Tag: Toys

Charge It!

 

At Christmas time, the imperative phrase “charge it!” can mean one of two things: either buying a gift on credit, or making sure a battery powered gift is ready to go once the recipient unwraps it. Buying on credit has never been the best idea and can be a sign of financial distress, while using batteries to power toys and electronic devices of all sorts has gotten better over the years, with battery technology currently poised for another great leap forward.

The Flintstones Bedrock City IMG 0132
Flintstones Bedrock City in Williams, Arizona, in September 2018. Photo by Don McCulley. That appears to be a stripped down version of the Flintstones’ human – or cartoon character – powered vehicle under the sign.

 

The need for batteries on Christmas morning made itself known in earnest after World War II, when the first battery powered toys arrived on the market. Those batteries were not rechargeable and lasted only a few hours at most before depleting and then becoming trash. No recharging, no recycling. The batteries themselves might have been relatively inexpensive, but replacing them time and again was not.

Now batteries are mostly rechargeable and mostly recyclable, and more importantly they have become vital to powering far more devices than toys, from communication devices almost everyone uses throughout each day of their lives to personal transportation that is moving toward similar ubiquity. And batteries play a big part in storing electricity generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar, and that electricity can in turn be used to recharge the batteries people use every day.

ElectricCarText
A cartoonish look at the works of an electric car. Illustration by Welleman.

All that burgeoning interest has attracted research and development dollars, the incentive being the production of batteries that run longer on a charge, are made of less toxic materials, are cheaper for consumers, and are lighter in weight and in environmental footprint. The race is on, and with many more things in everyone’s daily lives being powered by batteries than there were 70 years ago, the stakes are bigger than simply making toy cars go faster on Christmas morning.
— Techly

 

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Find a Better Way to Give

 

Animal shelters in Germany are imposing a ban on pet adoptions this Christmas in hopes of discouraging the poorly thought out and whimsical decision to give a pet as a gift. Animal shelters in Germany and in other countries celebrating Christmas have always had to cope with a surge in animal drop-offs after the holidays, as families come to grips with the realization their decision was poorly thought out and whimsical. As always, it is the animals who suffer. Don’t add to the problem this Christmas by giving a pet as a gift. A pet is not a gift to be returned after the novelty wears off, but a living being deserving of and requiring commitment to his or her care.

 

Perhaps animal shelters in other countries will follow the excellent example set by the German shelters. Unfortunately there are still pet shops and breeders who will sell animals to nearly anyone who has the money. It’s more likely that the kind of person who visits an animal shelter to adopt a pet is not the kind of person who is as cavalier about that pet’s well-being as someone who purchases an animal from a pet shop or breeder and considers the creature a commodity or toy. Animal shelters often charge to adopt a pet as well, but in their case the fee is not for profit but to help offset costs of running the shelter, and as a hurdle, however low, to impulse adoptions.

Otto Scholderer Kind mit Katze
Child with Cat, a painting by Otto Scholderer (1834-1902).

In a better world, there would be no pet shops and breeders selling animals. In a better world, the necessity for animal shelters would dwindle because responsible people would take care of the first priority in pet adoption and have their pet spayed or neutered. But until a better world comes into being, reconsider giving a pet as a Christmas gift and consider instead making a financial donation to an animal shelter. The youngster whose heart is set on adopting a pet can, with the help of an adult in the family, volunteer a few hours a week at an animal shelter to help with the care, feeding, and socialization of the animals. Once the youngster gets a real grasp on the commitment required, then it may be time to consider adoption as a responsible and giving way to bring a new member into the family, not as the equivalent of a toy under the tree on Christmas morning, without needs or feelings.
— Izzy

 

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Joy in a Toy

 

With Christmas past by several days now, many children will be enraptured by a new toy or toys if they were lucky enough to receive them. The trend now is for giving more technologically sophisticated toys even to small children, but a simple toy such as a rubber duck can give a small child many hours of joy through encouraging the use of imagination, while some complicated toys do everything for the child, who quickly becomes bored through passivity.

 

For such a simple toy, the rubber duck has become enormously popular since its introduction in the form we recognize today in the mid-twentieth century. Some rubber ducks squeak when squeezed and others don’t, but all are hollow with a weight in the bottom, so that they always float upright. Of all toys in America, perhaps only the teddy bear is more popular than the rubber duck. A teddy bear does even less on its own than a rubber duck, however, since some won’t float, and it certainly doesn’t know which end is up when it does float.

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The world’s largest floating rubber duck, designed by the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, is towed in Los Angeles harbor in August 2014 as part of the Tall Ships Festival. Photo by Eric Garcetti.

The technology employed in making rubber ducks is some of the simplest in manufacturing, involving rotational molds, heat, and some hand painting. The toys are not made of rubber anymore, since that has gotten too expensive. Manufacturers instead use a non-toxic vinyl which will be safe for toddlers, who inevitably will chew on the toy. The paints also are designed for child safety. Like many manufacturing plants in the past half century, the ones for making these simple toys had moved overseas, primarily to China, until one company returned part of its manufacturing to the United States. That company struggled at first to find a factory and skilled workers, evidence of how quickly disused facilities and worker skills melt away without investment.

For all the stories in the news about how Silicon Valley technological companies like Apple and Google are leading the way for the American economy, and how the less educated workers who don’t fill that mold will just have to make do with minimum wage jobs in the service economy, flipping burgers at McDonald’s or driving Ubers, there are millions of workers who are not cut out to be software engineers but who nonetheless could use better paying jobs to help their families not merely stay afloat, but get ahead in the world.

In this clip from an early episode of Sesame Street, Ernie the Muppet sings “Rubber Duckie”, the 1970 song that set off a resurgence in popularity for the toy.
These are people who may never invent the next big thing in computers or smartphones or driverless cars, but whose children possibly could if given a fair chance at a good education without sinking the family into poverty. In the last fifty years, while the rich in their opulent yachts have gotten ever richer, the working class has been cut adrift from the mainstream economy by the loss of good paying manufacturing jobs, and the middle class has been kept busy furiously kicking to keep from drowning. Not everything has to be complicated or technologically sophisticated to work well in the world. Sometimes all it takes to make people happy is a simple toy that knows enough to bob upright in the water and keep afloat with a plucky smile.
― Techly

 

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