March 28, 2024

The Perfect Toy

Dec. 2, 2007
With all the recalls of toys, primarily from China, for having lead in the paint, parents are having a dilemma regarding what to buy for their kids. The cuter the toy, the more quickly a kid is likely to be bored with it. Toy boxes are full of toys that were played with for an hour or two, then discarded or broken.
The perfect toy is one that engages the child’s imagination for many hours and even longer. I grew up before plastic. Toy cars were either made of tin, sometimes recycled tin cans from Japan, or pot metal, like the little Tootsie Toy cars which sold for a dime. Other toys were wooden.
My all time favorite was a Gilbert Erector set, which was devised by Dr. Gilbert after a train trip into New York; seeing construction going on with girders, he made some out of paper at home before putting together a metal prototype. It was a huge success. The set was a collection of steel beams, plates, nuts, bolts, and a real electric motor which could be hooked up to make part of a steam engine move, run an elevator up a skyscraper, etc. It came with a screwdriver, gears, wheels, and an instruction book with some suggestions for models. The sets came in various models from simple to super deluxe. 
Thanks to Dr. Gilbert, I learned how to use a screwdriver and do any number of projects around the house, boat, or car; yes, I owe it all to my Erector set. The Erector set and other educational toys by Dr. Gilbert played an important role in the development of American boys and had an impact on World War II. It’s quite a story.
When World War II mobilization
demanded that all industries convert for the war effort, Gilbert and other toy makers made a historic Washington plea to save the toy industry. Granted a fifteen minute audience before a roomful of generals, they brought along  an assortment of educational toys. Gilbert’s pitch: “Why is the American soldier the best engineer? Because of the erector set. Why is the American GI the best shot in the world? Because he grew up with the Daisy Air Rifle.” The generals ended up on the conference room floor, playing with the toys. The Erector set was saved, and there would be toys made for Christmas when the rest of American industry had gone to war. The Erector set was the model for a pontoon ridge the Army put into action.
Dr. Gilbert’s home was in Salem, Oregon, where today you’ll find a Gilbert museum. Gilbert was a protégé, a track star who invented the springy bamboo pole vault which boosted his record and only later was replaced by fiberglass. Gilbert went to college on an athletic scholarship, won a gold medal at the Olympics, but was also a magician. He tried working his way through college teaching others how to do magic tricks, but got discouraged because few of his pupils were willing to practice enough to get good at it. So instead he manufactured a magic set with over a hundred magic tricks. That got him into the toy business.
Gilbert branched out into chemistry sets. They had in them real chemicals, and kids could make tiny quantities of explosives—a young lad’s delight—but in the end parents were so fearful of kids being poisoned by the stuff in the Gilbert Chemistry set, that they are no longer manufactured. After the Atomic Bomb, Gilbert issued an atomic chemistry set, complete with a Geiger counter and radioactive materials, but parents again were so alarmed by it that it had to be taken off the market.
Nowadays parents are so intent on making the world safe for their kids that they would keep them in a cocoon or bubble. Alas, the world is not safe. Kids will hurt themselves, crash bicycles, fall out of trees, and get a variety of “boo-boos,” which is how we learn to be cautious. When my wife was a kid, every youngster, even girls, had a pocket knife. No one thought of sticking it into another child. Nowadays, bringing a knife to school means instant suspension. You’d think children were a bunch of homicidal maniacs.
When picking the perfect toy, look for one that fires up the imagination, develops skills and keeps the kids occupied. Any toy that is boring after an hour because it doesn’t do anything, is a flop. Who is supposed to DO something is the kid: learning life by playing.

Visit the web site www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs, where you can listen to and read Harley Sachs’ stories, read reviews, and find links to the publishers of his books.

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