Toys

Toys

I

INTRODUCTION

Toys, objects that serve as playthings for children. Although the exact origin of the word is unknown, it is believed to date to the 14th century, with its modern usage emerging in the 16th century. Toys is a broad category that can encompass games, puzzles, balls and other sports equipment, dolls and action figures, play sets, creative and artistic materials, collectibles, miniatures of all kinds, and a wide variety of other items.

Most toys are specifically manufactured or crafted, but found or homemade objects are also often used by children in play. Ancient cultures, such as the Greeks and Egyptians, fashioned the earliest toys from rocks, sticks, wood, animal hide, and clay. Even with the wide variety of elaborate, high-tech toys available today, a child may have just as much fun using his or her imagination to play with a cardboard box or a stray piece of plastic.

The inherent purpose of any toy has always been to entertain or occupy a child. But toys are also frequently used in other ways, such as educating children or teaching them about important rituals. No matter their purpose, toys are an important influence on the emotional, mental, and physical development of children.

II

TOYS AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT

While children mature at different rates and some toys can be fun at any age, many playthings are tailored to different age levels. Child development experts have conducted studies aimed at determining the right type of toy for a child at each stage of development. Relevant factors may include the color of a toy, sounds or movement, features, level of complexity, and ability to stimulate creativity or role-playing. See also Child Development.

In addition to age-specific targets, toy manufacturers must consider child safety issues. A toy designed for 2-year-olds has very different safety requirements than one made for 12-year-olds. For example, toys with small pieces pose a choking hazard for small children. This is one of the primary reasons that toy makers label their products with specific age recommendations. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission is a federal agency that works with all types of manufacturers, including toy companies, to determine safety guidelines and recall potentially dangerous items.

Safety restrictions aside, there is little governing the age at which a child may enjoy a toy. Some children will play with toys designed for a much older age. Less often will a child play with a toy he or she feels is too “young” for them.

A

Infants

Toys designed for infants—children from birth through age two—are generally targeted toward developing the child’s senses, primarily sight (colorful mobiles), sound (musical toys, rattles), and touch (balls, plush toys). Such objects stimulate the child, provide comfort, and encourage the development of hand-eye coordination. Infant toys are usually based on familiarity, whether with shapes, colors, animals, or people. Repetitive play reinforces familiarity with the toy. Infant toys should follow the child’s development level. They should be durable and nontoxic, with no small pieces and no sharp edges.

B

Early Childhood

Toys for preschool-age children, generally considered ages 2 through 6, allow them to exercise their imagination in preparation for school and other social settings. These playthings encourage creativity and skill-building, such as coloring books, blocks, construction sets, and modeling clay.

Some toys for this age group fall into gender-specific categories. Toy kitchens, makeup, housewares, and dolls reinforce traditional female roles and are often used in role-playing. Traditional favorites among little boys are toy trucks and cars, miniature construction equipment, and blocks and building sets. Toy weapons—such as cap guns, space guns, and cowboy guns—have also long been popular with boys. Many types of toy guns have been discontinued, however, because of growing concerns about violence among children and the potential for such toys to be mistaken for real weapons.

Still other toys designed for early childhood can easily cross gender lines. Crayons and paint, modeling clay, board games, and plush toys are equally desirable to both boys and girls. Sports toys, once considered strictly for boys, are now widely popular with both sexes following the rapid growth in girls’ athletics.

Early childhood is also a time children become more aware of television and movie characters. Throughout history, familiar characters have appealed to children from an early age. Some of the more popular 20th-century icons that spawned their own toys included Little Orphan Annie, Batman and other superheroes, and Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse. The expansion of children’s media in recent years, through sources such as cable television and video games, has greatly increased the number and variety of such characters and their related toys.

C

Late Childhood

The toys of late childhood (ages 7 through 12) build on the skills children have acquired to this point, including reading, cognition (ability to acquire knowledge), artistic talent, and hand-eye coordination. These toys are designed to expand children’s knowledge of society and the larger world; develop creativity; encourage problem solving, role-playing, and socialization; and improve literacy and vocabulary.

Toys based on hit films and television series are also highly in demand at this age. Young consumers often want the latest action figure or prop from a popular film or show so they can play out what they have seen on the screen. Electronic games and toys have also experienced huge growth in this age group as children become more adept at using computers and other gadgets at an increasingly young age. Most handheld games and communication devices (such as walkie-talkies) have been usurped in the 21st century by video and computer game systems. These tech-savvy toys even make long-distance play possible—children can now play video games with or against others online, whether it is with a friend down the street or a child who lives on the other side of the world.

III

HISTORY

While the development and production of toys has changed over the centuries—in such areas as manufacturing, materials, and design—the essential purpose of toys remains basically unchanged. At the same time, the societal values, economic circumstances, and technological capabilities of different eras have greatly influenced the types of toys that developed and thrived during that period.

A

Earliest Toys

The history of toys closely follows the development of human society. People constructed the earliest toys from materials they had on hand, such as rocks, sticks, or clay. These readily available elements were also used to make more elaborate toys as human society advanced.

Archaeologists have found primitive, handmade toys such as wooden or cloth dolls, clay marbles, and terracotta figures that date back thousands of years. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, people placed dolls or clay figures in the graves or tombs of children for them to play with in the afterlife. The yo-yo may seem like a 20th-century fad, but it actually dates back at least 2,500 years to ancient China and Greece. Other early toys that Greek and Roman children played with included hoops and sticks, skipping ropes, and bows and arrows—some of which continue to be popular today.

Few toys survive from the Middle Ages, although some game pieces and earthenware figures have been uncovered in European excavations. Other toys of this era were made of cast metal in small numbers by skilled craftsmen. Some French metalworkers in the 14th century, for example, probably made metal soldiers for their own or their children’s amusement.

Historical texts indicate that centuries ago children often made their own toys. A 15th-century poem mentions a girl making a doll from cloth, and refers to children making caves or forts from sticks and stones. Another common theme in historical toys is imitation of the adult world. Among the most frequently pictured toys in illuminated manuscripts and early printed books of this time are windmills and hobby horses, which are smaller-scale versions of real-world objects.

Most historians agree that the systematic production of toys began in Germany during the 15th century. Craftsmen making household items or religious pieces would have been a likely source of toys during this period. The city of Nürnberg, Germany, is considered the birthplace of modern toys. Today, a large annual trade show for toys is held in the city to honor its importance to the history of the industry.

Dollmaking and woodworking were common trades in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Toys preserved from this time, such as tiny models of Noah’s ark, reflect the flourishing woodworking industry as well as the power of religion in society at that time.

B

18th and 19th Centuries

As European influence spread throughout much of the world after the 17th century, particularly through the British Empire, the colonizers brought toys with them. Dolls and wooden animals were imported from Germany and England to many different countries. A burgeoning printing industry in the British colonies produced children’s books, puzzles, cards, and board games. Many of these early games were designed to be educational or to convey a life lesson or moral.

The demand for toys steadily increased as societies grew and became more prosperous. Advertisements for toys from the 18th century show that dollhouses, drums, and wooden toys were popular. Toys were not yet a mass-produced commodity, however.

By the mid-19th century, the factories of the Industrial Revolution began to make toys on a larger scale. Cheaper and faster methods to make cast iron and stamp tinplate were particularly important in toy development. Toys from this era include dolls made of composite materials, tin-lithographed toys (some with winding mechanisms), and banks and horse-drawn vehicles made of cast iron.

C

20th Century

Many of today’s most successful toys originated in the early decades of the previous century. Although the toy business experienced revolutionary changes over the last hundred years, in particular with cheaper materials and increased production, some themes remained constant. Items such as construction toys, board games, wagons and bicycles, art toys, and sports items never went out of style, as their basic concepts transcend the latest trends or technology. These toys have bridged generations—parents who loved them as children continue to buy them for their own offspring.

1

Father of the Industry

The first half of the 20th century is considered the golden age of American toy manufacturing. One of the most important individuals during this era was Louis Marx, who founded his own toy company in the early 1920s with his brother David. With the philosophy of offering more toy for less money, the firm was known in the early years for its high-quality tin wind-up toys.

By the late 1940s Louis Marx and Company was one of the world’s largest toy companies, producing items such as yo-yos, model trains, play sets, toy soldiers, dollhouses, and mini-cars. Later successes included the Big Wheel riding vehicle, first introduced in the late 1960s. Marx finally sold the company in the early 1970s. In 1985 he was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, where his plaque proclaimed him “the Henry Ford of the toy business.”

2

Other Toy Manufacturing Pioneers

Other pioneers in the toy business focused on construction sets, which have a long history of popularity. In earlier periods these toys consisted mostly of wooden blocks and similar objects. In 1913 a Yale University medical school graduate named A. C. Gilbert created a metal construction toy called the Erector Set. A year later, an Illinois stonemason named Charles Pajeau invented Tinkertoys, a simple wooden spool-and-stick construction toy that remains popular to this day. For decades children have been using the interchangeable Tinkertoys to produce cars, buildings, animals, and many other creative inventions.

While kids could build rudimentary towers with Tinkertoys, they were able to flesh out their architectural dreams with another construction toy that came out of this era called Lincoln Logs. Invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright (son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright), Lincoln Logs were inspired by the elder Wright’s interlocking-beam design for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan. The set of small interlocking wooden “logs” was an immediate hit, connecting the country’s frontier past—the toy was named after Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood log cabin—with the opportunity for children to create impressive-looking structures of their own design.

In the early 1930s a Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen created a toy company called LEGO, from the Danish words leg godt (“play well”). In the late 1940s he introduced a toy called Automatic Binding Bricks made from plastic, a relatively new material. Today known simply as LEGOs, these simple interlocking bricks have become one of the world’s most popular toys. Billions of LEGOs are sold every year, allowing children to craft predesigned items or anything else their imaginations can dream up. The first Legoland theme park, dedicated to celebrating the famous toy, opened in Denmark in 1968.

3

Milton Bradley and Board Games

Board games have been popular for centuries. Some of today’s games have been around for more than 100 years, such as The Game of Life, which was created by printer Milton Bradley in the 1850s. In the 19th century board games were often made by printers and skilled artisans who were more interested in the stylized graphics of the boards or the meticulous crafting of the game pieces. When automated manufacturing made widespread production of board games possible in the early 20th century, toy companies began to focus more on games of strategy and intellectual development. These games, many of which are still popular, paved the way for the hundreds of board games found on the toy shelves today.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, an unemployed heating engineer named Charles Darrow thought that jobless Americans needed something to help pass the time. His solution was to invent a real estate buying-and-selling board game he called Monopoly. Needing names for the various properties used in the game, Darrow chose street names from his favorite vacation spot, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Darrow tried to sell the game to toymaker Parker Brothers in 1934, but the company turned him down, citing more than 50 design flaws. Undaunted, he decided to sell the game himself. When it proved popular Parker Brothers reconsidered their decision. Monopoly remains one of the world’s most successful board games, with hundreds of variations marketed in more than 40 countries.

Another board game invented by an unemployed man in the 1930s that initially proved a hard sell was the word game Scrabble. The inventor, architect Alfred Butts, first manufactured the game (which he called Lexico) in his living room. After years of tweaking the rules and design, Butts eventually found a manufacturer in the late 1940s. By the mid-1950s Scrabble had become a hit. It remains a widely popular game today—players can find a Scrabble game 24 hours a day on the Internet, and the World Scrabble Championship annually attracts players from all over the globe.

4

Binney & Smith and Art Toys

The first art toy was probably nothing more than a burnt stick that a child used to doodle on a flat surface. Today, children often make their first drawings with a product developed in 1885 at Binney & Smith, a small chemical company in Peekskill, New York. The company had invented a wax marker to label barrels in its factory, and with a few changes and some coloring they came up with the Crayola crayon. Generations of children have used their Crayolas to fill in the lines in a coloring book or produce a family portrait. The company now makes over 100 different colors of crayons, from forest green to midnight blue to burnt sienna.

Another innovative art toy that remains popular is the Etch A Sketch, developed in 1958 by a French mechanic. An Etch A Sketch consists of a gray screen coated from the inside with aluminum powder and plastic beads, enabling children to produce a drawing using two knobs fixed at the bottom of the screen (one for vertical lines, the other for horizontal). The classic design requires no batteries, and the child can easily erase their design and start over by turning the screen upside down and shaking it. Another innovative, bestselling art toy is the Spirograph. Invented in 1965 by a mechanical engineer from England, Spirograph allows children to make multicolored spiral drawings using a variety of different-sized plastic stencils.

5

Unintentional Toys

Some of the most successful toys of all time were created by mistake. A classic example is the Slinky, one of the most elemental toys ever patented: a metal spring that has the ability to “walk” down a sloped board or stairs. It came about when, in 1943, engineer Richard James was attempting to invent a spring that would measure horsepower on engines used in battleships. When James accidentally knocked one of the springs off his desk, he watched it tumble end-over-end across the floor. Thinking that it might make an interesting toy, James had a small batch manufactured. After a prominent in-store demonstration at a large toy store, sales of the Slinky took off. The toy still delights children today.

Another famous mistake-turned-toy was created during World War II (1939-1945), when most toy production had ceased due to the war effort. With natural rubber in high demand for war manufacturing, scientists at General Electric were charged with inventing a synthetic replacement. One batch produced a material that bounced very high when dropped, was extremely stretchable, and could even be used to lift pictures off of a newspaper or comic book—but it was not a good rubber substitute. An opportune marketer soon came across the puttylike stuff and decided it might make an interesting toy. Dubbed Silly Putty, the rest is toy history. Similarly, the modeling compound Play-Doh was created as a wallpaper cleaner before a preschool teacher’s request for a more pliable clay turned it into a bestselling toy in the 1950s.

6

Changing Materials

The different materials used to make toys over the course of the 20th century reflect the technological changes in society. Metal was the major toy material of the first half of the century. It was used to make wagons, toy cars, soldiers, play guns, and many other items for children. But during World War II (1939-1945) most American companies devoted their production (and metal supply) to the war effort, curtailing toy manufacturing.

After the war, toymaking resumed in earnest. While metal was still a common medium at first, the widespread use of plastic materials during the 1950s and 1960s revolutionized the toy business. Because it was less expensive than metal, plastic soon became the basic material for almost all toys, including vinyl dolls, hard plastic tea sets, action figures, robots, vehicles, and toy guns.

Although some products are still made using metal or wood materials, the vast majority of the world’s toys are manufactured with plastic today. One downside of this change in material is that cheaply made plastic toys break more easily, failing to last long enough to be handed down to younger siblings or future generations.

Inventors and toy marketers are constantly looking for new or different materials that can make a great toy. For example, foam rubber solved an age-old toy problem: how can children play ball in the house without breaking furniture or a window? In 1968 toy maker Reyn Guyer, who had invented the game Twister a few years earlier, came up with a solution: a foam ball he called a Nerf. Guyer sold the idea to Parker Brothers, and the toy became a great success. Eventually more than 40 different Nerf toys (from Nerf table tennis to Nerf bow-and-arrow sets) reached the market—with the Nerf football becoming the bestselling football in the world.

7

Pop Culture Toys and Fads

In the second half of the 20th century one of the biggest impacts on the toy industry came with the rise of pop culture tie-ins: toys connected to television shows, movies, comic strip characters, and similar media creations. While toy licensing itself was nothing new—characters were licensed as early as the late 1800s with Palmer Box’s Brownies and Richard Outcault’s comic character The Yellow Kid—motion pictures such as Star Wars (1977) and the films and characters marketed by the Walt Disney Company sparked a gigantic new wave of such toys.

In particular, action figures became a big market segment in the toy business in the later decades of the century. The trend began in the 1960s with the Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, toys that remain hugely popular with children. Many of the most successful action figures, games, and other toys today are directly tied to the latest television and movie characters. Millions of these types of toys are sold or distributed to children every year as both a business and an effective marketing tool.

Another industry phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century was the toy fad. Such a fad occurs when a toy briefly captures the public’s imagination, sells in the millions, then fades from sight as rapidly as it bloomed. One of the earliest toy fads was the hula hoop, the hip-twisting toy that became a national craze for a short time in the 1950s. In the 1960s the game Twister, in which people intertwine their bodies to touch colorful circles on a large mat, was a hugely popular party game for both children and adults.

In the 1970s there was a brief infatuation with an item known as the Pet Rock: millions of ordinary rocks were boxed up and sold to children and adults who longed for a low-maintenance companion. In the 1980s parents fought each other in toy stores to buy the homely Cabbage Patch doll. A clever marketing tactic used for this toy was giving each doll an individual name and personality profile.

One of the fads of the 1990s was Tickle Me Elmo, a talking doll based on a popular Sesame Street children’s television character. About the same time, a line of small, individually named stuffed animals called Beanie Babies caused a frenzy among both children and adults. By restricting distribution to smaller toy stores and by regularly “retiring” (discontinuing production of) some of the animals, the manufacturer inflated the demand for these toys. In the collecting market, Beanie Babies that originally sold for $5 were commanding huge prices from specialty stores and online auctions as soon as they were retired. Like most previous toy fads, the craze lasted for a few years and then suddenly disappeared, as children and parents moved on to the next big thing. See also Collectibles and Collecting.

D

Current Trends

If history is an accurate gauge, toys will continue to follow societal trends in the 21st century. One dominant theme in the modern world is the rapid spread of technology, which is having a great impact on children’s toys. The great strides in computer chip technology over the last several decades have made electronic games and toys more powerful and affordable every year.

These high-tech toys are not only popular with children but also with millions of teenagers and adults, which greatly increases their reach and overall popularity. Total annual sales of home video game systems—such as Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox—and related software passed $10 billion in the first few years of the 21st century in the United States, and the industry continues to expand. (Encarta is published by Microsoft Corporation.) At the same time, some child-development experts and parents fear that the long hours spent playing video and computer games can hamper children’s social skills, discourage more imaginative play, and—in the case of more explicit games—promote violence.

While technology continues to change the 21st-century toy market, manufacturers and parents find that children are still drawn to the classic toys from earlier generations. Crayolas, Tinkertoys, Etch A Sketch, Slinky, Monopoly, LEGOs, Silly Putty, Play-Doh—all of these toys are essentially unchanged from their original versions and continue to appeal to millions of children around the world. Reaching even further back, the ultimate purpose of any toy remains the same today as it was millennia ago—to engage and occupy a child.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.