Children Today Want Realistic Toys

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31238, 9 December 1966, Page 2

Children Today Want Realistic Toys

Ours is a scientific age. Hardly a week goes by without someone drawing our attention to this. Television programmes keep viewers up to date with the latest scientific advances, so it is hardly surprising that viewers of kindergarten age are bombarding their teachers with questions about rockets, space, and underwater travel.

Children down through the ages have always liked to imitate adults and their behaviour in their games, today more than ever.

Toy manufacturers are all in favour of this and go to much trouble to make sure that the children have the right “props” with which to make their games properly realistic.

With Christmas near at hand, children are busily engaged leading their parents into toy shops to make sure they get exactly what they want, regardless of expense. According to Santa Claus,

children this year are asking for expensive toys with the emphasis on realism. They want toys which are exact copies, down to the last detail, of equipment used by adults. Today’s child is probably no more aggressive than his parents were at the same age, but the once popular toy soldiers dressed in the uniforms of the last century complete with old fashioned cannon and horses are out of favour. Children are all in favour of war toys but they are demanding and getting grenades, howitzers, nuclear submarines, rockets, jet fighters and bombers, jeeps, moon rockets, modern combat equipment, and walkie talkie sets. These, together with spy equipment have relegated cowboy and Indian gear to second place. With the wars, won and the

spies captured, children turn their attention to rebuilding, spending hours moving earth with minor editions of machinery used by contractors, mixing up cement in portable mixers and constructing all manner of articles with junior tool and engineer kitsets. Girls want realism just as much as boys—they are asking for toy typewriters that type, food mixers run by batteries, toy hair dryers, stoves and sewing machines.