THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA (17 page)

Thus the game evolves as a subcategory of toy designed to take some aspect of the environment—whether financial (Acquire), military (Gettysburg), scholastic (WFF ’N Proof), or even physical (Twister)—and codify it in a manner which the player can hope to master.

Ever since Eric Berne’s
Games People Play,
we seem to be growing increasingly aware of the predominance of recognizable play patterns of our lives. It is then no wonder that adult games promise to be the most vigorous form of game product on the market. With science expanding and knowledge mushrooming, we are in critical need of sugar-coated ways of comprehending what is happening to our world.

Maybe the game is nature’s prescription for future shock.

Next time you see a toddler making his unsteady way across the living room, take a good look at him. He is one of the most powerful consumers in the nation.

For even though he is unable to make his product needs known and has no personal purchasing power, he is a very important person to the retail merchant.

Preschool playthings is one of the fastest growing categories in the toy industry. Every year, impressive gains are made in dollar volume, as well as in the number of companies making preschool toys. In 1969 alone, about $200 million worth of preschool toys were bought in America, out of a grand total of $3.2 billion for all kinds of games and toys. And it’s no wonder: there are now more than 25.5 million Americans six years old and younger.

The fact that there are now more children in the preschool range than ever before helps account for the tremendous growth of preschool toys. Another reason is that designers and manufacturers are doing their best to turn out more interesting and sophisticated products.

But the greatest single factor is the increased sensitivity of parents to their children’s needs and wants—partly because educators and child psychologists have increasingly emphasized the importance of toys in the child’s early development.

The need for a balance of fun and educational value in playthings, already discussed in this book, is critical in preschool toys. The burden is squarely on the shoulders of the consumer to select items that will engage the attention of the toddler and help him grow. Older children, whose exposure to toy advertising preconditions them to some extent, can help select their own toys; but choice of the preschool toy is the sole responsibility of the adult.

Fortunately, the guidelines for picking appropriate toys for young children are simple. Observation and common sense are the only requirements.

Animals, for example, are a source of pleasure to most youngsters. But unless he is born into a house full of pets, it may be safer (for child and animal alike) to acquaint the child with the animal kingdom through books and toys.

Possibly the best known mechanical animal is Fisher-Price’s Snoopy Sniffer, an amiable low-slung pull toy which paddles its paws as it trails after its master. Seven million Snoopy Sniffers have been sold in the United States since the item was introduced in 1937.

In plush, the Henry dog has been bringing Animal Fair Inc. plenty of sales in the past few years. Henry is an orange-ish, extremely cuddly puppy with a pot belly, floppy head, and long, soft ears. The degree of calculation which went into Henry is astonishing; his limbs are deliberately understuffed, and one is a trifle shorter than the other, so the consumer will subliminally feel that poor Henry needs some hugging and protection.

Another popular toy that utilizes the appeal of animals is Koo Zoo, a venerable alphabet block set with transparent sides that show plastic animals inside. Koo Zoo is made by a Nashville firm, Kusan Inc., which later used the transparency concept in much of its toy line, making a variety of ingenious and durable products that “show the inner workings to the curious child.”

Bill McLain and Earl Horton started Kusan in 1946 with their service mustering-out pay of about three hundred dollars. The company developed Koo Zoo because it wanted to give its staff experience in plastic molding.

“Koo Zoo was the first thing we made,” said McLain. “We got the idea when we looked at a kid’s charm bracelet one day. We took a little scottie dog off the bracelet and got a sheet of plastic and fabricated our first block on a kitchen table. Our idea was to put in a different animal for every letter of the alphabet.”

Most of the retail buyers who first saw Koo Zoo were unimpressed. Who wanted a transparent block? So Kusan had to make up all sorts of promotional gimmicks. Executives would leave samples behind on restaurant tables. The blocks were dropped off tall buildings to show how sturdy they were.

But real interest in Koo Zoo came about in a wholly unexpected manner. An unrelated company ran an advertisement that showed a Christmas tree. For visual impact, the firm put Koo Zoo blocks on the tree instead of traditional ornaments. Soon Kusan got about fifteen hundred letters asking where Koo Zoo could be bought. “Every letter was answered,” McLain said. “We told them all to go to their local department stores and demand that our blocks be stocked.”

Now that Koo Zoo has become a staple toy, McLain has only one lament: consumers often pass up staple products for newer ones, perhaps because they’ve seen them on the shelves too often. “I think shoppers looking for a toy sometimes say to themselves, ‘Oh, Johnny must already have
that.
I’ve seen it so much!’ Of course, this is not always the case.”

One of the newer toys that have crowded out some staples is Playskool’s Dressy Bessy and her companion, Dapper Dan. The two happy-faced stuffed dolls are ideal for hugging by any preschooler. In addition, they have strong value as educational toys. Bessy’s shoes buckle, her blouse buttons, a plastic belt snaps over a laceable vest, and underneath it all is a big zippered pocket. Dapper Dan’s features are similar except that his zipper works vertically.

Dolls and animals are, of course, obvious choices as preschool toy presents. But sometimes it is the activity, rather than the subject, which determines the toy’s value.

Play-Doh, for instance, encourages the child’s creative impulse. Introduced in 1955 as a clean, nontoxic alternative to modeling clay, the molding substance is produced by Rainbow Crafts. Joseph McVickar, then a twenty-four-year-old Cincinnati resident, conceived it after a visit to his sister’s nursery school. After watching preschoolers there work with clay, McVickar decided there was a real need for a safer and less messy modeling material. So he associated with a Chinese-born chemist, Dr. Tien Lu, and worked for a year to create Play-Doh.

Today, McVickar is retired from the toy business, and Tien Lu serves as director of scientific research and quality control at Rainbow Crafts. Recently, he introduced a new modeling toy: Playstone, a self-hardening compound that permits the child to make permanent models safely without firing them in a kiln.

The opposite extreme of these construction toys is Kusan’s Humpty Dumpty, a brightly colored plastic version of the nursery-rhyme character deliberately designed to take advantage of children’s natural destructive impulses. When he is thrown on the floor, Humpty’s arms, legs, hat, jacket, and two-part body split into pieces. But, unlike those of the Mother Goose character, they are easily put together again.

Like Humpty Dumpty, many popular preschool toys make use of children’s fascination for color. Though Mom and Dad may like those polished and shellacked wood toys, a study by the Color Corporation of America indicates that kids between the ages of two and six prefer lively shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, and green—in that order.

“There is a basic physiological reason behind this,” says a CCA spokesman. “Small children need to be active to develop their faculties, and our studies show that red, orange and yellow are motivating colors which stimulate persons to action. By the same token, electric blue and emerald green have an intensity that is exciting. The world of the preschooler should be a vivid place.”

Conceptual simplicity—allowing children to bring something of themselves to the play hour—is another important consideration in buying preschool toys. A Kusan official gives examples: “Take the average talking toy—it has a very limited vocabulary. But once the battery wears out, the kid can make it say anything, and consequently he enjoys it more. Our own Ride ’em Jet has no motor, as some fancy toy vehicles do. But a child riding on it makes far more interesting engine sounds himself than we could build in.”

Simplicity of idea is also important to Schaper Mfg., makers of an amusing line of games for preschool children. Suspense is also important in many of their products, but on an easily comprehended level. The firm understands that a good preschool game is highly visual, with only two or three rules to remember.

One Schaper game is The Last Straw, in which children compete to pile “straws” onto a camel’s back. When the plastic animal breaks down, as in the proverb, the straws drop and the player whose straw brought on the collapse loses points. Similarly, Don’t Spill the Beans consists of a swivel-based beanpot into which children put play beans. One too many can spin the pot and spill them all.

But Schaper’s most famous game was also its first: Cootie. It dates back to the late nineteen-forties when Herb Schaper was making casting lures for fishing. While doodling on a piece of paper, he got the idea for a take-apart plastic bug. The first Cootie looked pretty ferocious, and it was only recently that the firm modified the design to make the bug appear a little friendlier.

Cootie could have been introduced on the market as a plastic toy for youngsters to assemble and take apart. But Schaper saw that the plastic insect could be developed into a simple preschool game just by adding a die and allowing a player to add certain parts when various numbers were thrown. First to complete his toy bug would win the game.

At first, orders for the product were scarce. It wasn’t until a Twin Cities TV commentator showed the toy on the air that interest began to grow. Shortly afterward, Dayton’s department store in Minneapolis staged a Cootie demonstration a week before Thanksgiving and the game took off. By Christmas, Dayton’s alone had sold 443 dozen.

The nice thing about Schaper products, Herb Schaper once mentioned, is that they are toys as much as games. Even if the child is too young to understand the rules, he can still have fun playing with the parts.

Age is a very important consideration in buying preschool products. No matter how smart a child is supposed to be, it is not a good idea to give him an overly sophisticated toy that he will only find frustrating. The right toy for the proper age is perhaps the key guideline in selection of preschool toys.

When the toy
is
the right one. it will be a delight to the child’s eye, ear, hand, and imagination. Beyond that, it is difficult to determine the precise role preschool toys play in the growth and shaping of a child’s character.

But there is evidence that the effect is profound. The years up to six are critical ones, notes Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, professor of education, child psychology, and psychiatry at the University of Chicago. Calling today’s maladjusted teenager the product of permissive and wishy-washy early upbringing, Bettleheim says, “If a child gets the right help and strong protection in his all-important preschool years, hopefully when he is grown up, he will do something to make this a better country. . . . The future of our country and our society in the year 2000 depends on today’s preschool children.”

It is no wonder that parents and educators have expressed growing concern over the quality and kind of preschool toys. People are discovering that children’s pastimes are not idle luxuries but vital necessities.

Because the years from birth to age six are crucial to the shaping of character, preschool toys are potentially the most important playthings in the world.

Barry Richmond is a slightly nutty and extremely gifted man who, among other things, is a theatrical designer. He’s tall and somewhat gangly, wears glasses with a built-in snigger, and altogether bears more than a passing resemblance to Tony Perkins in
Psycho.

One afternoon not long ago, Barry needed some materials to make a model of the stage setting he was working on. He walked into F. A. O. Schwarz in New York and asked to see some construction toys.

“Certainly,” the saleslady said. “And how old is the child you’re buying it for?”

A sheepish grin spread over his face. Pointing a finger at himself, Barry mumbled, “Thirty-nine.”

Though he had a good professional reason for purchasing a building toy, Barry had to admit that he enjoys playing with the miniature components long after his scenic designs are done.

In this he is not alone. Although Lego, Tinkertoy, Erector, and other building toys are generally considered the province of handy youngsters, kids don’t have a monopoly on them. Architects and engineers, designers and craftsmen, professional and amateur alike know there is nothing wrong with making castles in the air and cabins on the ground.

Consisting of a variety of interlocking plastic colored bricks, Lego enables the modeler, young or old, to fashion almost any project his imagination conceives from fortresses to automobiles to free-form
objets.
In fact, a few years ago it was a space helmet that took first prize in the annual Lego model-making contest which the toy’s former U.S. manufacturer, Samsonite Corp., sponsored. But Lego might never have been invented if a Danish carpenter hadn’t turned to making toys as a way to eke out a livelihood in an impoverished village forty years ago.

The carpenter was Ole Kirk-Christiansen, who lived in the remote town of Billund in Jutland, over 120 miles from Copenhagen. Billund, a tiny group of potato farms and rural houses visited once a week by a westbound stagecoach, was so poor that Ole was unable to earn a living by his trade. He began fashioning hand-carved playthings and selling them from door to door.