At some point in life, and especially when we have children, we stop looking forward to look back and remember our childhood.
One way to do it is to revive it through our children and for that We are many parents who give our children some of our childhood toys.
The good memory of that time, knowing that we had fun, that helped us stimulate our creativity and remember the long hours we spent with these toys are the arguments in favor of buying them again.
In the image you can see toys that represent two of the brands that were part of our childhood and that now many parents look for for our children: Tente and Playmobil.
The Playmobil They are easily found in stores and even on the Internet and enjoy very good health at the sales level, something totally logical if we take into account that those who played the most with them are now parents and that, furthermore, they continue to provide news year after year.
The Tente, on the other hand, they can only be obtained on the internet since Exin, the company that manufactured them, closed its doors in 1993. In the image you can see a “Roblock Gamma II”, with which I did a few days ago in ebay and that I will keep as gold in cloth until my children grow a little more.
They are still valid Lego, which were the competence of Tente (or vice versa, but Tente was Spanish) and they still have very good results because they adapt to the times, with lines from Star Wars, Harry Potter and even SpongeBob.
With respect to toys "as a child" (between quotation marks because they do not have to be, but usually they are), I have no memories because I did not play with them, although the Nancy, the Barbie and the Tummy.
Those who kept their childhood toys in the loft are lucky to be able to resurrect them. In my mother-in-law's house, for example, we have found toys from Pin and Pon with buildings and vehicles, a Tente incomplete with which we have been able to do many things, the Who is who, he Operation, he Slot machines and a few more (there is a mine) that are what my children use (and a lot) when we visit their home.
The toys of yesteryear allowed to develop more creativity
I think we all agree that our childhood toys were simpler (because there was not much technology) and that they allowed us to develop more creativity than current toys.
The reason is very simple. They were toys that did not depend on a story or were considered merchandising (then it barely existed). The Playmobil, for example, are characters without a name and without history (although there are now some who have it, as there are video games), and it is the children who must create it. The transformable robot of the image of Tente It is not "Mazinger Z", it is not even "Optimus Prime". It is a robot that transforms into a vehicle and point. We created the rest of the story, inventing worlds, situations, conflicts, solutions, etc.
Now the vast majority of toys correspond to a series of cartoons (Pocoyo, Ben 10, Gormiti, Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob, etc.) or a movie (the aforementioned Lego of Harry Potter or Indiana Jones, Cars cars, ... ). This makes the creativity and imagination of children somewhat limited, because if you give a child a Gormiti, he will play with him to do what the Gormiti do.
Some children even simply dedicate themselves to representing the story they have seen on TV in a certain chapter. This is not counterproductive or something that should be corrected, because it is also fun to play with the characters you already know, however If the majority of toys that children receive correspond to familiar characters, their imagination will never take off.
The danger of restricting their imagination
Many parents buy our childhood toys for this reason: allow children to imagine stories and believe with their hands what they want to create (Lego, Tente).
However, these toys are a double-edged sword and By buying them we run the risk of restricting creativity, which is just the opposite of what we intend.
For them they are new toys, which they have never seen or used. For us they are those totally squeezed toys that we know from end to end and that we discover and rediscover hundreds of times when we were children. This can cause more than one father (or mother) to be tempted to play what he played as a child with his son ("this is done like this", "now you can do this", "if you press here, see what happens" , etc.) and that we give the child the chewed toy, with added history and everything (“it is the most powerful in the galaxy and flies between planets to save the universe from the clutches of…”), something we should avoid at all coast, even if it costs us.
It is children who must discover the possibilities of toys and invent stories for them. (Although we think that we squeezed them more) and we must be very clear, too, that we can deliver one of these toys with our greatest enthusiasm and that our child does not like it (I am preparing in case he leaves the Tente parked the first day) .
What the statistics say
A recent survey conducted in Madrid reveals that 70% of parents would buy their favorite childhood toy again and that 72% of them already retain some of them.
I think this survey perfectly reflects the general feeling of many parents, that we keep very pleasant memories of our toys and try to get them again for our children, although I am surprised that 72% of those who would buy toys from their childhood already I have them for home. In my house there is absolutely nothing left of those years although, everything must be said, there is more than one moving in between and we are a few brothers (if everything had to be saved ...).
