Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood

Rating:
Summary: Good Stuff About Kid's Stuff
Review: This is a book about toys that nicely balances an historical analysis of mass-manufactured toys and their appeals to children, with a look at current toys and their appeals. Mr. Cross has a unerring eye for what toys say about past and current culture. While he is critical of some of today's toys and the type of play they encourage, such as fantasy violence toys, he is not a public scourge suspecting toy companies of base motivations. Instead, his opinions are considered and grounded in historical observation. Too, he seems to have a soft spot for Marx toys -- those cheap, antic, crazy, tin and plastic toys that spoke to a kid's sense of chaos and anarchy -- in other words, the toys that were the most fun of all!