The Preface to My Favorite Toys

I have been working here for just about 4 years. I've had mom's tell me I should be a toy consultant, and sometimes, I don't think that's too bad of an idea. I love toys and playing. And I think that I have gained an amazing knowledge about toys, especially in how they have progressed over time. That is because many of the items in the toy library are the part of the original collection, when it began almost 25 years ago. I can see how many toys were ahead of their time.

Discovery Toys, for example, it's a great brand, highly trusted, but also, the toys are just different than others. They are multifaceted. For example, the Measure Up Cups aren't just stacking and nesting cups. They are also numbered, have animals engraved on the bottom, can be used for patterning AND they are volumetrically correct. I know a child may not appreciate all of these qualities, but the adult buying them sure does. Any toy that can teach more than one concept is pretty great, in my opinion.

I've seen Fisher Price change dramatically. Not only in their Little People brand of toys but also in their infant/toddler toys. In this collection, we have Little People that are small-wooden, small-plastic, chunky-plastic, "realistic"-plastic... For a short period of time I was seeing another version of Little People that were flexible, but they must not have lasted long. What also has amazed me, is that when you look at the small Little People, they were not multicultural, there was just white. Now they have a better representation, they even have Hanukkah play set (as well as a Nativity Scene, Christmas and Kwanzaa). The infant/toddler toys used to be very simple, and now they are electronic and noisey. They count, they say the ABC's. They speak Spanish! It amazes me.

Now that I have waned nostalgic about different toy companies and my love for them, I'll get to my point. I think I know toys pretty well and I know how the children interact with them. So in my next post, I am going to chose some of my favorite toys in this toy library. I do not have the most rigid criteria, by the way. Some are my favorite because because I know children love them, some for their educational purposes, and others, well, I genuinely like playing with them still :-), I think that says something.

News From the National Toy Hall of Fame

I read this today on Strong National Museum of Play's blog...

"So, it’s a great thrill to celebrate this year’s three new inductees to the National Toy Hall of Fame—the Ball, Big Wheel, and Nintendo Game Boy ."---Play Stuff Blog

P.S. I have to say that it's pretty exciting to see the game boy in the hall of fame :-) 

The Best Toys Lists

Parent's Choice
This list separates games from toys which is nice...and I find it's a little more family friendly (duh!) than the Oppenheim list below.

Oppenheim Toy Portfolio
This award is kind of a big deal. They also chose awards in book, audio and dvd. They organize by age group and have lists of "the best toy" for each. They chose less mainstream toys in my opinion. I have quite a few items chosen over the past few years in the Toy Library.

About.com Toy of the Year Award
This one is a little more commercial, but still a detailed list.

Games turning into movies...

Story from Rotten Tomatoes...

THE PLOTS OF THE BATTLESHIP AND MONOPOLY MOVIES ARE AS BAD AS YOU'D EXPECT
Story details have emerged in the last week or so for the "board game movies" Battleship andMonopoly. First up is Battleship, which will be about an "international" five ship fleet engaged in an intense battle with... aliens. And those aliens will apparently shoot giant red or white plastic pegs, I guess. Filming of Battleship starts next spring, and the movie is expected in the summer of 2011. As for Monopoly, the premise as detailed by producer Frank Beddor is quite lengthy, but the gist is that it's about a "comedic, loveable loser" who tries to break the world record for the longest game of Monopoly, and instead ends up in the world of Monopoly City, where Monopoly money is real and the world is ruled by the evil Parker Brothers, with whom the comedic, loveable loser engages in a series of "sight gags" to defeat them. Maybe it would be impossible to come up with plots for movies based on board games that wouldn't sound rotten, but that's sort of why until recently, people didn't make movies based upon board games.