Toys the mind can play with

Originally published 18 December 1989

Time to take a look at this year’s sci­ence toys, and what bet­ter place to see what the elves have been up to than the Boston Sci­ence Muse­um Shop? I’m a long way from child­hood, but I found lots of stuff I would­n’t mind find­ing under my tree.

The ques­tion is, how to get it there with­out look­ing sil­ly? My kids are grown up. No grand­chil­dren yet. I’m at that awk­ward stage in life where if I want toys, I have to buy them for myself.

Back in the days when aunts and uncles did their shop­ping at the five-and-dime, there were cer­tain things a kid could be sure of get­ting for Christ­mas. Like a big red horse­shoe mag­net. Every kid got a horse­shoe mag­net whether he want­ed one or not. Some­times two or three, depend­ing on the num­ber of aunts and uncles. We did­n’t have refrig­er­a­tor mag­nets in those days. Some folks did­n’t have refrig­er­a­tors. A big red horse­shoe mag­net was a high-tech toy.

And sure enough, the Sci­ence Muse­um Shop has horse­shoe mag­nets just like the ones our aunts and uncles bought at Wool­worth’s for fifty cents.

Why, I used to won­der, are horse­shoe mag­nets always red? I still won­der about that. The col­or may go back to mag­nets Michael Fara­day con­struct­ed for demon­stra­tions at the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion in Lon­don in the ear­ly 1800s. Sci­ence is like that. Full of the use­less trap­pings of a rich his­to­ry. Thats one good thing about an old-fash­ioned horse­shoe mag­net as a gift for a kid. It’s his­to­ry in the hand.

A box of treasures from hardware store

I remem­ber one of the best toys I had from San­ta — a big box of elec­tri­cal stuff from the hard­ware store. A spool of bell wire. Two giant dry cell bat­ter­ies. Flash­light bulbs and sock­ets. An old-fash­ioned door­bell with an iron clap­per. And a DC motor. No instruc­tion book was nec­es­sary. If you put some­thing togeth­er and it did­n’t work you knew the wires were crossed. It was­n’t long before our house was full of crazy inventions.

One of those inven­tions was an elec­tro­mag­net, which I pit­ted in a feat of strength against a horse­shoe mag­net. That was fun. But I’m no fool. I know a box of junk from the hard­ware store won’t sat­is­fy kids today. This is the com­put­er gen­er­a­tion. A spool of wire and dry cell bat­ter­ies were a suit­able child’s tech­nol­o­gy back when Detroit ruled the world, but nowa­days a kid’s play­things need punch and pizzazz.

Some toys at the Sci­ence Muse­um Shop had the tech­ni­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion of the NASA Shut­tle and the design finesse of a Fer­rari. Best of all were the con­struc­tion sets from around the world—Capsela kits from Japan, Fis­chertech­nik from Ger­many, and Quercetti from Italy. These toys could win an award for design, and the engi­neer­ing is superb. North Pole prod­ucts have changed a lot since the elves went international.

As I poked around the shop it occurred to me that kids need two kinds of toys (maybe adults need them too). Fan­ta­sy toys and real­i­ty toys. Kids today get plen­ty of fan­ta­sy toys. Bar­bie dolls. Go-Bots. Nin­ten­do. Noth­ing wrong with that. No one can live with­out fan­ta­sy. But a few good sci­ence toys help anchor a kid in reality.

Learning how the real world works

Toys like a big red horse­shoe mag­net. Or a rock­et pow­ered by air-pres­sure. Or a device for mak­ing giant bub­bles. Or a tele­scope or micro­scope. All of the toys at the muse­um shop have some con­nec­tion with real­i­ty. Kalei­do­scopes with optics. Mod­el dinosaurs with pale­o­zo­ol­o­gy. Bal­sa wood air­planes with aeronautics.

I liked the show­er cur­tain that is also a star map, and the lit­tle gray sleep­ers for infants designed like NASA space suits, com­plete with Amer­i­can flag and Shut­tle emblem on the sleeves. You cant enjoy these things with­out learn­ing some­thing about how the real world works.

A set of build­ing blocks can teach a kid more about real­i­ty than all the Sat­ur­day morn­ing TV shows put togeth­er. I found beau­ti­ful block sets at the Muse­um Shop, care­ful­ly-craft­ed wood blocks with heft and pre­ci­sion. San­ta ought to pile more of these into the sleigh on top of all the plas­tic junk and elec­tron­ic giz­mos. Blocks teach a kid some­thing about grav­i­ty, about bal­ance, about archi­tec­ture and design, and no bat­ter­ies are required.

Yeah, I know. No kid wants to find a bunch of school stuff under the Christ­mas tree. There’s such a thing as too much real­i­ty. Good sci­ence toys, like good sci­ence, need an ele­ment of fan­ta­sy, space for the mind to play. Thats whats good about Capsela electro­mechan­i­cal con­struc­tion sets, or Quercetti toys — or even a box of elec­tri­cal junk from the hard­ware store. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.

I loved your new sci­ence toys at the muse­um shop, but I guess what I real­ly want for Christ­mas is that grand­child I’ve heard is on the way. Then I can buy these mar­velous toys in June, play with them myself until Christ­mas Eve, and no one will be the wiser.