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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

The earlier discussion of this article mentions Legos as a good toy for free-form play. I'd like to add another: plasticine clay.

It's even more free-form than Legos, as it's not limited to any kind of pre-made shapes. It never hardens, and can be endlessly re-shaped in to new forms. It's a great way to get kids exercising their own imaginations.

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Nice, where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?

edit: The point I am trying to make is that kids don't want the toy that are good for them. They want "cool" stuff. And the market are really good at making new crap.

Don't know if they still make them, but it looks like they did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UygajWAbOVQ

"where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?"

Buying pre-made toys defeats the purpose of the clay, which is for kids to make their own toys out of.

It's like recommending you buy your kids some paints and paint brushes only to hear someone ask, "great, where can I buy them a painting of their favorite character?" You don't. That's not the point. If the kids want a painting of their favorite character, the paints and brushes empower them to paint their own. Same with clay.

The results might not be up to the high standards of adults, but usually kids don't care, have a lot of fun with the materials anyway, and actually learn to be creative instead of mere consumers of someone else's creativity.

"kids don't want the toy that are good for them. They want "cool" stuff"

Cool stuff that they get bored with 5 minutes after they got it. Clay gives them an inexhaustible material that they can shape in to whatever they desire (including the cool stuff that they make themselves), and if they're bored with one thing they just mash it up and make something else.

I speak from personal experience -- having spent endless amounts of time playing with clay as a kid while many of my other toys languished. Of course it's not the ultimate toy, and kids will eventually get bored with it too and move on to something else. But it'll always be waiting there for whatever new thing their imagination conjures up next, instead of needing yet another trip to the toy store.

Pretty sure GP was being sarcastic.

Sarcastic but within it still lies a really good point. You can go for the 'fast food' toy options - Premade, pre-themed with little scope for emergent play. Or you can go for free-form play materials with no initial set theme, but you should also layer on some scene-setting (aka 'parenting') to help your child get into the creative play mindset. Just plonking the materials down doesn't work if kids are currently primed for the fast food toy stuff.

So a direct answer to "where can I get plasticine clay avengers characters for my kids?" is 'from raw plasticine and maybe half an hour of parenting assistance'. Then you leave them to it.

Parent assistance, while doubtlessly well-intentioned, is really tricky, as it could unintentionally act to inhibit creativity instead of foster it, as the child tries to copy the parent and work within the often unconscious parameters and restrictions the parent sets rather than going wherever their own vision and desire leads them.

I'm not sure if I'd plop a pile of clay in front of a child as an answer to their desire for some action figure, even with my own guidance to help them make it. I'd give clay as its own completely independent gift, perhaps with the only guidance being that they can "make anything with it" and only if the kid struggles to do anything, asks for help, or just forgets about the clay for a long time would I even consider trying to give more guidance than that.

Only properly educated children knows how to play with good toys.

Grew up in 90s china, clay was actually really popular because they were cost effective to provide entertainment. On the other hand, even back then there were tons of companies making shitty toys around popular cartoons.

Right now company are smart enough to make shitty "educational toys" as they figured out they need to sell to the parents.

Kids are meant to be educated. Without good art and technology education, They would just consume crappy toys like junk food.

I was lucky enough to discover the fun of dissembling and repairing electronics for my parents. But not all children are like that.

It all comes down to how we educated young kids. Primary school teachers are not the best educated and they are paid lowest. Better education will mean smarter toy industry and more educated adult in the future.

But who on earth is going to pay for that?

Why the off-topic swipe at primary school teachers? Does it require specialized advanced education to allow kids to play with clay and blocks?

It requires specialised education to guide free play into a constructive activity. There's a big difference between "Here's a lump of clay. Smash it with your fist until you're bored." and "Here's a lump of clay. Let's try and mold it into something together, like a flower, or a bowl."

Also, depending on the child there can be a lot of learning in the "smash it until you're bored" phase. Then you can show a technique, or help them make something they can be proud of and help, a little, to show they can produce artefacts they are proud of if they seek to learn and apply that learning.

There's also much therapy in smashing clay, it doesn't hurt it as I remind every person I instruct on making pottery.

> Cool stuff that they get bored with 5 minutes after they got it.

Er, yes, that’s exactly what they want.

I think you’re talking past the GP; they weren’t making an argument about what toys kids will retrospectively agree they enjoyed, but rather what toys kids will demand.

(Also, something you may not have considered: frequently the toys kids want are not about playing with them themselves, so much as they’re about making other kids more interested in playing with them, and thereby becoming friends.)

They don't because you haven't shown it to them. Plasticine sounds boring, until you play with them.

Buy some, show them.

Some kids need parenting.

In your kids room. I used to do my own, then they will fight and I'll typically end with a multicoloured blob of plasticine with arms and legs of two characters protruding. It was a lot of fun.

All clay bars get dirt or turned psychedelic or brown after a few rounds so is not a totally renewable material.

Well, you buy the plastine clay and make the characters. It's not necessarily easy, but it's fun. Better still start to free them from the franchise and use it as a launching point - what Avenger would you add, can you make a mash-up of 2 avengers. If AntHulk gets angry does he grow or shrink?

Source: 20 years as a volunteer with children's clubs.

I always preferred Meccano! (similar to Erector in the US)

When I was a kid I found Erector sets to be a little too fiddly compared to Lego. My dumb kid hands struggled with the tiny screws/bolts and miniature tools. Plus the kit always wanted the fasteners installed in inner corners where the wrench didn't quite fit.

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