The set of toys I spent the most time playing with was a big bag of wooden blocks my grandfather gave me when I was very small. They are well designed, with a good selection of different shapes, e.g. it has cylinders and arches and thin planks as well as cuboids. They got a lot of use because they're so flexible in combining with other toys, e.g. you can build roads and garages for toy cars, or obstacle courses for rolling marbles. The edges and corners are rounded and the wood tough enough that clean-up was just dropping them back into the bag.
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.
> I highly recommend this kind of simple toy for young children.
As a parent I very much agree. And for grown-up children too.
On my desk I have a small tin containing small wooden blocks and planks, arches, etc. I get lots of play value from them - when my thinking is blocked, or if I just want to fool around and not think at all. I'm in my mid fifties.
And over at my climbing club's off-grid climbing hut we have a big box of over-sized, home made jenga blocks. Pretty-much everyone plays with them: not only jenga, but also just building structures or giant domino runs or whatever.
Same. We had a kids’ play table (low to the ground and rectangular) that we’d prop up with a few blocks under one end to give it a slight incline. We’d spend hours covering the surface with blocks in different positions to simulate a pinball table.
Then we’d take a large marble and use two long triangular blocks as flippers to “play” on it.
I had such blocks as well. For a recent take on this, I can recommend Kapla, typically come in a large (a couple 100s) box of skinny rectangular cuboids. I had fun doing, ahem, preliminary testing, before gifting them to my niece.
At one point way back then, my dad made something in the workshop that improved them tremendously: Wooden boards.
These were small, thin, very flat boards of oak -- about 3/16" thick and 3/4" wide. Their lengths varied in 2" increments, and the length of each board was written on it.
With boards added in, the blocks got a lot more interesting. Fastening was still limited to gravity, but things like cantilevers started happening.
100% agree. Box of blocks cannot be beat. My sister and I used the hell out of ours: we built towers, cantilevers, mazes, Rube Goldberg devices, houses for rodents, vehicles, elaborate locks, catapults, you name it. They're still in the same condition as day 1, ready for our children.
Bonus: You can roll a lot more down those long rubber racetracks than just cars.
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.
Blocks is the top comment (for me); and yours is number two. Timeless classic. Another one could be plasticine clay. These toys afford play, they don't direct, restrict, or guide play. Other good toys like this: box, stick, the woods, paper (especially a big roll of butcher paper), and things to draw with (I find a black, red, blue, yellow and green sufficient).
I recently needed to make a mockup of something, so I got some plasticine from Amazon, since I remembered playing with the stuff when I was a kid. However what I received was quite stiff and left an unpleasant oily smell on my hands that I had to scrub off with a lot of effort. Is there a particular brand of plasticine that you have had a good experience with?
Can confirm that Magnatiles, specifically, were maybe the best value for the dollar we ever got out of toys for our kids. Idk if the quality has held up but our kids abused the hell out of the things and it took them years to finally break just a couple of them (the largest ones are the most vulnerable). They have incredible range, good for babies but still seeing use as a supporting toy up to their tweens. Kinda pricey but if the quality is still as good as it was years ago (can’t say, the ~3 sets we bought over a couple years held up so well we never bought any more) they’re easily worth it.
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 just aged out of this as our youngest child is now 11, but I can affirm that magnatiles are fantastic and fun - and that is coming from someone who lionizes legos and considers them the ne plus ultra of toys for children.
That being said ...
We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":
A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.
My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".
This was the first toy I expected to see on the list. Can agree that, though they are somewhat expensive, our kids played with them frequently for the better part of a decade and then we passed them along to cousins who completed the decade of play and then some.
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.
I think this is worth worrying about, especially with knockoff magnatiles. The magnets are small enough to swallow. If a child swallows two they could die, for the same reason that "buckyball" magnet toys were banned: the magnets can snap together with intestinal tissue in between and perforate the intestinal wall.
I can't recommend enough ordering a $10 collapsible ball pen. My son understood even at age 2 that some toys needed to be played with in his play pen, and it means I can let him play with toys with hundreds of pieces and then scoop them all up at once.
Trivial Pursuit was like this too. Our family would chill in the den just randomly asking each other questions from the cards. I'm not sure we ever actually played it using the board game part.
I think so many 90s kids had this same experience. The Rube Goldberg trap was so much fun to build and play with, nobody bothered to even try and learn the game itself!
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.
The ideal "fuck you, parents" present must be noisy, and yet must require no batteries. Drums & cymbals are a good choice, as is a vuvuzela or an Aztec death whistle.
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.
We have some magnet tiles that have tubes and ramps for building marble mazes with - they are probably the most popular toy in the house. The thing about magnet tiles is there are several brands but they’re incompatible so it’s best to buy multiple sets from a single brand.
> Maybe I feel the satisfaction of clicking them together as I clean them up. Cleaning becomes a little like playing.
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.
The best toy my sister and I got is a now long-discontinued product called Omagles. They were brightly colored tubes and panels you connected with plastic clips. They were strong enough to stand and climb on. They even had wheels we could make vehicles out of.
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.
There is also Quadro Toys. I have a couple of the large sets and have built a series of houses, climbing toys, and now a "castle" with a slide for my daughter.
Exact same for me! Just ten minutes ago my son opened his Xmas present, his first box of TubeLox. My expectations and hopes are high but he is currently distracted by the flashier presents.
Another overlooked characteristic of a toy, especially a toy that takes up space, is "doneness".
Lots of free-play toys that my own kids use (4 and 7) can unconditionally be defended as still in use. They haven't been touched in an hour, but an ask to put it away is met with "I'm still playing with that". So: nothing gets put away until a parent pulls authority and overrules the kid's declaration that the game is still going. Understandably, the kids find this unfair and sort of demeaning.
A board game is different in so far as it has an ending. The kids never try to weasel out of putting Hungy Hungry Hippo or chess pieces or whatever back into a box.
This year the family favorite everyone was fighting to play including the adults was the new litebrite touch https://amzn.to/3MROaJs
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
Am I not loading all of this article? It basically stops for me after saying "magnet toys top the list" with 3 examples of such (well, really 2) for me, with no real investigation into other toys or exploration of why the variants like the Minecraft magnet toy scored much worse in cleanup (I assume it's due to the piece size?). Anything about toys other than magnet blocks?
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!)
The confusion was less on the author and more on the submission reaching the top of the front page - it wouldn't have been the first time the issue was my ad blocker or something. Thanks for confirming!
For small(ish) kids there is a certain correlation between play- and clean-up-time. If there was a toy which deviated, it would become blockbuster and there are hardly any such. Electronic screens are popular as nannies because of this.
Personally I choose all types in rotation. One toy of high duration is Play-Doh but afterwards needs a cleaning machine.
It looks like the author examined every toy inspired by Lego, other than Lego itself.
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?
Big problem with modern LEGO for me is that so many modern sets are almost all teensy-tiny pieces, so they look good on the box—the adult-aimed ones have always been like this since they started targeting that market, but now it’s like 95% of all their sets; also, they seem to hate exposed nubs, which is silly if the set is for play.
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.
Unfortunately, LEGO has decided that they want to make mostly high-margin co-branded sets with Nintendo, Pokémon, Minecraft, Star Wars, Monster Jam, F1, etc rather than cool engineering sets with a lot of flexible pieces that can be built into lots of different things. Luckily Chinese vendors like Uncle Brick and Mould King have stepped in to offer huge sets of Technics compatible parts, including simple motors that LEGO simply does not make anymore, for not much money. It’s really too bad that Lego abandoned that market. I would certainly pay a premium for the original stuff but a lot of what I would like is just not available. Now, I still buy a lot of the branded LEGO stuff, but the Chinese stuff has also entered the rotation for the older kids who are interested in engineering.
This article is aimed at younger kids, before normal Lego is appropriate. I like Duplo more than magnatiles - slightly harder to clean up I suppose, but that's because they hold together better than magnatiles, which create quite fragile structures.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the classic line showing up on shelves and they seem a ton better, but I don’t recall seeing them several years ago when we were doing lots of Lego-buying. Really limited selection and mostly big, expensive sets too, not many mid-sized ones. But glad to see them releasing sets that seem more focused on play than sitting on a shelf.
That's something I've run into myself. I just recently finished the Enterprise Lego set, and it was fun to build... but I doubt if I will ever take it apart and rebuild it. There were 30 bags in that set, and I don't much fancy the prospect of trying to sift through all the pieces at once rebuilding the thing.
We didn't see any of the toys in the article , but had a lot of other magnetic and combinable toys. The big advantage over Lego was building sizeable things with fewer blocks.
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.
You can teach a 4~5 yo kid to clean up. Below that it probably comes down to personality/level of awareness, and it's probably a lost cause for 2 year olds and below.
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.
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.
As a parent I very much agree. And for grown-up children too.
On my desk I have a small tin containing small wooden blocks and planks, arches, etc. I get lots of play value from them - when my thinking is blocked, or if I just want to fool around and not think at all. I'm in my mid fifties.
And over at my climbing club's off-grid climbing hut we have a big box of over-sized, home made jenga blocks. Pretty-much everyone plays with them: not only jenga, but also just building structures or giant domino runs or whatever.
We all need to play sometimes.
https://cuboro.ch/en/
Then we’d take a large marble and use two long triangular blocks as flippers to “play” on it.
Tilting was NOT advised.
At one point way back then, my dad made something in the workshop that improved them tremendously: Wooden boards.
These were small, thin, very flat boards of oak -- about 3/16" thick and 3/4" wide. Their lengths varied in 2" increments, and the length of each board was written on it.
With boards added in, the blocks got a lot more interesting. Fastening was still limited to gravity, but things like cantilevers started happening.
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...
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.
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)
That being said ...
We got a lot of mileage - many good years of use from male and female children - out of "Snap Circuits":
https://elenco.com/
A very, very cool building ecosystem with easy to build and understand recipes - we built a working FM radio, for instance. Not at all fussy or fragile.
My children are not particularly "STEMy" but they all enjoyed breaking out the "circuit kit".
For bonus points, get pics of your kids' faces lit by only that light.
Boom: next year's card.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfection_(board_game)
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.
Or paint. Or glitter.
There are 37 more in the child's bedroom.
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.
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.
Or take them to a library that has toys, see what they play with, and then go buy that.
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.
Lots of free-play toys that my own kids use (4 and 7) can unconditionally be defended as still in use. They haven't been touched in an hour, but an ask to put it away is met with "I'm still playing with that". So: nothing gets put away until a parent pulls authority and overrules the kid's declaration that the game is still going. Understandably, the kids find this unfair and sort of demeaning.
A board game is different in so far as it has an ending. The kids never try to weasel out of putting Hungy Hungry Hippo or chess pieces or whatever back into a box.
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
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!)
Personally I choose all types in rotation. One toy of high duration is Play-Doh but afterwards needs a cleaning machine.
For cleaning we just dumped everything into a big box. Repeatability is endless
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.
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
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.
It's good for their development and the clean-up-time can't be beat.
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.
Arguably not a “toy”, but it’s interesting to think about.
- 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?
Also, sadly these days many people assume such summaries are written by an LLM, and HN users seem to really dislike them.
I found the post informative.