Toy Exhibition
Today I went to the international toy exhibition, which is held in Tokyo annually. I found out about the event in an English oriented magazine, it's a free weekly publication and I have no idea where did I pick it up!
The show was in a huge exhibition centre and spread on unbelievable space. There were dozen of companies and uncountable number of toys and people.
It surprised me on how many logical and competitiveness based games were out there. Children were engaged in games from simple puzzles to the world famous cubic-Rubik. A number of games were oriented into hands manipulability, and required (surprisingly) chop sticks.
Overall, I personally saw nothing hugely innovative, but it seemed that the trend is to make computerise old ideas, for example the new globe would have a computer interface and if a user touches a country, the computer would show information about the place.
Also much attention was given to cooking. A number of companies featured toy cooking facilities which would help to create biscuits and eventually allow decorating them. Girls loved it and stood with mouth open.
Oh, and ofcourse the barbie-type dolls must be mentioned !
Eventually i decided to rank my favourite toys. The ranking i gave was based on how innovative change was to an old idea, how much attention did the product receive from children, how much it contributed to the child development and eventually how affordable it was.
The results are:
The third place goes to a wall drivable radio controlled car ! From my experience, driving a radio-controlled car at home is always an issue, there are too many obstacles, while the walls are mostly empty. Probably the parents would not be too happy if the tires get dirty and leave signs all around. It's not contributing much to the child development but it's innovative !
The second goes to a story reading device ! It's a somehow bigger then a pen, but light. As the promoters explained, it has an embedded camera and it can recognize items touched by a child in a picture type book. The trick is that the objects (e.g. characters) in the book are printed with special technique, and recognisable by image processing. The item is pricy but would pronounce the names an infinite number of times, and thus it should a child busy while learning.
What gets my first rating is a construction toy, made literally from laundry clips. Ofcourse the clips were slightly modified, but who has not played with laundry clips in the childhood and never thought of making a product out of it ? The reason for my selection, is that the designers took an inspiration from a simple thing and converted it into a new product.
On the way back I saw a beautiful rainbow!
The show was in a huge exhibition centre and spread on unbelievable space. There were dozen of companies and uncountable number of toys and people.
It surprised me on how many logical and competitiveness based games were out there. Children were engaged in games from simple puzzles to the world famous cubic-Rubik. A number of games were oriented into hands manipulability, and required (surprisingly) chop sticks.
Overall, I personally saw nothing hugely innovative, but it seemed that the trend is to make computerise old ideas, for example the new globe would have a computer interface and if a user touches a country, the computer would show information about the place.
Also much attention was given to cooking. A number of companies featured toy cooking facilities which would help to create biscuits and eventually allow decorating them. Girls loved it and stood with mouth open.
Oh, and ofcourse the barbie-type dolls must be mentioned !
Eventually i decided to rank my favourite toys. The ranking i gave was based on how innovative change was to an old idea, how much attention did the product receive from children, how much it contributed to the child development and eventually how affordable it was.
The results are:
The third place goes to a wall drivable radio controlled car ! From my experience, driving a radio-controlled car at home is always an issue, there are too many obstacles, while the walls are mostly empty. Probably the parents would not be too happy if the tires get dirty and leave signs all around. It's not contributing much to the child development but it's innovative !
The second goes to a story reading device ! It's a somehow bigger then a pen, but light. As the promoters explained, it has an embedded camera and it can recognize items touched by a child in a picture type book. The trick is that the objects (e.g. characters) in the book are printed with special technique, and recognisable by image processing. The item is pricy but would pronounce the names an infinite number of times, and thus it should a child busy while learning.
What gets my first rating is a construction toy, made literally from laundry clips. Ofcourse the clips were slightly modified, but who has not played with laundry clips in the childhood and never thought of making a product out of it ? The reason for my selection, is that the designers took an inspiration from a simple thing and converted it into a new product.
On the way back I saw a beautiful rainbow!
posted by KGena at 11:29 PM
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