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[evil_mel]

My last free weekend of the year was predictably uneventful.  On Saturday we went to Westfield to complete this year's Christmas shopping, and although it wasn't too busy (for Westfield) it was still a very un-fun experience.  Buying toys for James' nieces was difficult; I remember toys being so much more varied years ago, my favourites being

Comments

[dancingpuppet]

I remember toys being so much more varied years ago, my favourites being vaguely science related stuff, but all of that seems to have vanished.

They might have vanished from shelves but you can probably still find them online, or in shops specialised in cool educational games?
Like these? http://www.ravensburger.com/fr/jeux-scientifiques/index.html

[evil_mel]

Yeah that's the sort of thing I was thinking of. It's such a shame that they're not widely available anymore (they used to sell loads of this stuff in Argos). I imagine it's generally only the more affluent, middle class parents who would even have time and resources to order specialist toys off the internet, so I wonder if I would ever have got into science if the range of toys then was as it is now (especially with how geared towards boys a lot of the packaging is - can't remember that either!)

[dancingpuppet]

Unfortunately I suppose it's consumer's demand which is dictacting the kind of toys on offer. If you sell 5563 Hello Kitty plushies for every set of educational games sold I suppose as a retailer it makes sense to stock up on Hello Kitty things instead (I have nothing against Hello Kitty, just trying to think of a realistic example). But yeah, the educator in me wishes things were different, especially when it comes to games promoting STEM'related things... :/

Speaking of that Lego Education seems like a good start to find games that are actually sensible?

[evil_mel]

The girls have never shown any interest in science so I wouldn't buy science themed toys for them (we have bought Lego - I don't think they really got into it though