Toys

Kids have an amazing ability to get their fingers into just about anything; hinges, jars, plugs, even other kids’ eyes. I’m sure we can all remember being yelled at for pulling apart the doll grandma gave us as a birthday present, or using dad’s hammer to “fix” the fridge, or that time you fed your babysitter a Tabasco-laced peanut butter sandwich just to see what would happen.

Kids are endlessly amused by their own imagination. Even the lowly stick was inducted into the Toy Hall of fame recently as testament to its unfaltering popularity among kids (and animals). 

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A damning report – Chinese parents favor foreign-brand toys – has recently revealed that middle-class parents in China are shunning Chinese toys in favour of foreign brand names.

Hot on the heels of the recent lead paint scandal which rocked the Chinese toy industry, the report by the Associated Press showed that parents aren't willing to take chances with Chinese toys.

Indeed, more and more parents are turning away from traditional wooden toys and buying their children Danish Lego blocks, American Barbie dolls and Transformer figures from Japan. It's not something that's happening on a small scale, either- in many of Beijing's mall toy stores, foreign toy labels take up far more shelf space than the home-grown brands.

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When I was about five years old, my brother and I were given a Rubik’s Cube as a toy to exercise our eyes and brains. Instead, we exercised our hands more than anything else – we’d get so frustrated with it that we often ended up taking the whole thing apart and putting the pieces back together in the correct order. Then we showed it to our parents claiming: “We did it!” and enjoyed the little praise from them gained by cheating.

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