First time parent? Just kidding.

My experience as a parent, and the conventional wisdom of parents I've known, including my own, is that there's no predicting the influence of a given toy on a kid's development[0]. My hunch is that toys are better if they give the kid more agency to make up their own play and games without supervision, and many of the toys mentioned in the article are of that ilk. That could be because I still like toys, to this day, with that kind of built-in agency.

Also, growing up in a emotionally stable family culture that values curiosity and learning is probably a huge deal.

[0] Excluding cellphones and the Internet, which are their own discussion of course.