The New York Toy Fair began on February 13, 2011 as executives from toy companies gathered to witness some of the brand new designs being showcased and it will conclude its show on February 16 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 11th Avenue between 34th and 38th Streets, New York, NY 10001.
As fun an exhibit as this, some of the most imaginative demonstrations have happened at this toy fair. Introduced for the 2011 line of upcoming toys were some of the latest digital toys on the market. With a growing market for children’s toys to become technology savvy, it is no wonder that the iPhone and the iPad have become the focus of some of the biggest toy companies out there.
Fisher-Price and Crayola, among several others, have designed toys that allow parents to use their grown-up toys as toys for their children to play with as well. One of the featured toys by Fisher-Price is the Laugh & Learn iCan Play Case. It is a plastic case that lets parents place their iPhone or iTouch from any generation into it. Along with downloadable apps that parents can get from Fisher-Price, the case allows for digital interactivity without parents having to worry about their adult toys getting ruined by the normal child batter and abuse that many toys are inevitably accustomed to.
While Fisher-Price has designed a toy for the iPhone and iTouch, Crayola has designed a downloadable app and toy for the iPad. It is called the Crayola Color Studio App Monster and Crayola iMarker. The app is a digital coloring book and the iMarker is a stylus that allows the child to paint and color on the iPad’s screen.
Digital Interaction versus Physical Play
It is well known that digital interaction does have its benefits, but physical play is still one of the most highly sought out way of interacting. Digital play simply cannot offer the touch and feel experiences that physical play can. So, while toy companies are predicting a very profitable margin for the iPhone and iPad toys this year, many companies are still sticking to traditional style toys.
Companies such as Toys "R" Us are using wooden toys to stay in the old-fashioned style which are also anticipated to do extremely well in 2011. Toys "R" Us has come out with wooden toy cars in character-form from the Disney Pixar film called Cars. In the Sunday, February 13, 2011 article of the Business Section in The Bergen Record called Gaining app-titude, Jerry Storch, the chairman of Toys "R" Us in Wayne, New Jersey, agrees that traditional toys won’t be eliminated by the digital.
Other companies like International Playthings, Gund in Edison, and Pressman Toy Corp., are all looking to the traditional over the digital as the current hot trend. With products such as the Tumblekins by International Playthings and The Squaredy Cats by Monkey Doodle Dandy, toys that promote physical play are still at the forefronts of the toy industry.
All Toys in Moderation
With the digital world catching up in the baby world, what's to say that traditional toys and digital can't be in the same category for being beneficial and fun for children? I guess it's up to the parents. To each is own, as the saying goes, and if parents believe that these i-toys can be helpful in the development of their children, then by all means go out and try them. But as the tales of the old have taught all of us parents along the way, everything should be done in moderation.
Physical play and digital play alike, the rule still applies in today's toy market. Too much of something is never a good thing, and while the Laugh & Learn iCan Play Case is a technological accomplishment as far as toys go, it still holds true that interactions between parents and children as well as between other children should still be the main form of interaction for any child at any age.
Studies have shown that with the dawning of digital worlds such as Facebook, that many people who frequently interact through social networks can end up suffering from depression. Why is that, many might ask. Psychologist Dr. David Swanson told CBS News on February 2, 2011 in an interview, "What you put on display is how great your life is — the cars you drive, the vacations you go on. Nobody’s life is that perfect and so, whenever you start to compare your life to those images, you’re going to be depressed, because you’re going to feel like your life is lacking."
How is this in connection with the iPhone and iPad toy designs? Well, if use of this method of playing were used long enough or maintained as the only way of interacting, it can possibly cause long term social interaction problems for the children as they grow up. While this result has yet to be researched in children as young as infants and toddlers that are associated with these new toys, it is still worth evaluating the risks when comparing social interaction through social networks to learning interactions through digital toys; both of which still end up taking the person or child out of the physical world and into the digital world.
Kimberly Ray - Kimberly Ray is a free-lance writer, anthropologist, and amateur novelist. She currently is working on receiving her bachelor's degree in ...
Join the Conversation