it, I've found it a waste of time, so I gave a warning/summary so people coming after me know what to expect?
Am I doing it wrong?
It was a short enough post that it didn't really warrant a tl;dr.
Also, sadly these days many people assume such summaries are written by an LLM, and HN users seem to really dislike them.
What are you warning us about?
I found the post informative.