Why the simplest toys last longest

Every parent has watched a child abandon an expensive toy for the box it came in. The usual explanation — children are contrary — is wrong, and the real one is useful when you are deciding what to buy.

The distinction that matters

Toys sit on a spectrum between open-ended and closed-ended.

A closed-ended toy has one correct outcome. A shape sorter is closed-ended: the triangle goes in the triangle hole, and when it does, the toy is finished. An open-ended toy has no such state. Blocks, cloth, sand, cups, sticks and figures can be arranged in ways the manufacturer never considered.

Closed-ended toys are not bad — solving a defined problem is a real pleasure, and puzzles earn their place. But a solved problem stays solved. Once a child can do it, the toy has spent most of what it had.

The architect Simon Nicholson made a version of this argument in 1971 with what he called the theory of loose parts: the inventiveness available in an environment is proportional to the number and kind of variables in it. Fixed environments produce fixed play.

What the toy does, the child doesn't

The clearest test is to ask how much of the play the toy performs on its own.

A truck that a child pushes is doing nothing. The sounds are made by the child, the journey is invented by the child, and the truck can also be a boat.

A truck with a button that plays a siren has taken the sound over. It is more impressive in the shop and it holds attention harder for about a week, because novelty is not the same as interest. What it has done is convert an actor into an audience.

This is why the box outperforms the toy. The box has done nothing at all, so everything remains available.

Batteries are a proxy, not a villain

There is nothing wrong with a battery. The reason battery toys skew closed-ended is that a manufacturer who has added electronics has usually added them to perform something: the noise, the movement, the narration.

The same logic catches things without batteries. A dolls' house with painted- on furniture is more finished than an empty one. A costume with a fixed character is more finished than a length of fabric.

Finished is the word. The more finished a thing arrives, the less there is left to do with it.

Quantity works against you

A second effect compounds the first. Studies of toddler play environments have tended to find that fewer toys available at once produces longer and deeper engagement with each one, and that large quantities produce shorter visits and more switching.

This matches what most people observe at home. A floor with thirty things on it is not thirty opportunities; it is a distraction from each of them.

Thirty seconds in a shop

A quick version of all of this, for when you are standing in an aisle.

Pick the toy up and ask what happens if the batteries are dead. If the answer is "nothing", you are holding a device. If the answer is "it is still a truck", you are holding a toy.

Then ask what else in the house it would go with. Anything that combines with blocks, animals, cups or water has a long life ahead of it. Anything that belongs only to its own set is one child's changing interests away from the cupboard.

The trap of the themed set

Licensed and themed sets are where the combining test usually fails, and they are worth a paragraph because they are so often the gift.

The set arrives complete. It has its own characters, its own scenery and its own implied story, and it works beautifully for a while. The difficulty is that it is a closed system: expanding it means buying more of the same range, the pieces rarely serve any other purpose, and interest in the property tends to expire faster than the plastic does.

None of that makes a themed set a mistake — a child who loves a story will play harder with its characters than with any neutral wooden figure. It is worth knowing which kind of purchase you are making, and not expecting a closed system to behave like an open one.

What actually survives

The toys that stay in use for years share a short list of properties.

They can be more than one thing. Blocks are a road, a wall, a phone and a sandwich.

They combine with what is already there. A basket of animals gets better when the blocks come out. A toy that cannot be combined with anything is alone in the room.

They tolerate several ages. The same blocks are stacked at one, sorted at three, and used as scenery at five.

They survive. Wood over hollow plastic, screws over glue, a seam that has been sewn rather than welded — not for sentimentality, but because an open-ended toy is one you are hoping to still own in four years.

The honest caveat

None of this means a child should not own anything that lights up. Children love novelty and there is nothing improving about a joyless shelf of neutral wooden objects.

It is a purchasing heuristic, not a moral position. When you are choosing between two things at a similar price, the one that has done less of the work will usually still be in use when the other is in a cupboard.