Tips from the Toy Guy

CHRIS BYRNE: Hi I’m Chris Byrne, the Toy Guy, content director for TimetoPlayMag.com, and I’m here today to talk about great tips for toys for this holiday season. 

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Many, many children’s lives today are overly managed and micromanaged with activities from dawn to dusk. I think that what we lose is a little bit of the creativity, that imagination, that have to make it up by yourself. 

We used to say to my mother, I’m bored. She’d say, no you’re not. You know, you’ve got a roomful of books. You’ve got toys. You’ve got brothers. Get out and figure something out. And I think that dependence on the imagination is something that bodes really well for kids being able to figure out things later in life. 

With toys and imagination, the toy itself– the best toys– are really springboards to the imagination. The play happens in the child’s mind. They have to bring the toy to life. I always say, you know, Barbie or any doll is sort of an inert lump of polyvinyl chloride until a child’s imagination brings it to life and projects onto that or creates stories or really makes it reflect the child. 

I think there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to give you tips of choosing toys for your children, but the best tip of all is know what your child likes. Give him or her that opportunity to have that experience or express themselves based on their interests. No two toys and no two kids are really the same. 

We always say that the hot toy’s only hot if it’s hot for your child, because there’s a lot of commercial, there’s a lot of marketing that goes to kids. But at the end of the day, it’s that toy that the child will come back to that will become part of his or her daily life and part of our memories that’s really important. 

I think if there’s one thing that’s going to dominate this Christmas season, it’s really good classic play. Parents are looking for things that aren’t just one shot, open it up, and look at it for 10 minutes and throw it back in the closet. It’s really about things that inspire imagination. 

DaGeDar from Cepia, they’re collectible ball bearings. Now who knows why these things are so big, but they become big because the child is inspired. Redakai, a new game from Spin Master, I think, is going to be very big. Of course, Barbie is going to continue having good years with Monster High. And basics like LEGO. LEGO has great games, great building systems, all kinds of stuff that really inspires a lot of classic play. 

I think when you think about toys and the holidays, that what we grew up with in our family where the toys were a nice addition to the holiday, but the holiday wasn’t just about getting toys and just about Santa Claus. It was about family. It was about going to church. It was about the whole sacred and the secular mixing up together. And the toys were a bonus, but they weren’t the central part of the holiday. 

And I think creating those memories with the family that make toys incidental but a nice part of the holiday is something that’s going to last a lot longer than any piece of plastic.