- Joined
- Dec 6, 2012
- Messages
- 2,677
Saw this article about the demise of a large toy store.
The cause reflects a cultural shift in how and what children are learning. I'm wondering if there are long term implications for home shops and industry.
http://e.startribune.com/Olive/ODN/...18/03/17&entity=Ar00902&sk=44F68065&mode=text
"But the chain’s biggest foe was neither nimbler retailers nor that heavy debt load. It was the undermining of the very concept of the toy. For most of recorded history, toys have been physical things with which children play and create, telling themselves stories about the world and their place in it. ..... The rules we made up as we went along, with only our imaginations as guides. That was what toys were for.
By the 1990s, toys had to do things: They blinked, they spoke, they walked or rolled along the floor. They operated not according to the whims of children but according to definitions imposed by their creators. And a piece of the imagination died.
.... nowadays even very young children prefer the touchable screen to the touchable toy. Apart from a niche here and there, toy stores no longer serve any discernible function."
Daryl
MN
The cause reflects a cultural shift in how and what children are learning. I'm wondering if there are long term implications for home shops and industry.
http://e.startribune.com/Olive/ODN/...18/03/17&entity=Ar00902&sk=44F68065&mode=text
"But the chain’s biggest foe was neither nimbler retailers nor that heavy debt load. It was the undermining of the very concept of the toy. For most of recorded history, toys have been physical things with which children play and create, telling themselves stories about the world and their place in it. ..... The rules we made up as we went along, with only our imaginations as guides. That was what toys were for.
By the 1990s, toys had to do things: They blinked, they spoke, they walked or rolled along the floor. They operated not according to the whims of children but according to definitions imposed by their creators. And a piece of the imagination died.
.... nowadays even very young children prefer the touchable screen to the touchable toy. Apart from a niche here and there, toy stores no longer serve any discernible function."
Daryl
MN