- 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'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?
I found the post informative.
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?
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.
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 11yo wants few new sets now because he doesn’t know where he would put them, and declines to swap out his assembled sets.
Feels just like Grandma's ole box o bricks
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 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.
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
Personally I choose all types in rotation. One toy of high duration is Play-Doh but afterwards needs a cleaning machine.
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.
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...
Then we’d take a large marble and use two long triangular blocks as flippers to “play” on it.
Tilting was NOT advised.
And over at my climbing club's off-grid climbing hut we have a big box of over-sized, home made jenga blocks. Everyone plays with them: not just jenga, but also just building structures or giant domino runs.
We all need to play sometimes.
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.
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.
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.
Or paint. Or glitter.
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.
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!)
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 cleaning we just dumped everything into a big box. Repeatability is endless
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.
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.
Arguably not a “toy”, but it’s interesting to think about.
It's good for their development and the clean-up-time can't be beat.
TheCleric•2h ago