Boys Toys
The Forgetful Aunty or Uncle’s Guide to Great Gifts
If you’ve got nieces and nephews but don’t have children yourself, it’s likely that at some stage or another (unless you’re very organised, in which case, well done) you’ve experienced that pang of panic when you realise that it’s your niece/nephew’s birthday in a few days and you’re yet to organise anything. If this is you, don’t worry. It happens to plenty of aunties and uncles around the world, and the way we usually cope with the guilt of forgetting is to overcompensate with expensive toys, so everybody wins! Here, we’ve put together a guide for creating great gifts that don’t require a visit to the toy store. Click Here To Read More
Toys for the future engineer (K’nex, etc. toys that teach about machine functions)
You know why a lot of us didn’t like school? It was simply kind of boring. For some of us, it was challenging, but for many, it’s just that the material was already old to us by the time we got to it.
If you were already reading Doctor Seuss before you ever started first grade, you were probably ready for a little something more by that point. Some of us got lucky and were maybe skipped ahead a grade or two, while others simply had to settle for being the bored smart kid in the class.
When you’re young, you tend to latch on to certain things, and it’s important that your parents nurture that interest (even if it does result in boredom at school). For example, when a kid who’s always been playing around with legos toys, K’nex and other mechanical toys starts learning about simple and complex machines in school, he or she is going to wind up saying “Haven’t I already been over this?” The wise teacher will administer some slightly advanced curriculum to the child.
Being way ahead of the class, again, while it can make school a little dull, winds up being very important later in life. It’s always the kid who found grade school dull who winds up being accepted to an elite academy for future engineers.
If you want to facilitate your future-engineering-genius’s creativity and grasp of the material, the good news is that you have quite a lot of options. The better toymakers out there craft their products with an understanding of the way a child’s brain functions. Kids don’t think they’re training for a career in designing new ways to harvest and cultivate food, or that they’re going to engineer an ingenious solution to fossil fuels, they’re just having fun, putting different things together and seeing what they come up with.
How to shop for a nephew’s birthday (advice on selecting presents for kids that aren’t your own)
It’s always a real trick to shop for boys toys for the little dude in the family who’s not your kid. You may love your nephew, but you may also wind up being forced to admit to yourself that you don’t really spend enough time with him because… he’s got a birthday coming up, and you haven’t a clue what you should consider getting him for the party.
The typical answer is to just ask the parents what the boy has had his eyes on, and grab that… This seems like a little too easy an answer, though, to be honest. Communicating with the family is important, we’ll get to that later, but for different reasons.
It’s a much better idea to do this: Take your nephew out for an afternoon. Go to the park, watch a movie, or just get some ice cream. Converse, play, and pay attention. As soon as the afternoon is up and you drop your nephew back at your sister or brother’s house, you’ll know exactly what he wants.
How will you know? Well, it’s simple, kids never stop yapping about all the cool stuff they like! That’s the kind of luxury afforded to those of us who don’t have to worry about taxes and health problems, we get to talk about superheroes and Mega Bloks all day.
A Crash Course on Star Wars
Some of us never really got into Star Wars. For the True Believers out there, yes, yes, it sounds crazy. Who doesn’t like Star Wars? But you know, different strokes for different folks.
Of course, most of today’s parents grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, truly the Star Wars Generation. It’s like our own personal mythology. The story of Luke taking down the Death Star and coming face to face with his own father, it’s a permanent, iconic part of our lives. Not just as a great work of adventure fiction, it goes a little deeper. It touches on something about humanity in general. The way the heroes are always smiling, joking, and laughing, in the face of certain doom, the way Han Solo can still crack wise at Princess Leia seconds before being frozen in carbonite. Even with a soul crushing empire rampaging through the galaxy, blowing up entire planets and enslaving the inhabitants of others, we can still look on the bright side and appreciate the fun and adventure life has to offer. That’s what makes these adventures more than just movies, more than just stories, but something we’ve actually learned from and lived by.
But… as close as those first three films were to our hearts, keeping track of the new ones, the animated series, the latest CGI movie, and the new Clone Wars TV show… it’s practically like trying to memorize the dictionary, word for word. There are about a billion new characters and story developments, and geez, we do have jobs, you know! We can’t sit around memorizing Star Wars trivia all day (as much as we might like to).
So with that in mind, here’s what you need to know about Star Wars in the 21st Century. You’ll thank us once you’re ready to fill out that Christmas shopping list…
Toys that no girl would be caught dead playing with (toys for boys)
One of the great things about shopping for girls is that they’re a lot more willing to accept and enjoy toys for boys than boys are willing to play with toys for girls. To take one example, He-Man had a huge, huge girl fanbase, even though it has the words “He” and “Man” right in the title! The girls who loved He-Man may have been smaller in number than the girls who loved Barbie, but the girl fanbase was big enough to have spawned He-Man’s sister-series, She-Ra. Now on the other hand… if you saw a boy playing with a Barbie doll, you’d probably do a double take.
This doesn’t mean you can get away with throwing a dart at a toy catalogue, but you do have a little breathing room. Below, we’ve compiled a list of Manly toys that, most likely, will have any girl giving you a “Gee… thanks… I guess?” In other words, these might be great if you’re shopping for boys, but you may want to use it as a warning list if you’re shopping for girls.
TRANSFORMERS
Heavy duty trucks and construction toys
A popular misconception is that trucks and construction toys are for boys only. If you grew up with a single mother who would fix the cabinets and do the landscaping by herself, you know that building and fixing is a gender neutral territory. The producers of Bob the Builder seem to understand, hence the character of Wendy, Bob’s on-the-job colleague.
The vast majority of trucks, construction toys, toy toolboxes and so on are marketed more for boys, but the basic skills and interests that these toys encourage can certainly be put to use by both boys and girls.
We live in the 21st Century now. In the past, a girl would grow up hoping to marry young and not have to worry about how to fix the sink or change a flat tire. Things have changed, and a basic understanding of how to put a power drill to work is something everybody has a right to.
Besides, boy or girl, we can all appreciate the empowering nature of a yellow dump truck with big fat wheels!
