Toy Story: Interesting Facts About Children's Toys

Toy Story: Interesting Facts About Children's Toys
They surround every child from the moment of his birth. They help babies fall asleep, cope with pain and sadness, “listen out” to the most secret children's secrets, become travel companions and the most desired New Year (and not only) gifts. We have collected the most interesting facts about toys.

hello from antiquity
Toys have been around for as long as there have been children. That is, always. Miniature figurines, whose age is more than three thousand years, were found during excavations of ancient civilizations.

The most ancient toy is quite expectedly considered a doll. The first dolls were made of wood, stone and wax.

But the second oldest toy is quite unexpected. This is a yo-yo. The toy consisted of two disks on a rope, fastened with an axle.

Goodbye childhood!
Now the toys of grown children are sent to the trash, to friends and relatives or to thrift stores, and in ancient times they were sacrificed. In ancient Greece, there was a kind of rite of growing up - having reached the age of fourteen, a girl brought her toys to the temple and gave them as a sacrifice to the gods as a sign that she was no longer a child and could get married.

The special role of the doll
Not only in ancient Greece, but also in other countries, including in Rus', dolls, in addition to playing, also performed a ritual function. For example, a rag doll kuvadka, made from pieces of cloth tied with threads, helped with childbirth. The dolls were hung close to the woman in labor to ward off evil forces. Subsequently, the kuvadki moved to the cradle of the child and guarded him already. It was believed that there must be an odd number of kuvadok, then they will bring happiness.

The tradition of taking dolls with you to bed also comes from antiquity. But initially, the dolls were placed not to calm the child, but to ... ward off insomnia. It was believed that while insomnia would play with the doll, the baby would be able to sleep peacefully.

In Rus', children made their own dolls. For the simplest ones, neither knives nor needles were required - a small rag that could be torn off one's own clothes and a couple of threads were enough. Interestingly, the faces of the dolls were not usually painted. It was believed that without a face, a doll is inaccessible to evil spirits.

Favorite of millions
Of course, the most popular doll in the world is Barbie. The long-legged beauty with feminine forms appeared in the 50s of the twentieth century and became the first "adult" doll - before that, children were invited to play with baby dolls and dolls depicting older children. American Ruth Handler, one of the founders of Mattel, inspired by the heroine of a German comic book, created a doll depicting an adult woman. She named her in honor of her daughter Barbara.

The new doll was a resounding success. It turned out that girls all over the world are tired of rocking babies and want to try on other roles. The role of an adult successful woman, for example.

Initially, Barbie had the wrong proportions - a real woman with such a figure would not be able to move around. Already in our time, Mattel has received a lot of criticism because of this. Toy makers were accused of creating unrealistic expectations for girls from their own appearance, because it is physiologically impossible to be like Barbie, no matter how hard you try. Today, Mattel produces dolls for every taste and color - there are Barbies with human proportions, there are representatives of various professions (from a builder to a football player) and even a Barbie with disabilities.

Tara Winstead/Pexels
What does it cost us to build a house
Another favorite of all the children of the world is the Lego constructor. It is difficult to find a child who does not have at least one set. If all the parts produced in the history of the company are distributed to all the people of the world, then everyone will receive 52 parts (and the world's population is almost 8 billion people!). By the way, all these details can be interconnected. This is the main feature of Lego - absolutely all sets are combined with each other. The company also carefully monitors safety, uses environmentally friendly materials, and all the little men have a special hole in the head, which is necessary so that the child can breathe after swallowing the toy.

The name Lego comes from the Danish phrase "leg godt", which translates to "play well".