I am a big fan of VH1’s “I Love…” series, such as “I Love the 80s,” and “I Love the 80s… Strikes Back”. Unfortunately, I missed one of the recent installments, “I Love Toys, “ which aired earlier this month. (You can read all about it here.) Moreover, you can make money for all of this. You can find some other tips for making cash in here.
VH1 counted down the top 100 toys of all time, a list the producers arrived at through “online voting, sales, historical significance, and longevity.”
The Top 100 Toys is a trip down memory lane: Magic 8 Ball, Spirograph, Baby Alive, Color Forms, Operation, Shrinky Dinks (To see numbers 100-11, click here. Band noise has the top 10 here.) The top 5 toys of all time? Hula Hoop, Barbie, Lego, G.I. Joe, and Mr. PotatoHead.
What struck me as I looked down the list was how few of these top 100 toys need a battery, let alone a microchip. In fact, only 7 toys on the list are electronic or computer-related: Pong (#96), Remote Control Cars (#92), Walkie Talkies (#71), Gameboy (#50), Mattel Classic Football (#37), Nintendo (#21), and Atari (#20).
However, a full 75% of the new toys featured at the 2006 Toy Fair had some microchip in them.
Will today’s toys stand the test of time? How many new toys are destined to become classics? I do believe that sometimes, less is more. Crayola Crayons (#28), Lite Brite (#25), and Etch-a-Sketch (#16) are likely to provide many more hours of entertainment for my daughters than an electronic fake cell phone with prerecorded messages.
These simpler toys stimulate creativity and provide endless possibility, while canned electronic toys can become rote and repetitive. Board games such as Trivial Pursuit (#79), Scrabble (#18), Candy Land (#70) and Battleship (#30) are fun even in their most stripped-down, low-tech versions.
I am not knocking technology – I couldn’t live without TiVo, blackberry and cell phone. However, I think there is still plenty of room in our modern world for some non-electronic mainstays, and am glad to see these toys being recognized and cherished.
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