Let kids play with toys?
- Thread starter WOOOF
- Start date
My kids have never really been interested in my stuff. I think both have looked at stuff that is sitting out (Most of it is behind closed doors in Billy cabinets) and for a while, they did play with in the sound effects on the Millennium Falcon or the AT-AT. I believe my son fired one of the Falcon's missiles into a heat register on a wall several years go... since I've never found it on the floor over the years.
But my son doesn't care much for Star Wars ("too many people die"), but my daughter would take it all.
But my son doesn't care much for Star Wars ("too many people die"), but my daughter would take it all.
I am thinking of giving my son all my old action figures and just saving Star Wars and NECA/horror stuff for myself, because chances are the horror stuff isn't going to be much of a draw for him anyways, and I kind of plan on getting him his own SW toys. Lucky kid! I was just interested to see what most parents who were collectors did. Chances are he probably won't even care about all this nerdy stuff and be more into sports or something 
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I have always had a plastic tub of figures I would be willing to give to my kid(s). My girlfriend has a nephew that’s approaching four years old...He has tons of toys and he doesn’t really care for too many of them. He has some cars that he likes and some very cheap rubber dinosaurs. His interest in anything else is waning at best.
His real hobby is YouTube videos, ironically, of other kids playing with toys. I don’t understand this at all. He literally can have the toy and he will watch kids play with it. Not to inspire his own play patters either...He watches them mindlessly and gets irritable when he can’t or isn’t allowed to. He doesn’t see a kid play a certain way and then use that to inform his own imagination.
He does enjoy being outside, but he prefers to just kick a ball or have more active toys. Action figures and other things like that are not interesting to him overall.
His real hobby is YouTube videos, ironically, of other kids playing with toys. I don’t understand this at all. He literally can have the toy and he will watch kids play with it. Not to inspire his own play patters either...He watches them mindlessly and gets irritable when he can’t or isn’t allowed to. He doesn’t see a kid play a certain way and then use that to inform his own imagination.
He does enjoy being outside, but he prefers to just kick a ball or have more active toys. Action figures and other things like that are not interesting to him overall.
Interesting about the Youtube video thing; I see other people's kids do the same thing. They sit around and watch other kids play with toys. I really don't get it either, play with your own stuff! I plan on being fairly strict with limiting phones and electronics because I feel like it is a mindless time killer for both adults and kids. My 8 year old niece drives me nuts with looking at her phone all the time and has the same irritable reaction when we ask her to put it away.
I basically set up a huge plastic tub of stuff I am deeming his toys which is everything my brother and I had as a kid plus many superhero and GI Joe additions. "Dad's toys" (horror and Star Wars) will be in the basement. He will be able to do whatever he wants with his stuff; I think I will encourage the old toys in the sandbox thing. Just stay out of the house and off TV.
I basically set up a huge plastic tub of stuff I am deeming his toys which is everything my brother and I had as a kid plus many superhero and GI Joe additions. "Dad's toys" (horror and Star Wars) will be in the basement. He will be able to do whatever he wants with his stuff; I think I will encourage the old toys in the sandbox thing. Just stay out of the house and off TV.
My son used to get into those videos, but has (thankfully) moved on. It was always those Ryan's Toy Review videos, which was fine for awhile until he (or his family) sold out and put his face on product and was the face of Target... which meant his reviews were no longer unbiased. Plus, I kind of felt like his mother was pushing him to do these in the end and she then would seriously take over the videos as if she was the star of the show, not Ryan... and bluntly put, she was simply annoying.
I open all my characters, together with my kids, and let them play with it for some time. My eldest 2 sons are 9 and 7, so they know how not to break stuff.
Then I normally put them in my display cabinets later on or they day after.
In cases where i replace a older model (5POE) for a newer model, i'll give those to my son(s).
However they aren't really that interested in that. What they really like to do, is playing a story together.
I'll just imagine some basic outline for a story (e.g. we need to recruit allies to invade a imperial base/rescue something/extract some secret data) then i'll improv whatever ideas they come up with.
So once a while i risk my collection to play together with my kids.. But i enjoy it, plus i'm there to supervise so they dont brake my stuff.
Then I normally put them in my display cabinets later on or they day after.
In cases where i replace a older model (5POE) for a newer model, i'll give those to my son(s).
However they aren't really that interested in that. What they really like to do, is playing a story together.
I'll just imagine some basic outline for a story (e.g. we need to recruit allies to invade a imperial base/rescue something/extract some secret data) then i'll improv whatever ideas they come up with.
So once a while i risk my collection to play together with my kids..
But i enjoy it, plus i'm there to supervise so they dont brake my stuff.Four years later…
Kid is exactly the same. Very few toys, and then plays videos games and sports.
He was into wrestling for about six months and we bought him a dozen or so figures, but he’s no longer into that. I don’t know if he ever really played with them either way, but he did seem excited to receive them.
Edit: And those wrestlers were not cheap either. I’m going to assume it’s a lot like Star Wars, where casual or kid buyers are priced out of the market. We look at them on the pegs still. Crazy that they range from like $20-50 each.
My niece likes to play with my stuff, but she only has the opportunity while she's with me, and I limit how many things we play with at once. My brother's more worried than I am about her possibly breaking something.
My nephew wouldn’t ever break anything on purpose, but he is kind of clumsy and would definitely run into or drop something accidentally.
Hmmm...I'm stumbling into this thread with adult kids. I played with my kids with my Star Wars, and then started buying them their own. They learned to care for the toys and still value them as adults because of the memories we made. I will do the same with grandkids when the come along. We have other younger children in our life, they are all interested in creative play.
Maybe it is, Jodo. Some of it is parenting style, to be sure. I certainly do hope that Skeleton Crew resonates with kids (it resonates with my 12 year old self 😀). I don't feel like the other Disney+ live action offerings have much for younger kids, so they are not really a gateway to creative play.
I've been thinking about this more. One of things I remember as a kid was seeing commercials for products with other kids playing with them. Those commercials didn't bother to "reproduce" scenes from the movies. I think the failure to feed anticipation (card back images, commercials, etc.) harms toy context, as does seeing other kids play with the toys. I think not advertising "Young Jedi" toys on the front and back of episodes on Disney was a truly missed opportunity, for example.
Yes, I agree! Watching the Skeleton Crew, there’s been a lot of commercials for a SC themed food delivery service, some other streaming services, and that’s about it. It would make total sense to advertise the TBS crew and push that. Even if your main demographic is still adults, it’s an easy tie-in and exposure to your main consumer.