Text: Nikki Bush. Photography: Greatstock-Corbis; Elite Photo Agency/Shutterstock. Article from the October 2013 issue of Living and Loving Magazine.
Creative parenting expert and seasoned toy judge, Nikki Bush, shares her insights about the staggering developments in the digital world of toys.
Toys, like everything else, are changing to incorporate the real and virtual worlds; evolving and merging with technology, like integrating parents’ smartphones and tablets into a game. These new-generation toys and games are referred to as Toys 3.0, whether it’s a helicopter or car controlled by a smartphone, figurines brought to life on a gaming console or even board games now played on a tablet computer (a new version of Monopoly uses an iPad in the middle of the board). But there’s no need to panic that all toys are going high-tech and digital. New-generation toys won’t squeeze out classical toys. Instead, they’ll enhance and complement them, because kids need both.
Did you know?
According to Axel Dammler of Iconkids & Youth, 80% of toys bought in the future will still be real, classical toys – even though Toys 3.0 currently dominates the media.
Combination toys in demand
Both parents and children are demanding products that combine the strengths of electronic and real toys – like the Lightning McQueen mobile application toy incorporating AppMATes technology.
The vehicle has a unique touch footprint recognised by touch screens. The child drives the real car on the screen, which becomes a virtual play mat with obstacles and challenges. Children can explore, play and customise their cars. Another example is the reinvention of Furby. It comes with an app for the iPad that translates Furbish into English so you can understand what Furby is saying.
You can also turn your tablet into an interactive firehouse or dollhouse. The AppVentures iPad Play Case is an easy-to-fit case that snaps over your iPad and turns it into a playhouse for your firefighter or doll figurine. The Play Case has one figure with a scannable QR code that can be used with the compatible iDollhouse or iFirefighter app. When you scan the figure, it’s virtually transported to the app so you can interact with your iPad and your playhouse. You can decorate your house, rearrange furniture, water plants, slide down a fireman’s pole and extinguish fires.
Did you know? Car manufacturers SAAB and Ford are installing technology to make car windows into touch screens that children can play on during a car journey.
Portable play
Portability is a big trend in Toys 3.0 – play any game, anywhere, on any device, any time. 2012 was considered the year of the tablet for kids. Specialised ‘child-proof tablets were launched, the most popular in South Africa being the LeapPad – the Apple’ in this genre of educational play for children, which brought with it a suite of installed games and hundreds of downloadable apps.
Fisher Price came out with Apptivity Cases, in which you can safely store your iPhone or iPad and make it childproof for your child to use. It protects from dribbles and drools, and provides four child-friendly apps while blocking your buttons so little fingers can’t wreak havoc in your world.
Managing director of Prima Toys in South Africa, Wanda Ambrosini, says: “The future of toys is here – and it’s all about apps combining a physical toy with the excitement of an app and the contemporary appeal of a tablet is a completely new way for kids to play. They’re attracted to it and it adds a real wow factor to toys.”
Bringing real toys to life
Skylanders, the most popular children’s video game of all time, has quite literally brought real toys to life by doing something that hasn’t been done before. Real figurines are provided for fantasy play and when placed on the ‘portal of power’ they magically appear on your gaming screen. This provides a child with strategy, problem-solving and creative opportunities as he faces challenges in the game. The digital has been so successful that other players in the industry, like Disney, are rushing to apply similar technology. Watch out for Disney Infinity, due later this year, where children can take Buzz Lightyear to play in the Monsters’ University world and connect Jack Sparrow with The Incredibles.
According to Steve Reece, a leading toy industry expert, by 2020 virtual world brands, like console games, will be more popular and prevalent than movies are today.
Sign of things to come
All children go through phases of wanting to keep goldfish. Now they can, without the mess and fuss that usually accompanies such a pet, by purchasing intelligent Robofish that look and move like real fish.
There are different kinds, from clownfish to sharks, and they can be kept in a fish bowl, a vase, or swim with the children in the bath. They’re even more lifelike in numbers, when they swim in a shoal.
Then there’s the Barbie Digital Makeover Mirror that pairs an iPad with a mirror for augmented reality play, enabling a little girl to apply make-up in the mirror without actually putting it on in real life. It’s her face in the mirror with the green eye shadow on!
Moms, this is the same technology that you’ll find in clothes shops in the future. You’ll no longer try on clothes under ghastly lighting in fitting rooms. You’ll just look in a virtual mirror and, at the swipe of a touch screen, the clothes will appear – on you.
Moderation is the key
Toys 3.0 does not pose a threat to our children’s development. Rather, it’s the inappropriate overuse of these toys that can cause problems.
They should be seen as a complement to classical toys, not a replacement, and they should not be overused as a babysitter either. Wise use of Toys 3.0 should add value to a child’s playtime and bring learning to life. It’s important to never forget that real, concrete learning forms the foundation for everything a child learns in the future.
Kids’ TV becomes more interactive
Elmo, Big Bird and the rest of the Sesame Street crew have always talked to kids. Now they’ll try to have a two-way conversation with their pint-sized audience using Kinect, the motion and voice-sensing controller created by Microsoft.
Grover will count coconuts you’ve thrown, the Count will praise you for standing still and Elmo will catch a talking ball if you throw it to him. This is the beginning of viewers becoming participants and affecting a show’s outcome.
Tech toys must be used in moderation. Children stall need interaction with real toys.
Parents in emerging economies, beware
Research on BRICS countries of their experiences. (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) shows that parents in emerging economies are far more likely to adopt Toys 3.0 and are in danger of substituting real toys with virtual ones.
Where there’s a lack of exposure to classical or educational-type toys because of circumstance or history, parents are more inclined to jump into technology and allow their children carte blanche access.
It’s important for these parents to realise that tech-toys must be used in moderation and that children still need real, concrete interaction with their world, with real people and real toys in order to make meaning out of their experiences. Children must learn in a multi-sensory way to make the learning experience more memorable and meaningful.
Movement is an essential ingredient in healthy physical and intellectual development.
Tech-toys can be a wonderful addition to real toys, reinforcing learning experienced at home and in preschool through repetition and using the semi concrete and abstract world of pictures, games, words and activities on a screen.
But it should never be the dominant form of learning or play.
Nikki Bush is a creative parenting expert, inspirational speaker and co-author of Future-proof Your Child, and Easy Answers to Awkward Questions. nikki@briglitldeasoutfit.co.za; www.nikkibush.com
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