<p>"Remember when a ball was just a ball? Now it is a tactile stimulating sensory aid that helps develop gross motor skills.</p>
<p>Really. Strolling through the international Toy Fair at the Javits Center in New York City last week was like walking through the brightly painted halls of a children’s hospitalat once cheery and sad. Cheery were the shiny bikes and busy ant farms. Sad was the way the marketers made it sound like they were peddling early intervention in a box.</p>
<p>Take ‘Baby’s First Construction Marble Raceway Set’ from Rollipopa very cute plastic set of chutes and curves that any marble would be delighted to loop through. It looked ready to delight any kid, too, and better still keep him occupied while Mommy checks her BlackBerry. But according to the box copy, this was no mere diversion. It was an educational show-stopper that ‘encourages hand-eye coordination," even while “visually stimulating” the brain and developing "fine motor skills.’…</p>
<p>…That’s why the makers of balls, blocks and battery-free marble games have to market them as if they were Stanley Kaplan incarnate. They have to remind parents that there is something valuable to plain old goofing aroundeven if it looks like child’s play."</p>
<p>How did any of us adults ever survive childhood or amount to anything?</p>
<p>Didn’t read the article, but from your post it sounds like manufacturers and marketers are taking the fun out of toys, not the parents. I certainly hope they aren’t marketing marbles to babies (choking hazard). Seriously, who cares how they are marketed? And how does it take the fun out of it if the parent is led to believe it is educational? A bike is still a bike. Kids will play with balls how ever they want to. Legos will always be popular.</p>
<p>My brother bought one of those marble set-ups for his son for Christmas and much to his dismay, it is my nephews favorite toy. It required and requires extensive time on my brother’s part and he want to sneak the thing out of the house and into the dump. So these educational toys can catch a kid’s eye and become a favorite. </p>
<p>Legos are a pet peeve of mine. They might as well be model kits these days.</p>
<p>My kids played with their Legos for years. All of the toys that needed batteries got annoying quickly. There was one horrible toy fire engine (complete with realistic siren sounds) that I had to hide in the trash after just a few days.</p>
<p>Balls have always been stimulating sensory aids that help develop gross motor skills. It’s just that now we have a term for that. Parents want to buy their kids educational toys that will help them develop and learn. That’s not any different from parents in the past; now we just have a lot more research on it, that’s all.</p>
<p>IMO legos were more fun when they didn’t tell you what you were making…just a box of legos and your imagination. Now its a lego train station or whatever…boring. Color outside the lines!</p>
<p>What is great about legos is that they are still capable of being other things once the model on the box has beenmade, remade, destroyed and mutated. They all ended up in large tubs (or in my vacuum cleaner bag). My DS was not the ind of kid that could take the blocks and build an unusual machine from imagination right off the bat, but he could build something familiar, then morph and modify as he grew older and more confident. If only they didn’t hurt so much when you step on them at night going to the bathroom.</p>
<p>My 5 boys took the fun out of a lot of toys by finding things to do with them that made my hair stand straight up. Things wedged between piano keys, broken glass, …I can’t even begin to list the stuff that was done. And yeah, I have lego feet syndrome too.</p>
<p>There is a device that parents of new babies have that were not available when my kids were babies…that is an Exersaucer.</p>
<p>I call it a fancy device for sensory overload ( our business rents them out ) They are an explosion of bright colors , sounds and things to touch…and some parents can’t seem to function without them…whatever happened to holding your baby ?</p>
<p>I did have a baby swing to use that bought me enough time to woof down a meal or read a story to an older sibling , but the must have items for babies are much more complex …glad I am past that !</p>
<p>My kids usually made the kit then played with Legos the way they ought to be played. My kid’s best toys were the huge sandbox and a garden hose, wooden blocks and old packing boxes. </p>
<p>I got to a point where I refused to buy anything with batteries. Flat out refused after all of the backless battery compartments we accumulated. Where the heck they went, I have never found out. The kids ended up having to buy any battery junk themselves, the older ones for the younger ones and I put my hands over my eyes, ears and mouth about the whole thing;</p>
<p>I gag when I think about what I bought in toys for the older toys. Five boys took care of that for me. The youngest didn’t know that cars had to have 4 wheels.</p>