Classic Toys For Christmas? 1085
waterwheel asks: "Christmas is coming, and it's time to start planning our online shopping list for future Slashdot readers. This year I'm having a look at some of the more classic toys - and am finding that not only are some of the classic toys still around - but they are still educational and fun. Two good examples of this are the Rubik's Cube and the time honored gyroscope. The cube has been around for about 20 years, the gyroscope it seems for almost a 100. Both will be under the tree this year. Both of these toys are able to compete with video games - a true test of staying power. This begs the question - what other classic toys do you remember from your youth that are still fun enough that kids will play with them today?"
Slinky and Superball (Score:3, Interesting)
The slinky was one of my favorite toys growing up.
Also, the superball was awesome as well. I usually could be found with a superball in my pocket all the time and would be constantly bouncing it off walls, annoying my parents and everyone around me in the process!!! LOL, good times.
I hate the cube (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure there's a bunch of steps you can follow, but where's the challenge in that.
I can only stand in awe of anyone who independently is able to solve the Rubic's Cube.
My 2 1/2 year old... (Score:5, Interesting)
I never liked those big fat legos-- I'll wait until he can manipulate the "real" ones before I get him into legos...
Fridgets (Score:4, Interesting)
Playmobile (Score:4, Interesting)
-Phixxr
My favorites (Score:5, Interesting)
Lego - the rectangular block kind. None of this Star Wars/Pirate/Bionicle nonsense.
Anything else that fosters imaginative thinking: PlayDoh, Etch-a-sketch, and the like.
physics toy! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a physics device: four squares attached to a vane in a bulb of glass rotate when placed in the sun. I still have it with me in my college dorm room on a window sill.
If your child likes science it's a neat little gift. :)
Re:Rubik's Magic (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen them on ebay but they're not that cheap. Example [ebay.com]
We got a Simpson-themed one from somewhere not to long ago...
Capsela (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.discoverthis.com/capsela.html
And what about Stratego? (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy enough for a kid to learn, but strategies are so varied, it's hard to ever master it against another good player...
As an aside, I loved throwing a few Major and Colonels at the front with all my scouts and a couple of Miners and decimating my opponents' lower ranks... that gambit usually only works once or twice on them... unless they're slow to adapt.
Estes Rockets (Score:2, Interesting)
Bonus for the parents (Score:3, Interesting)
Put me in a room with Legos to this day and you know what? I'm gonna play.
Re:LightBright (Score:2, Interesting)
School House Rock (Score:3, Interesting)
I am also looking at the multi purpose electronics kits and an erector set [newhorizontoys.com] for my oldest daughter.
I can't seem to get enough of the older toys and neither can my kids. They are so tired of plastic.
Electric Trains (Score:3, Interesting)
Coincidently, Tom Hank's Christmas movie (why not, he's done everything else) - the Polar Express opened Wed. Lionel got the in on the act, and they have the official toy for the movie and are expecting to double their best year in the last 20. They are probably right.
Electric trains are still fun, I still remember the one I had at age 5.
Capsella and more (Score:3, Interesting)
Also interesting and undermentioned is Erector sets. They aren't as easy to configre as Capsella, but certainly give you more freedom to do what you want. I got some good milage out of those as a kid.
Lego is already mentioned a billion times, but I'd recommend the old school bricks as opposed to the recent specialty bricks that aren't nearly as configurable.
Tinker Toys and Construx were good fun, though I haven't seen either around recently. I also haven't really looked.
If you have aspiring artists consider some honest to god nice drawing pencils, some high quality paper, and a good eraser. There's about an endless number of things one can draw.
Board games are up on my list too. Consider a nice chess set if there isn't one around the house. That's a game that's stood the test of time.
Meccano (Score:3, Interesting)
How about... (Score:5, Interesting)
A tree house?
Legos.
Lincon Logs.
Estes Model rockets.
Cox Control line airplanes.
Any of the new RC airplanes.
Rubber band powered planes.
Swing set and slide?
Anything to get them out of the house and moving in the sun shine and fresh are and not sitting in front of the TV/Monitor.
I have to say that toys that invole the real world beat the heck heck out of video games. I have to wonder what we are teaching our kids. Even the coolest Slashdot stories tend to involve things like making your own roller coaster in your backyard. A battle meck tree house. Or a full scale space ship in your back yard. Not sitting in front of Doom3 day after day.
toys are evil (Score:5, Interesting)
Toys represent everything that's wrong with modern western civilization. They enforce the notion that there is a difference between "work" and "play".
Toys are an artificial construct popularized by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations in the late 1800's. The inherent psychological principle is that if you mentally dissociate your job from the context of your normal life, then you are willing to put up with a constant low level of dissatisfaction in exchange for a reward of "play time" or "toys".
Thus, by encouraging your children to "play", you are psychologically destroying them and reducing their future potential to that of an assembly line worker. People endure 40-60 hours of pure crap every week of their lives with the dubious reward of "vacation", or a nice car, or time to watch TV as their only reward. Toys simply lay the groundwork for this type of pathological motivation.
What's the solution for this madness? Teach your children to enjoy working hard to accomplish their independent goals. Learning and discovery and adventure are rewarding without the need for false constructs. Hard work and proportional reward are the foundations of our country, and the entrepreneurial spirit should be encouraged at a very early age. Teach your children to live and enjoy life, rather than to simply endure it.
But, failing all that, buy them a Nintendo 64 and Goldeneye... that game rocks my face off.
Re:Classic toy (Score:4, Interesting)
Capsula (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My 2 1/2 year old... (Score:3, Interesting)
* No, that's not my real name. My parents weren't that cruel.
Orange Hot Wheels track. (Score:2, Interesting)
Mattel, why hast thou forsaken me?
Re:Plain-Jane Lego, of course! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to second the call for Lego Technic. I had much fun with those when I was younger. Even if the kid (does need to be at least about 8-9 to deal with them properly) just follows the directions and doesn't make anything new, he'll get to see how basic mechanics work up close without any danger of working with "real" fanbelts and motors and such. You can learn a great deal building a Technic car or motorocycle for far less cost and risk than building a real car or motorcycle.
I recall my major Technic custom project was a Borg arm that I could stick up my sleeve and control via the battery pack tucked into the sleeve. It just opened and closed a gripper arm on the end, but it looked wicked cool, and of course required me to do a lot of design work getting the motion of the spinning motor down the length of this contraption to the gears to turn the hinge to open and close the arm. Ah, good times.
Re: Still asking for Legos (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Screw the kids, LEGO for ME! (Score:4, Interesting)
It was a sad day the year they switched from building with flat plates and blocks to the large "hull" pieces for ships, castles, and bases. They canceled the $100 monorail at the same time, so I missed my chance at ever getting a Lego train set.
Re:Dad, is that you!? (Score:3, Interesting)
4.3252×10^19 (43252003274489856000) is the number of cube combinations that you can create by rotating cube faces (as it is designed).
the odds that you'll create a valid cube combination by moving stickers is slim. Even if you make all faces solid color the chances that the internals of the cube correctly representing the face colors is slim.
3.2×10^22 (32000000000000000000000) is the approximate number of stars in the universe.
(all of this from http://www.greenhodge.net/g/read/math/numbers-6.p
Not A Classic but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I know what I'll be building Christmas morning...
ahh the memories... Lego car-crash contests! (Score:5, Interesting)
My brother and I would do the same thing!
Rules:
We'd try different techniques--increasing the mass, using as few pieces as possible, trying different centers of gravity, building a ramp front-end to try to flip the opponent, building a "lance" aimed at what we thought was the opponent's weakest piece, etc.
We played this game from elementary-school age even through high school. It was a fun exercise in creative thinking and we were learning engineering skills as well!
Now I'm teaching my daughters the game--they like it too.
-bp
Re:Move the stickers? jeesh! (Score:4, Interesting)
And when you reassemble the cube, make sure you assemble it into a solved state... even if you know how to solve it. If you assemble it into a random state, there's only a 1 in 12 chance that it's solvable without another disassembly.
Abstract Algebra... (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the topics deals with commutators... elements in a group such that they are of the form aba^-1b^-1 (a, b, a inverse, b inverse) where a and b are in the group.
You can show that the various moves on a cube are a group, and then show that various commutators (such as FRONT CLOCKWISE, RIGHT COUNTERCLOCKWISE, FRONT COUNTERCLOCKWISE, RIGHT CLOCKWISE) relate to 3-cycles. Plainly speaking, a 3-cycle on a cube is when 3 edge pieces or corner pieces rotate amongst each other, and the other pieces STAY THE SAME!
Armed with this knowledge, it is straightforward (but sometimes laborious!) to solve a cube in random position without resorting to canned moves.
I wrote a paper on this for the second course, and while speaking about it, solved a cube "live." Clearly I used the "canned move" approach, and could have solved it earlier than the end of the speech, but just kept it close and cycled through a 3-cycle until the speech ended. 10 seconds later, I set the (solved) cube down and walked off.
Drama king? No. Geekest link? You betcha.
--
wwjd? jwrtfm!
Erector Sets (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, I suspect that the metal sets would no longer be considered safe for kids anymore. *shrug* Which makes sense from a pure safety perspective, as I know we banged ourselves up repeatedly making weapons out of the pieces in addition to scrapes from burrs on the pieces and a few cases of hair or skin getting caught in the open workings of the motor. *wry grin* And then there was that incident where I got thrown across the patio by an electric shock. But in retrospect, yanking the cord out of the outlet when on a rain-soacked patio was not the brightest of moves for all that I had good intentions. (My little sister, Eileen [louisville.edu], was reaching for the plug. Her being a toddler, I knew she wouldn't remove it safely, so I did so. Ouch...)
Re:Ummm .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuff said.
Re: Stratego - Risk - Diplomacy (Score:2, Interesting)
Diplomacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game) [wikipedia.org] Now here is a game that will lose you friends. Simultaneous moves, social interaction and high-stakes negotiations. With Gamers. A recipe for destruction.
I have a friend who still recounts to people (who are rolling on the floor laughing) about getting chased around the room with a knife after he negotiated the sabotage and destruction of another player.
Classic.
Re:Ummm .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, since I can solve the cube, and I have disassembled and re-stickered literally dozens of cubes, I must again say NO.
Assume for the moment that each face has been correctly re-assembled with one colour/face -- the nominal position. Most of the solving techniques involve identifying the opposite and adjacent faces, and the patterns of moving pieces are to make them line up. From there it's not all that complicated.
I concur that if you take apart the cube and re-assemble it in a randomized pattern, you won't solve it. Same goes for randomly moving the stickers. But I'm specifically saying that once you have each cube face as being exactly one colour, it's all the same, and just variations on the same theme.
Solve the cube, re-sticker it. If Blue and green used to be adjacent, make the opposite. Solve the cube again. The moves are all relative to the known configuration (each face is one colour), not which colour is on which face.
Again, taking it apart and re-assembling it randomly is not what I am saying works. If you start with a cube in a known-good state (all faces have one colour), you will always have a cube that behaves self-consistently.
But I can gurantee you that if you take a cube to someone who can manually solve it, have them solve it, then switch the colours of two faces, that person will still be able to solve that exact cube.
You can take this all the way to moving all six faces, because the pattern is based on an association between the elements, and the assumption you don't have a truly randomized cube. In that case, the colours of a corner piece would not match up to the relative orientation of the center faces (the only pieces which never actually change their location).
I'm saying there are a bunch of valid "original placement of the stickers" which can be made to work. Wether the blue face is opposite to green, yellow, red, orange, or white, the mechanism for solving the cube does not change.
This doesn't mean I expect any reassembly of the cube to be solveable, but if you strip off the stickers and assemble it as a finished cube, that cube is solveable by the exact same techniques always used.
Re:My first toy (Score:3, Interesting)
Grandma still has lots of them. Some "new" in boxes still, most rusty and well loved. Even rusty with no paint left they will still dig up, dump, and roll. My brother and I played with them for hours on the beach at Grandma's cabin...
And for added fun, you can teach your kids how to sand, mask, and spray paint metal. Fun stuff!
Ah die cast construction. It's a lost art...
Re:Magnifying glass (Score:2, Interesting)
I always store it between books, in a huge brown-paper envelope that my copy of Knuth came in, just for safety.
Re:A kind message from pedants anonymous (Score:1, Interesting)
It is blindingly, screamingly, painfully clear from the context which usage is being applied.
Which begs the question, why don't you find something useful to be pedantic about? And why don't you start saying "circular reasoning" if that's what you mean, instead of confusing everybody with the archaic begs-the-question nonsense?
Btw, I have a B.A in Logic. I learned that "begs the question" thing in first year, and the prof immediately admitted that it was a stupid phrase and shouldn't be used.
Re:Classic toy (Score:1, Interesting)
As a kid, I remember having been excited about being able to find the right kind of wood to make my own bow, whereas the time I got to shoot with a
In my social circles, the former gave me more freedom to do things on my own, whereas the latter required supervision. Still, I felt much more interested in building my own weapons and ammo.
Christmas Toys (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dad, is that you!? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the remote chance that you aren't totally making this up for laughs, where could I buy such a beastie?
Re:Rubik's Cube (Score:3, Interesting)
Which part of my post did you not understand??
The magic cube guys had/have a valid trademark for the "magic cube" (what the agents told the toy store to take off the shelf) given to them by the trademark office.
Ser no. 76351080/reg no.2671747 look it up here [uspto.gov] or just stick in "magic cube."
You know how to use the internets, don't you? Stop being a tool/troll or fool.
Enough of those already work for the government.
Re:Dad, is that you!? (Score:4, Interesting)