Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
joannabregan.substack.com401 points by surprisetalk 16 hours ago
401 points by surprisetalk 16 hours ago
I gifted my 6 year old nephew a cheap hand held analog radio (and a few other things to be fair). He loved it. I can guess it must be fascinating to turn a wheel and then different music and voices are coming out of it. Also it has a frequency scale that's controlled by the wheel which I assume is good for training a technical perspective on controlled action and reaction. The antenna has to be pointed in the right direction. Maybe this gets him interested in why that is. Certainly no clean-up-time at all and play-time probably also decent.
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.
Those look super cool, but I'm also not sure I'd be ready to throw down $340 for the 50 piece starter set.
I bought the magnatile-knockoff-version essentially and while not as pure montessori as the wooden blocks, they're 1/10th the price and my 4-year-old is _loving_ this kit: https://amzn.to/3MVXRXg
Wood's expensive these days. It's probably costing close to a ton just for the nice beech they're made of.
Beech is the cheapest of the common European hardwoods. Even through a distributor it’s only about 1400-1700 € per cubic meter in 5” planks. For context, the cheapest construction lumber is about 300-800, oak 2500, american walnut 4000.
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.
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.
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.
Are you referring to the "Builder DI-1"[0] from the USSR? I had it in my childhood, too.
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.
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.
They blocked Japan IPs on product pages...
Even Germany. Simply stupid.
Snap Circuits are just standard electronic components that combine with each other using standard snap buttons [1] from the textile industry. The real “genius” of them is that the grid spacing and the width/thickness of each component is well-balanced such that they are held together securely while being easy to separate using the lever action that a child naturally produces when grabbing something (ie don’t pull straight up). It should be easily replicable and I’d be surprised that there aren’t knockoffs in all the countries that they block from their website.
> 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
So uh, as hackers...
Anyone got any good reverse engineering docs / write-ups? On where the right attachment points are? For those of us interested in, oh, perhaps, 3d printing our own?
(Hack the planet)
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have bought a bunch of them secondhand. They arrive already scratched up, but who cares.
Lego Duplo is the best. It is a great creative toy at least from 2 to 10. Especially when you have it from early on and it is just "part of the furniture".
It's much easier to collect from the ground than Lego.
Newer Lego stuff also has so many tiny parts.
What a strange world we're in when the top comment on a post about toys is about how LLMs are good...
LLMs are perfect for smart and curious kids who ask so many questions they annoy adults like I did. Smart kids can teach themselves many things using them
If you want to produce children that endear themselves to oleaginousness and have no concept of source verification, yes.
Mousetrap the board game is the opposite: Hard to setup, almost zero playtime, very hard to put back in the box.
Repeat twice a day because the kids love the idea of the game!
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.
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/
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.
Tip: Look for someone selling their grownup children’s Lego collection. I recently found a couple selling their children’s old Lego collection in Facebook Marketplace. I got an enormous bag of them for just a few bucks. It was a headache to filter out the garbage in them (small non-LEGO toys, unique pieces that were not really useful, a few mixed mega blocks, broken pieces, etc) but it was worth it, my children love them!
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.
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.
As an uncle, is there an opposite version of this list?
Yes. It's starts and ends with Perfection.
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.
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 in doubt, buy a musical instrument.
Or paint. Or glitter.
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.
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.
Aren't the choices straightforward, or looking specific product links?
Generally:
- Robots with lights that make nonstop loud noises without helping with household chores
- Glue
- Glitter
- Finger paint
- Bass guitar, drum kit, or trombone
- Baking cookbooks
- Things worse than IKEA flat packs with zillions of tiny, fragile pieces like laser-cut wood models
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
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?