subject: A brief history of children's toys [print this page] The rows and rows of children's toys we see on toy shop shelves and vast stock available in online shops are a relatively modern invention and it's interesting to look back and see how this all came about.
Archeologists claim that the first children's toys were either scaled down weapons or animal knucklebones. The weapons are fairly easy to grasp as toys, but animal knucklebones? These tend to be small and square and are oddly appealing to children; so much so that in the form of dice and jacks, you still see their like available today. They could also be used as small building bricks and as tokens in more complex games played on boards, or scratched into the earth. Knucklebones were valuable toys for kids and adults alike.
As time moved on there is evidence that the Greeks had all sorts of toys ranging from spinning tops made out of wood and models in the shape of people which became what we think of now as dolls. Horse toys were popular objects to the Greeks and came in the form of wheeled horses to ride on and rocking horses. Hoops were popular with the Greeks and later on with the Romans who also started making more and more board games (often using knuckle bones). Both cultures had the Yo-Yo which is a surprisingly old invention dating back to 500 BC.
Toys didn't really change much in the next few centuries; and until the industrial revolution there were very few changes at all. One of the earliest new toys is the Jigsaw which was invented in 1767 by John Spilsbury. He originally created his Jigsaw by cutting up maps into pieces so that kids could put them back together and learn geography but they soon evolved into the modern Jigsaw. By the 19th Century mechanical toys were starting to appear (they had existed before but mostly as curiosities for rich adults). Model steam trains and boats that worked in a similar way to the real ones were available for very rich children and clockwork toys and Jack-in-the-Box had started to pop up.
By the 20th Century for the first real time in history, children were starting to have time to play. Prior to this they were generally expected to work, or help out around the house. This new availability of leisure led to a glut of new toy inventions and toy shops, which were rare and restricted to the rich now became much more common too. Major toys invented or rising to popularity in the early 20th Century were the teddy bear, Plasticine (actually this was invented in 1897 but we'll count it) and Frank Hornby invented Meccano and mass produced toy trains. After the war there was a new glut of toy making and the modern toys we know and love today were invented, things like Lego, the skateboard and Barbie dolls. The late 20th century saw the advent of the electronic games revolution and the consoles meaning that there is less physical manufacture of toys again.
A brief history of children's toys
By: Davis Morris
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