This year, the hottest toy isn’t a string rag doll like those that ancient Egyptian kids played with or a button-collecting game popular with kids of the Middle Ages. This Christmas, the hottest toy on every kid’s list is a robotic hamster.

Though robot-like pets may seem a far cry from dolls made out of rags and wooden spinning tops (or even from just plain normal pets), actually they’re not so different after all. The basics of many toys have been around for ages. Doll-like toys — fake pets, small human-like dolls — were the first toys to be invented centuries ago, followed closely (and oddly) by the yo-yo. It’s amazing that these toys, which were created long, long before the advent of electronics, are still a staple of many childhoods.

Artifacts from early history show that even kids in ancient Greece and Egypt were able to create toys, even if they may not have had the help of computers. Though in the past half-century the depth and diversity of toys has sky-rocketed, many of the ideas really aren’t all that different.

In ancient Greece and Egypt, kids had relatively complex dolls and figurines controlled by strings. Those kids could pull the strings to make the figures dance and move. Now, we can press a button to make the hamster, uh, dance and move.

Most of these ancient toys found their roots in society at the time. Even now, historians and archeologists have a hard time differentiating between figurines used as children’s playthings and those used for cultural or religious reasons. A carved horseman may have simply been a symbol of an early pagan religion before it was picked up by a bored kid and made to pretend gallop.

Dice and board games were around as early as 2000 BC, but were just the arena of adult men and shady bars. Kites in early China were intricate works of art made to resemble a landing eagle and were not for small children’s hands. Now we look at these things as immature amusements. For centuries, the basics of games and toys stayed relatively consistent: mere variations of adult amusements.

It wasn’t until the 19th and 20th centuries with the advent of Christmas as a commercial holiday, instead of a merely religious one, that the toy industry became an industry. As toy companies became big companies, some wildly-innovative toys were pushed onto the youth of the time. See if you can recognize any of these most popular toys of the early 20th century: crayons, Raggedy Ann dolls, Viewmaster, Candyland.

The 1977 release of “Star Wars” introduced the concept of movie tie-ins (one which Disney quickly pounced on) and action figures. Never before had the demand for a toy been so high until the golden era of action figures came about in the 1980s. Every young boy (and girl) had to have a GI Joe or a He-Man.

Even these action figures seem antiquated now without computerized chips or robotic movement or video-game tie-ins. This move towards all things electronic and exciting isn’t limited to children’s games. Adults, too, often think that if it’s electronic, it must be awesome. Why have a regular vacuum when you can have a robotic vacuum?

The drive for newer, better, fancier gadgets isn’t new and it isn’t going away. As everyone rushes out to replace their DVD players with Blu-Ray players, which then requires that they replace all their DVDs, which means that if they truly want high-definition they might as well buy a HD TV too. We’re prone to think that we’re so modern and technology-driven. But there was a time when people rushed out to buy radios as fancy Christmas presents and experts bemoaned the degradation of society that portable radios would bring.

When we look at this years hottest toys, as reported by sales in mid-December, the toys may have shiner, fancier package, but are they really so different?

Bakugan is one of the most popular kids’ games, and it’s merely a variation on older card and role-playing games. It doesn’t even involve that much technology unless you buy the movies too.

On the list of most popular toys is something that may sound familiar: action figures. One of the most popular action figures is the Ultimate Fighting action figure, though many adults feel it may be too violent. Figures tied-in with the release of the new Toy Story movie and the new Disney movie, Princess and the Frog, are also wildly popular. Dolls (or call them action figures if you want) may change shape and color, but never change the basic idea.

The newest, coolest dolls this year are the Moxie dolls, where you can make-your-own play companion. Last year, Bratz with their trendy clothes and make-up looked to be serious competition for Barbie, whose clothes change, but who has remained a staple for 50 years.

None of these – action figures, card games, dolls – are really that different from the rag dolls and stick figures the ancient Greeks and Egyptians played with, no matter how much we’d like to think we’ve become more advanced with all our electronics and computers.

The robotic hamster is not so different than the carved horseman; it’s just a little lazier.

>Written by d/visible contributor Kelly Dunleavy.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Technology, Culture, Art & Design, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.