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.