alt Hacker NewsToys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
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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)
For a younger kid, a ball is often a good option.
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.
I feel like this list says a lot more about what the author wants her kids to be interested in than a real survey of the whole toy market. There are a few stuffed animals that get tons of love, and the magnet blocks were a hit for a couple months but then they got old. This is going to trigger a deluge of unsolicited admonition, but the television and the Nintendo switch have by far the highest entertainment value per dollar spent.
There were only two toys I never got tired of -- legos, and computers. Both encourage open-ended creativity. (I had older lego house sets which were quite flexible. Modern lego pieces seem more specialized.) Unfortunately, so many pieces took several minutes to clean up, so I would just leave them spread out across my bedroom floor for months at a time. These days when I want to play with legos I put a bedsheet down first.
Also, I read another article from the author and subscribed just based on how concisely she expresses her ideas. She just gets her point across, then quits. I love it.
The toy with the most longevity from my childhood were those cardboard bricks. Could be used for anything from forts, towers, hamster mazes, throwable weapons...
Not the quickest toy to clean up, but still fun since it's a building activity of its own, stacking them against a wall or something.
I vote the cardboard box, especially if it is a large appliance box, Unfortunately you can't really give someone a large cardboard box, but oh boy are they fun.
After my daughter turned 4, the ‘toy’ with the most play time and lowest clean up time was a good pad of blank paper and colouring pencils. The bonus is that it takes up little room and is therefore highly portable. Furthermore, if you forget it, you can replace it easily and cheaply!
> The worst toy is one with many pieces that my kids dump on the ground and then play with for only 2 minutes.
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.
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.
Magna tiles are my favourite of my kid’s toys.
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.
> 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.
A phone would get perfect score in all of OP's metrics, so I feel there is some stuff missing to identify really good toys.
Has anyone had experienced with the giant magnet tiles? This article seems like suspicious affiliate marketing which places are beloved product that everybody has beside one that looks kind of similar.
As a former child my favourites were Playmobile, Lego, Duplo, wooden blocks and those little matchbox cars.
For cleaning we just dumped everything into a big box. Repeatability is endless
> I score my toys across 3 dimensions
What about kid’s development? The whole point (okay, not while but the biggest) of a game is learning something.
I’m surprised no one mentions Knex. By far my childhood favorite, and for me, far more creative opportunity when comparing to something like lego.
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.
When I read the title the first thing that came to my mind were Magna Tiles. Glad they made it on the list.
It's the only toy in the house that lasted the test of time from she 4-8 (and counting). Also I love tidying up Magna tiles, even that is fun!
My oldest kid got a small sample of Clixco and was surprisingly entertained even with a limited set of possibilities they offered. They're great fidget toys as well.
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.
Your mileage may vary…
As soon as I got first Minecraft block to my 5yo, the magnatiles were almost forgotten. And she never played Minecraft in her life, but saw the movie and some YouTube vids. The fact that the tiles have an image and purpose is a huge benefit, because she creates better stories with them.
But I got it only after i got kiddo to cleanup her toys from the floor regularly.
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
smartphone. but everyone here is psychologically against this even though it's true.
To me, game consoles were toys. Maybe they are a lot more now but the SNES and N64 felt like toys. The pc felt like a toy too.
I am very likely to be a father in the future. I am happy I have all my old consoles because it helps a bit with introducing kids to technology without them having access to all of it.
Soccer outside was fun too, there was a field nearby our house.
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.
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!)
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?
I really wish people would declare ages when talking about kid toys. Anywho, any banger toy recommendation for a 1yo?
Question from a not-parent: why not teach kids to clean up for themselves?
I tell my kids to imagine they have the toys they want.
It's good for their development and the clean-up-time can't be beat.
Magna tiles are easy to clean up in the they stick to each other sense, but I still find them all over the house.
It would have been helpful if I had seen this BEFORE Christmas. lol
Tiptoi
Hot take - Along these lines video games score incredibly well.
Arguably not a “toy”, but it’s interesting to think about.
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tl;dr:
- 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
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.