Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
The worst toy is one with many pieces that my kids dump on the ground and then play with for only 2 minutes. This makes a cleaning to playtime ratio: 2 minute play vs 10 minute clean up
Sucking away my life as a parent.
A beautiful toy is one that the kids play with a lot, over a long time, and that isn’t hard to clean up.
I score my toys across 3 dimensions:
1. Repeatability
Play once 1 —|—|—|— 5 Play daily for years
2. Length of play session
One minute 1 —|—|—|—5 30+ minutes
3. Clean up ease
Annoying 1 —|—|—|— 5 Easy
My 3 best scoring toys
1. Magna-tiles
Score: 13
Repeatability: 5
Length of play session: 4
Clean up ease: 4
2. Giant Magna-tiles
Score: 13
Repeatability: 5
Length of play session: 5
Clean up ease: 3
3. Magnet foam blocks
Score: 12
Repeatability: 4
Length of play session: 4
Clean up ease: 4
A low scoring toy that seems similar
Minecraft magnet tiles
Score: 6
Repeatability: 2
Length of play session: 2
Clean up ease: 2
What makes a high-scoring toy
Comparing the toys I score high and the toy I scored low, here are the principles that I think give a toy a high score.
1. They are flexible
The high-scoring toys can become many different kinds of objects. At our house, they are robots, they are rocket ships. They are a fishing hook that then we go fishing with.
The giant magnet tiles and small magnet tiles also become containers for a narrative to play out. The magnet tiles are often present boxes to deliver birthday presents to each other, or houses that other toys live inside of. The giant tiles are houses, rocket ships, nap pods, or shops. I would rather have a pile of giant magnet tiles than one “play store”.
By contrast, the pieces in the Minecraft toy are each a specific thing: a tree, water, or lava. There are fewer world building possibilities, with everything fitting into the strong frame that the toy offers. It makes sense that they grow bored of playing with them if it has fewer “games” to offer.
2. The shapes play together elegantly
Each piece of the high scoring toys has a fun relationship with the others. If the pieces are different, they are different enough that it doesn’t take a lot of thought to choose between them.
The toy below looks less fun to me because it looks more fiddly. If I was playing, I would need to figure out if I want a slightly bent angle or a straight one, and it seems like not a fun choice.
3. They are magnetic
Apparently every toy that I find easiest to clean up has magnets on it. Maybe I feel the satisfaction of clicking them together as I clean them up. Cleaning becomes a little like playing.
With the high scoring toys, the magnets are strong, and the connection between parts feels satisfying when you make it.
On the other side, the Minecraft toy magnets are less strong and feel less satisfying to put together. It doesn’t have a satisfying sense of being complete when you stick them together; it’s more like a temporary paste.
Toy I want next
The toy Clixo seems cool: flexible play, elegant shapes, and magnetic. I predict it would be a top scoring toy.
I enjoyed this post!
This post is an example of a “dimensionalization”: a scoring system applied to the axes along which options in a choice set vary.
LLMs are excellent at this process. They can automate the identification of axes, scoring and ranking of options, and even generation of options (ideas or actuals) that have specific values on each axis. For example, what would a toy that scores 5/5/5 look like? LLM can invent or identify this toy.
Much more here, if this is interesting:
https://jordanmrubin.substack.com/p/an-abstract-arsenal
Great choice, my children loved these too.