The cool toys of my childhood aren’t necessarily relevant to children of the up and coming WWW generation: Whatever, Wherever, Whenever.

Many toys and games are of course timeless: dolls, legos (in my daughter’s case a large empty cardboard box provides hours of enjoyment). But today’s world requires brains used to making quick, accurate choices, and modern toys reflect that. Once children have the fundamentals down (IE: gravity) it’s time to get them multitasking, point-clicking, and making decisions on their own.

The same is true for television shows. The “classic” cartoons are all story-based, and often the stories are secondary to characters just goofing around demonstrating their traits. More and more of today’s shows include decision making. Often they actually stop the action to ask the viewer to express their opinion (for examples check out modern versions of Mickey Mouse, Pooh “Super Sleuths”, and of course Dora and all her spinoffs).

In his blog post “The Case Against Candyland“, Steven Johnson notes how the games of his childhood, in contrast with modern ones, are generally “moronic” and based on random chance rather than critical decision making.

On our European trip we got to spend some time in some of the world’s largest, most active airports: Chicago O’Hare, London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, New York JFK, and SEA-TAC.

Long airplane rides + sleeping children = good. This is where the airport play area comes in. Why isn’t there one in every terminal of every airport in the world?

The “Kids on the Fly” at O’Hare sounds really awesome but was too far away from our terminal, as was Air France’s Planete Bleue. We didn’t have any time to kill at Heathrow, and nothing at CDG.

But SEA-TAC… alright! The play area is just past the food/shops area on the way to the A gates, an easy walk from any of the terminals. The floor is bouncy and soft, all the things to climb on are rubbery and curvy, and there’s benches lining the whole thing so us exhausted parents can just sit back and watch the kids burn off steam. Why this isn’t FAA-required standard equipment in all airport terminals is beyond me, but good job SEA-TAC for theirs.