Last weekend, Shelby and I went on some adventures. We intended to visit Pike Place, then Uwajimaya, and then return home for a cooking project. Most of that we still fulfilled, but on our way to downtown, it came to Shelby’s attention that her Godiva chocolate membership was ready to provide her with her monthly free chocolate, and we found that there’s actually a Godiva in downtown Seattle, so we went to investigate.
In the very tall buildings, seven or eight stories or more, you expect there to be many offices and small businesses (or big businesses), that sort of thing. In smaller buildings you expect to see single businesses or stores. What about the medium-size ones?
Westlake Center is such a ‘medium’ building: it’s four floors from ground to top with basement parking. There’s a Godiva Chocolatier on the second floor. When we wandered around the block without seeing the shop on the street, it occurred to us that maybe it was inside somewhere - but we really had no idea what to expect from these buildings, so we just went in to see what we would find - and it turns out that these medium buildings are actually small shopping malls. We explored it with fascination, took note of the Monorail station and restaurant collection on the fourth floor - and then departed, but we somehow managed to go the exact wrong direction. And instead of ending up at Pike Place, we ended up at Pacific Place, which is a couple blocks away.
Pacific Place - pictured at left - is considerably nicer on the inside, a beautifully kept and structured building with a slightly unfortunate design that allows you to go up on escalators on either side, but only allows going down on one side. I’m not sure why it’s like that. Among some other attractions, we explored a toy store that we found, third floor I believe. For some reason it was the toy store that stuck with me (and not the Victoria’s Secret excursion……).
I’ve recently been confronting a sort of life turning point that I call the “Working Man Revelation”, since it was discussion of Working Man that actually brought it initially to my attention. When you’re a kid, especially a high school student, and you think about all the time your parents spend away at work, you think, “Man! I can’t imagine what it must be like to give up so much of my day like that! I don’t want to do that, I want to stay home and never get a job so I can do what I want!” But when you actually get a job, you find that… you actually still have a lot of time to yourself. A lot. I am far more relaxed and at ease working full time than I have ever been during the school year. And multiple times, I’ve wondered, what did I even DO with myself??
We were walking down the causeway and a glass casing allowed a massive K’Nex Ferris Wheel to visually accost us. And accost it did. It was about as tall as I was. Shelby was ecstatic - she was one for K’nex when she was younger, apparently, and talked about how she’d tried to make those contraptions when she was younger and never succeeded. I tried to play it off as a “simpleton’s lego” but really K’Nex was just a different approach to the same idea, and one geared towards future engineers and scientists (Shelby!) rather than future writers and artists (Sam!). You all know I enjoy science - so, I did sometimes really miss the K’Nex. They seemed like lots of fun… but also a huge pain to try and get enough to do much with. When you have as many Legos as I did, you get a little invested.
The accosting then took a marketing turn, and the ferris wheel offered us entry to a toy store. Like, an actual children’s toy store. I feel kind of stupid saying so but I can’t remember ever seeing such a store. Toys R Us doesn’t qualify - there’s just something wrong about that place and I will avoid it with all my might if ever I have children. I don’t like its atmosphere at all. But this little shop was cute and quaint and reminded me very much of polished craft wood, like Dad used to work with. I think it was the coloring? Anyway.
We went inside to investigate, and I found myself looking upon things that children played with these days. Some of them were gently nostalgic, others amusing, and still others rather frightening - and I found it fascinating to see, and wanted to share some of the things we found.
Credit to some random sites Google picked up for these images.
Wooden Trains
It’s almost a relief to see that some of the most successful devices for entertainment are still some of the most simple. We didn’t see it until we were on our way out, but there was a wooden train set laid out on a table near the entry, using the same smooth, cream-colored carved wood that most of my tracks use. I remarked that I would ensure any of my children would have quite a large set to play with (if I had my way), and Shelby agreed that it was a staple.
Wooden trains are definitely a staple. They inspire you to think about landscapes and the world you’re playing in. You can’t see it, I might say to you, but there’s a mountain right here - that’s why this is a tunnel piece. Or, you can’t see it, but there’s a river here! That’s why there are bridges. They encourage some kind of storytelling, as well - I vaguely remember thinking up why the trains did what they did…
Of course, you can’t forget that children are just fascinated by things that move around. That’s perfectly fine, too - I just like overthinking stuff. I know I liked pushing the trains and letting them run their course around something I could predict, or lay out. That’s why we adults still love electric trains. But for a children’s toy, I think the extra interaction required to play with a basic wood set is important somehow.
Also, wooden trains are not dangerous. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get hurt playing with a wooden train set. Big plus right there.
Coloring Books
This was a bit of an awkward one for me because I never liked coloring books but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. They had a spinning rack of them, so not very many, but Shelby spent a moment looking through them and pulled out a couple that she said she’d had when she was little. Since I didn’t use coloring books much, I just sort of stood and watched, poking at them mentally from afar, but thinking about it caused me to tangent off to another train of thought…
…How is it that the things that Shelby and I played with, fifteen years ago, are still in print and production??? Do the children’s toy makers just make one thing that works and then sit back and let it sell? When you think about it, this phenomenon must be almost constant - encountering things you used to play with as a child, that is. You only ever use it for a year or two, but when you come back as an adult, you remember.
…And then you buy it for your kids!! It’s a marketing scheme, I tell you!
Hexbug Nano
Okay, these things were both frightening and fascinating simultaneously.
A respectable portion of our society has a fascination with robots. For all that I enjoy things that I can predict and control, robots never were my thing - the idea of a programmable companion has always struck me as very counter-intuitive, and the point at which you make something sentient, is also the point at which you lose control over its actions. Aside from the moral implications, that doesn’t sound very fun to begin with.
But nonetheless, we rich technologically-advanced people like robots, and are always finding ways to make them publicly available, as if presenting everyday people with random robotic toys and pets - robotic dogs come to mind, which now come in more makes and models than your average car - will somehow advance us closer to the Jetsons age in which your robotic housekeeper can give you marriage counseling. *Shudder.*
But even I think the Hexbugs are cool. Hexbugs are supposed to be bugs. I love bugs: they’re small and containable, but weird and fun to watch and look at. You never feel too threatened by them and they never seem too threatened by you. In fact, I think that’s why I am so scared of spiders - spiders break that barrier by freaking out you come close to them. Ladybugs, beetles, mantises, they don’t care at all. It’s like you aren’t even there, and you have your own private show into the life of what amounts to a completely alien creature that might as well be from another world.
Well, Hexbugs capitalize on that idea. They’re robotic bugs. Pictured above are “hexbug nano”s, a small and bare-bones variety. They use a vibration control to scurry around like real bugs, and they can flip over if they somehow end up on their backs. That’s it. That’s their whole bid and package - it’s a cute little thing that scurries around. They’re powered by the same batteries you’d put in a watch.
HEXBUG is a brand name that produces loads of these little pets, in many varieties, with fairly simple, standard capabilities - optical sensors, noise and pressure detectors - used in novel ways to produce something entertaining. For example, they have a “Crab” robot that moves into dark places and then stops, but will move or change direction in response to light or loud noises. That just sounds like loads of fun to me. Let’s stop for a moment and consider what you could do with a mean streak, ten Hexbug Crabs, and your sibling’s friend that has never seen one before. Mmmmm, that was great. Let’s move on.
The Nanos fascinate me most, though. They are so incredibly basic and simple - and yet, so obviously entertaining. You can buy little pieces of track that curve around or have little pods, and they’ll move around in this little contained environment you make for them - like a train set, but with both autonomy and organic randomness. They become entertaining little things to have in your room or on your desk - something to stare at when your thoughts leave you behind. But all they are is a plastic microchip design, and an oscillator that makes it move. That’s it. Nothing else.
Apparently, HEXBUG is taking a collector approach to Nanos - they come in a variety of designs and colors, some rarer than others, and you don’t know what color or design you’re going to get when you buy one. Gotta catch ‘em all? So that tickled my interest as well… what with my obvious Pokemon background.
But through all this, looking at them, I couldn’t help but be intimidated. And I still can’t figure out why for sure, but they bug me (pun intended). There is something about the idea of offering a fabrication of life to a child as way to entertain and stimulate them, that strikes me as bad. The Hexbugs themselves I have no problems with, but when I think of them as a kid’s toy… something doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’s my preference for the hands-on approach to things - if something is predictable, it should be predictable because you made it that way. Giving my child something that he(/she) can program to walk around and wave “hello” somehow sounds just fine to me. Giving that child something that is already programmed to do that for him(/her) is… stale and pointless at best. And to me, inexplicably “wrong” at worst.
Let’s move on.
Legos
Man, I love Legos! They were almost the entire reason I wanted to head into that store. They’re just wonderful - creative building blocks that are designed to make pretty much anything you can possibly imagine. Top tier imaginative entertainment from years five through fifteen (and onwards).
Back when I was young, when you went into a toy section of any given store, you expected to see Legos. It’s like a qualification for being a toy section. If you don’t have Legos, you aren’t a toy section. That’s just the end of the deal. And not just a few Lego items, either - you better have a lot. A good stock and selection, even if you don’t want to carry the big ones, at least have a nice set of small sets to choose from.
My memory really lets me down here, but if I’ve ever subscribed myself to a magazine, I’m pretty sure that it would have been LEGO Magazine, and nothing else. I know I had a catalog that I absolutely adored - it had some base set models you could order from the main factories directly, but most of the booklet was pictures of things people had built on backgrounds or matte paintings or something to give you ideas. And ideas I got - loads and loads of them. Castles, teleporters, ruins, abandoned buildings, houses, spaceships, you name it. I was never as good at it as anyone else I asked to play with me, though, and that’s still sort of remained a disappointment that’s stuck with me. I don’t come up with good ideas on my own, and I never have. I take other people’s ideas and rework them - that’s my strong point.
Around when we prepared to move to Bellingham, we made our repeated rounds of donation and cleaning to streamline the move and only take the things we absolutely wanted to have. My massive thirty pound tub of Legos didn’t make the cut. But I think in my mind, I didn’t give it up because I didn’t want it anymore, or didn’t play with it enough to justify it - I gave it up because we were making our rounds to donation, and I looked at it for several minutes, imagining the toys dozens and dozens of different kids could make with all those Legos. They’re in much better hands now, I hope!
I still sometimes entertain the idea of buying some specific lego sets and trying to make some things for fun. Now that I’m older I could probably do a great deal more with them, if I coordinated my purchases and bought the things I knew I’d want to use. (I had so many square blocks - and those aren’t very useful.) So whenever I catch wind of a Lego selection, I’m eager to look.
The Pacific Place let me down. There were Legos, yeah, but they were all from either an underwater fortress theme, or like, a dark castle theme - neither of which really got my interest (the dark castle theme made lots of facades but no interesting castles, and the terrain designs were never that great). There weren’t very many, and they all seemed old, like things I’d seen dozens of times before. There was a somewhat equal selection of their “bionicle” series sets, which I did give a try a couple times - and they were interesting, but took a definite K’Nex direction that I didn’t like out of my Legos. You could only rebuild the Bionicle pieces in certain ways, and that was just a letdown. I hope that isn’t the direction most of their new advancements are going… but it did seem that way.
What do you think of the things we give children to play with? What are your favorite things to play with?
