multitasker toys for the win
The other day, Joshua helped the girls make this amusement park ride out of Knex. The battery operated motor makes it go around in circles, and as it does, the seats go up and down.
Not gonna lie...it's pretty cool.
$0.29 bears from the craft store are the lucky riders. 😉
The girls also made some zip lines for the bears out of Knex.
Well, the cars are Knex..the zip lines are yarn.
Some of the lines have sort of a dangerous slope. 😉
Watching this reminded me again that the toys which provide the very best value are the those that can do multiple things.
I'm sure you can buy toy amusement park rides, but the trouble with those is that they can do exactly one thing. When you get bored of the amusement park ride function, the joy of that toy is gone.
But a toy like Knex provides endless play options.
Once you get tired of the zip lines or the scrambler, they can be totally disassembled and made into something new.
(Bonus: I don't have to store a zip line or scrambler...just a box of Knex.)
Maybe I'm just getting old or something, but it does seem like in the last several decades, there's been a shift away from multi-tasking toys to unitasker toys. For instance, when I was a kid, my brother had Hot Wheels tracks that could be configured in multiple ways, but when Joshua was little, all we could find were preconfigured tracks (Boring!) They had lots of bells and whistles, but very little versatility.
And while I'm writing a curmudgeonly post, I'd like to complain about the poor quality of most of these unitasking toys. It's bad enough that they do one thing, but even worse is their tendency to break at the drop of a hat. And since they're usually all one big piece, the whole thing has to be trashed when something breaks.
Legos, Knex, and Duplos, however, can do a bajillion things, and if one piece breaks (which rarely happens), you don't have to throw the whole collection out.
Thus endeth the rant on modern toys.
P.S. Our box of Knex was a hand-me-down, but I just checked, and it appears that Knex are still available
. I think you could find great deals on these at yard sales or on eBay too.
That's why we loved Lego so much when I was a kid. Although these days it seems like there are a lot of pre-formed pieces included with the sets, which means they can only be built into one thing.
Nah...my kids use the preformed pieces to make all sorts of crazy things and they love that the Legos now have characters and costumes and things. We deliberately buy a wide variety of themed sets, one per kid, per year (adds up fast with three sons) and then their spaceships are manned with owls from Harry Potter sets and rats from the pirate set and has a trunk of treasure next to the laser gun things from the Star Wars set. Hilarious. Plus...so colorful. Fun, fun, fun.
My youngest loves our old Tinkertoys and can make dozens of things from them (instructions? Pah...for amateurs. Lol) but I can't add to the set because the new sets don't match...they are cheaper and made funny. I'd buy used but old sets are like gold now. Very annoying!
I always liked "building" toys for my kids (a girl and a boy) when they were little as there were so many things they could do with them.
As for K-nex, the corporate headquarters is across the street from my husband's job. As far as I know they are still going strong. About a year ago the president came and did a public appearance at their headquarters.
Have a great day. Beth
My son loves his Duplos.....hubby loves them, too:-). They have built countless houses, "king castles", gas stations, zoos, farms, and even a T Rex with them thus far. Duplos and Legos are indestructible, and I love that my son uses his imagination to build whatever interests him at the moment (hubby assists as needed).;-) I agree, so many toys fall apart after being played with briefly - that drives me crazy.
My son loves his legos. He uses them to act out whatever book he is into at the moment, which I think is pretty cool.
We are not old enough for knex, but we love our duplos. We have a few pieces from a thrift store bag that look like they might be train pieces and then a whole mess of regular blocks to provide the stations, the water tanks, the houses, whatever. And when we are tired of trains, they can become something else.
We have two boys in this house so it is ALL about the Lego's! But I love them, too and always thought how it was kinda sucky they were only for boys. Not anymore! They now have more neutral and girly ones! WOOT! And recently, we got some sort of set that was a combo of Lego's and I believe K'nex. They're awesome! Like you, we're sick of the 'uni' toys. As a matter-of-fact, when we purged that is what we mostly got rid of. But we kept most of the old school toys like real puzzles, dress up, Lego's, etc. Anything that could be used by pretty much any age over and over for many different things. The other stuff took a hike to the Goodwill store!
My son LOVES K'nex. They do "actions" as my son says. And we are always able to find sets at consignment stores/sales. My son says "not everyone knows about K'nex and how cool they are mom!" So we benefit from that. There are also tons of instructions out there for building things on the K'nex.com website. We print them out and put them in a binder for hours and hours of fun. There are less "special pieces" (unlike Lego) so you can really follow all the directions with just a good basic set!
I disagree with one of the other commenters that Legos used to be just for boys. My sister and I (and my dad) played with Legos all the time when we were kids. Sometimes we even used them to build furniture for our Barbies. We also both grew up to be engineers, which I think was partly related to the Legos.
Legos have gotten much more specialized and expensive since I was a kid, but even the specialized sets are more versatile than a lot of other toys I see. You can still buy basic sets of Legos, which are in my opinion the way to go. Not only are they a lot cheaper, but kids can build whatever they can think of with them.
My sister and I played with Legos a lot when we were kids too. We built a big town and we would kind of play house with it...we made the people go to work and go shopping and such. 😉
I loved my Legos. I had a hospital (once I mixed those pieces in with my regular bin I had a ton of chairs, computers, fancy windows). In the early 90s I had a girls Lego set-it was a beach thing with lots of pink so even them there were "girl" sets though I do believe girls don't need girl themed products.
This post warmed my heart. Love toys that allow kids to be in charge.
And love that your kids have the time and space to work together and imagine.
Left me wanting to watch the video. 🙂
So fun! I love it that you put into words what I have intuitively thought about toys. I have noticed the same trend--toys meant for one purpose are soon forgotten (or are, by my creative offspring, morphed into something new and infinitely more interesting) but multi-toys are a source of never-ending joy. We bought heavy-duty cardboard blocks for my son when he was two--you know, the kind they have in church nurseries and preschool rooms everywhere--anyway, he's 10 now and they are played with constantly. Tinker Toys also have timeless appeal. (I have a girl and a boy and they both play with these toys).
My favorite thing about Knex is that they're made in the USA! Unusual in toyland.
We love love love the old-school, wooden Thomas the Tank Engine sets for our boys (ages 3 and almost 2), for exactly this reason. And we saw this very same principle when my aunt, inspired by our boys' love of trains, bought them a very flashy, plastic-y train track (one track, to be configured about 3 ways), with a motorized plastic train. Within 6 months, multiple pieces of the track had broken, and our 18 month-old had figured out how to take the battery out of the train. Into the garage it went, and it's headed to Goodwill on my next trip. Meanwhile, the wooden tracks and (non-battery-operated) trains continue to be a favorite toy.
I agree about the wooden train tracks, my son and daughter, now ages 12 and 8, have built a million different tracks over the years. The original set was a gift from grandma, then we acquired additional pieces at a yard sale. It's the only toy that has been used on a regular basis for 10 years, and it makes me a bit sad that they finally seem to be outgrowing it.
A toy that I loved as a child were tinker toys......................those were great for the imagination too............
My son had several different building sets, but Knex was his favorite by far because of its versatility.
Amen! Preach it sister! 🙂
Plus these toys are ageless. Back when we had a collection of blocks my daughter and I frequently built whole towns sized for the Lego people on half our ping pong table. Visualize a grocery store with an apartment up the outside stairway, etc. In my mid-sixties I still enjoy seeing Lego constructions and plan to go see an exhibition built by friends of hers at a local library this Sunday.
Knex are awesome, my brother played with them A LOT as a kid and I remember doing a science project in the 9th grade with Knex and a solar panel battery. Pretty cool!
My boys loved playing with K'nex when they were younger. They definitely provided much more entertainment than a unitask toy, so I totally agree with you on your rant.
We love Duplos in our house. We have a lot of the themed sets, but there is definitely no limit to the imagination. We also got my daughter a train set from BigJigs last year (wooden) that can be configured however she wants. I do enjoy Little People, which would probably be considered more of a "uni" toy. My favorite thing though is that she puts all of her princess Little People on her pirate ship. I also loves when she repurposes things (i.e., uses the clothes from a magnetic paper doll as cookies for her kitchen). I definitely tend towards more open ended toys. Love this post 🙂
Love the K'nex - amazon has some sets on 50% off sale today only (10/9) in case you need some for Christmas!
The unitasker toys have come about for the very reasons you don't like them - if the kids get bored fast and/or they break, you have to buy new ones. It's just another aspect of our ever-promoted, rampant consumerism. It's nice to see so many parents here who see through advertisers' wiles!