I often hear from parents that their children use stickers to decorate everything: tables, windows, furniture, the TV. While parents might feel that this clashes with their decorative aesthetic, it is interesting that children have a natural inclination to decorate and make use of the stickers in such a way.
In an interesting exploration of that theme, Yayoi Kusama’s new art installation at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art took a blank canvas in the form of a plain, white room and provided children with thousands of stickers.
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (the C.C.F.C.) has announced their Worst Toy of the Year Award for 2011. The Toady award which stands for “Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children” nominates a few select toys every year that are, as the name implies, oppressive and destructive to kids.
This year a Tablet PC called Vinci Genius takes the top prize.
For more check out this opinion piece from the New York Times and a tech review of the device from Gadgesteria.
Came across this list of top 10 films featuring toys from Richard Gottlieb over at Global Toy News.
Is a Balloon really a toy? If it’s not a toy, what else could it be?
Good list with all classic films, but what about “Big” with Tom Hanks? “Toys” with Robin Williams was quite dark but toys featured a central theme in the film.
Some interesting toy statics from a recent article featured in the magazine The Economist. The article mostly applies to consumer trends in Europe, but speaks of the different buying habits of the English, French, Germans and Italians. The British toy market appears much more driven by licensed goods. UK parents are even labelled by the UNICEF as encouraging “compulsive consumerism” in children. Yikes!
Some interesting highlights from the article:
– British parents buy an average of 41 toys per year, which is almost a toy per week. In Spain, by contrast, children receive few toys outside the Christmas season.
– About one-quarter of toy sales in Britain are licence-driven, which means they are based on characters from Disney films or television series such as the popular “Peppa Pig” and “Fireman Sam”. The proportion in Germany is just 14%.
– Dolls account for fully 16.8% of toy sales in Spain, compared with 9.7% in Britain and just 7.9% in Germany. Italians buy a disproportionate number of toys from small, local makers.
There is much talk these days about the amount of time children spend playing video games but according to a recent survey in the UK reported by the Guardian newspaper, kids actually just want to ride their bicycles:
Research…asked children what they wanted to spend more time doing – and 54% of children questioned said they’d like to play on their bikes, while 52% elected to spend more time playing on their computer consoles.
A definite relief for parents concerned with the high costs of hi-tech toys.
Toymaker Arvind Gupta presents toys from India in this TED video. Although very basic and made from humble materials (trash), they show great imagination and creativity.
If necessary, subtitles available in 31 different languages.
Looks like one of the hottest trends in toys this Christmas season is….apps. Really?
According to recent news, including this one from kidscreen, app-based playthings top the list of hits this year.
I still refuse to believe that apps are a substitute for toys. Although apps on the iPhone and Android keep children occupied and amused while at restaurants, I just do not see how they can be more fun than actually playing.
The trend also highlights a more worrying trend that toys are slowly being edged out by screens.
– two-thirds of infants and toddlers watch a screen an average of 2 hours a day
– kids under age 6 watch an average of about 2 hours of screen media a day, primarily TV and videos or DVDs
– kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer (outside of schoolwork) and playing video games
