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September 24, 2004
What Toys To Buy
II
Interview
with Marianne Szymanski author of the book, Toy
Tips (www.toytips.com)
Mike
Carruthers:
You'll soon be thinking about what toys to buy kids for
the holidays. And you might be thinking about getting educational
toys however…
Marianne
Szymanski:
Toys don't really make kids smart; toys are just
a tool to enhance the learning process.
Toy expert
Marianne Szymanski author of the book
Toy Tips…
The kinds
of toys a child learns from are the toy that they play with
and the toys they have fun playing with. And that doesn't necessarily
mean it's a toy you buy from a shelf, it could be a game of
tag in the backyard. But most of these educational toys we're
finding in our research are no better than just other regular
toys a child will learn from. It's not that the toys are bad,
some of the toys are very good but they're not better than an
average board game, the child would learn the same thing.
Marianne
says just asking a kid what he or she wants isn't really enough.
Kids
love to have what other kids have. Kids love to have what other
kids are talking about and kids love to have things they're
not supposed to have. Just because a child says I really want
to have this toy, there is no indication that the child is:
a) going to play with it, b) going to enjoy it.
Marianne's
organization tests new toys every year and they also test the
classics.
And we
find that most of the classics year after year after year are
always doing well everything from play dough to Slinky, Sorrow,
Candyland, Mr. Potato Head's doing great. And the reason these
stay as classics is because they really are fun.
There's
a link to Marianne's website
from ours: somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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