We gotta start 'em young nowadays....or Planning toys

[martini]

Plan Toys, Plan city series, gets the young'ns started early on thier path to city design. This is Brio and its light rail concept taken one step futher. I can't wait to buy some of this stuff for the offspring.

Other than Legos, are there other planning related toys you've seen?

 

[Michele Zone]

I don't know if they still make them, but we had a bunch of waffle blocks by Little Tikes (same folks who make Duplo, I think). We had a mountain that had a train track and road running through it and you could change the pattern of the road and rail around it.

Here is a sample:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3168238964&category=19181

For bridge building (those future engineers), you should check out K'nex.

 

[Zoning Goddess]

My son has a farm set a friend gave him for X-mas years ago, he sets up the roadways, trucks, farm buildings, etc. Kind of a rural Lego.

He also has Sim Town on the PC.

Oh, and of course a large collection of Hot Wheels can be used to simulate any urban highway...

 

[DecaturHawk]

The PlayMobil series has city sets, as well as airports, castles, pirate ships, etc. They are pricey, but extremely well-made and durable.

 

[H]

Other than Legos, are there other planning related toys you've seen?

But Lego’s are still the best planning toy. I really can’t imagine just how many Lego’s we had. I lived and breathed Lego land until I was old enough for it to be really un-cool. We had an entire room in my house dedicated to it. My father made roads, lakes, mountains, and etcetera out of wood and then my brother and I set up our towns. We each had a town containing rules, a money system, tallest building contests, satellites to “spy” on each other and ultimately wars which would completely destroy each others town making us start over again from scratch (which was the best part). This play activity went on for the better part of 10 years. I guess it was a low-tech Simcity in a way.

 

[mendelman]

Those toys look great! With you Martini, can't wait to have kids, if only to play with their cool toys!

I had a similar toy when I was little. It was the Hot Wheels Large City Playest.

It was essentially a series of city blocks with nicely scaled (to the normal Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars) "typical" city buildings. It had gas stations, stores with large display windows, actual street lights, and landscaped medians.

All the sections could be 'hooked' together and reconfigured anyway you wished.

I loved that toy because it was more realistic than the folding city playsets. The folding palysets where not even close to the correct scale.

 

[Repo Man]

The model railroad is a great planning toy...you get to set up street syetems, rail systems, parks, etc. As a kid setting up the towns around the rail system was a lot more fun than actually playing with the trains.

 

[donk]

Don't forget lincoln logs. The low tech lego. Really good at teaching you about balance and cantilevers in buildings.

 

[Gedunker]

Lego (literally "play good" is a danish contraction for "Leg", pronounced "lay", and "Godt", pronounced "go")

They were designed by a carpenter on the Jutland peninsula for his sons and were originally wood. I understand if you can find the original wood ones they would be quite valuable.

My grandmother always sent my brother and me Lego sets from Denmark each Christmas. We still have many of them and I am always amazed at the smallest blocks and the lack of warnings: "Choking Hazard" and "Not for Children Under 3".

I guess we were just smarter kids in those days :-D

 

[ludes98]

Re: Re: We gotta start 'em young nowadays....or Planning toys

I lived and breathed Lego land until I was old enough for it to be really un-cool.

Wait Legos aren't cool for adults? Damn.

I still have mine. Saving them for the kids. I enjoy woodworking as my adult replacement.

 

[Seabishop]

My daughter has a village made of cardboard boxes made to look like small town stores (I forget the name of the toy). You put them where you want on a nylon mat that is the town complete with roads, train tracks, and parks. Without my encouragement she likes to group the buildings together to form a cohesive main street and preserve the open space. Her little sister likes to stumble in like Godzilla and destroy the town.

She's only 3 1/2 but she really wants to be an architect so she can make purple buildings.

 

[SkeLeton]

Gee, I must have played with Legos until I was like... 14 :-$

Well I can't say I didn't have fun! Though the majority of my Lego collection was amassed in the US, 'cause Legos here are quite expensive...

 

[Trail Nazi]

We just bought my nephew the Brio airport set. It was his favorite toy at Christmas. Plus, like Lego, they start them out young - 24 months. These toys are the best for creating new planners.

There are other forms of planning propaganda too. Such as the planning sheets, you know the ones with various transportation networks or little towns on them. I bought my child some clothes actually called the "urban" mouse and "rural" mouse and they have urban and rural scenes.

 

[JNL]

Another Lego fan here: I had a farm, gas station, couple of house sets, some ships and other bits and pieces. Used to look forward to seeing what new sets we'd get each Christmas.

My little sister had Duplo - the junior version of Lego.

Dad has some Meccano (metal construction set) which I think can be quite valuable now, depending on the age of the set.

 

[martini]

H, mendleman, etal, I know whatcha mean about Legos. My brother and I had thousands of the little buggers floating around the house. Stepping on random onesies was the worst. We were primarily concered with cars(dad raced them), but I still managed to build garages, buildings and streets. I used to build "mountains" out of a large rug and pillows for hotwheels too. The carpet that was in my bedroom was very blocky and symmetrical, making city creation easy for both hotwheels and lego cars.

I've got a baby due in May, so I'm all excited. I know these type of toys area ways off, but I can still get them, right? Thats not against the rules is it?

 

[donk]

As a kid I inherited a full mecano set from the 40's and 50's. It was great fun and useful for making things for other tous (FP adventure people forts and cars) Unfortunately, it was lost in a fire.

I wish I had it today, you could make really cool bookcases and CD racks out of it.

 

[JNL]

Stepping on random onesies was the worst.

I agree, that really hurt!!

And I think that having kids is the perfect excuse to acquire and play with cool toys

 

[donk]

And I think that having kids is the perfect excuse to acquire and play with cool toys

So I'll have to put my "where the wild things are" toys away and not look at lego auctions on ebay until then.

 

[JNA]

And I think that having kids is the perfect excuse to acquire and play with cool toys

That's so true also for us that are Uncles!

 

[donk]

That's so true also for us that are Uncles!

Good now I have an excuse, (un)fortunately, I only see my nephews maybe once a year.

 

[Plannerbabs]

My husband still collects toys...I had the house-building sets for Legos when I was a kid. Do they still make those? They were so detailed. One of my friends had a gravel driveway and a little brother with a lot of Hot Wheels, and we used to carve out streets and parking lots in the gravel and make our own huge city...used to drive her dad nuts...

 

[donk]

Not really toy related, but kid play thing.

Did anyone else use to reroute the runoff in their driveways to control it or control it with a series of dams and spill ways? I used to spend hours doing that and floating sticks down the rivers I created.

 

[SGB]

[ot]

Did anyone else use to reroute the runoff in their driveways to control it or control it with a series of dams and spill ways? I used to spend hours doing that and floating sticks down the rivers I created.

Driveway runoff? Heck, my friend and I used to dam and reroute small woodland streams! We especially liked to "create habitat" for crayfish and minnows.[/ot]

 

[Tranplanner]

Did anyone else use to reroute the runoff in their driveways to control it or control it with a series of dams and spill ways? I used to spend hours doing that and floating sticks down the rivers I created.

Whenever the snow started melting on my street, I'd be out there making sure the runoff could get into the sewer grates...and I'd create little dams and stuff too.

 

[biscuit]

[ot]

Driveway runoff? Heck, my friend and I used to dam and reroute small woodland streams! We especially liked to "create habitat" for crayfish and minnows.[/ot]

[kid planner dork story]
We would go down to the large creek near the house and dig out channels, canals and harbors for our "towns." Afterwards we'd go Godzilla on them and trample everything, and then go for a swim.

I would also build entire cities out of cinder blocks and bricks left over from building my parents house. These things would often get pretty large and included streets, bridges and sometimes even names and made up histories. Amish Sim-City in 3-D [/kid planner dork story]

 

[martini]

Not really toy related, but kid play thing.

Did anyone else use to reroute the runoff in their driveways to control it or control it with a series of dams and spill ways? I used to spend hours doing that and floating sticks down the rivers I created.

Oh hell yes I did. I think that any kid that grows up in a northern climate and doesn't do that is insane. On top of the ice, we also had a gravel driveway, so we had the ice channels and the gravel 'river' beds. I'd spend hours out there making sure the driveway was drained.

I also grew up on a ravine lot, so I was down in the bottom playing in the stream, diverting and damming almost everyday in the summer. To this day, I swear that how I got my ability to ignore the effects of itchweed on my skin. Though I was never dumb enough to use it as TP as my freind did. That was funny.

 

[SGB]

My 4 year old son actually likes to watch me play with Sim City 4 Deluxe. He loves to watch stuff develop and redevelop when I set the game on "cheetah" speed!

[ot] He's actually an urbanist in training. He spent his first two years of life in a village home, and now that we live outside a village, he constantly asks "When can we go play on the sidewalks?"[/ot]

 

[mendelman]

Oh hell yes I did. I think that any kid that grows up in a northern climate and doesn't do that is insane.

the best was, for two years, my family had a house with 100 feet of Lake Huron sand beach frontage. At the time, being a 12-13 yr old, it was great.

Summer: you have the lake to swim in, gather the shale and cobblestones from underwater and build/bury practically everything on/in the sand beach. Many matchbox car drivers lost there lives when the sand dams and cities would be destroyed from the sudden Lake tidal surges.

Winter: play on the 100 feet of Lake ice, knowing that you could fall in but not giving a darn.


I'm with everyone on draining spring melt . Even now I have to restrain myself.

 

[JNL]

Good now I have an excuse, (un)fortunately, I only see my nephews maybe once a year.

Your own or someone elses - they're all a good excuse. Though I don't have any children, or nieces or nephews yet...

Ok so you don't need an excuse. Remember "growing old is compulsory - growing up is optional"

 

[SGB]

Remember "growing old is compulsory - growing up is optional"

[ot]My parental units - in their mid 70's - proudly display a sign in their kitchen that reads "It's never too late to decide what you want to do when you grow up."[/ot]

 

[Gedunker]

[ot]My parental units - in their mid 70's - proudly display a sign in their kitchen that reads "It's never too late to decide what you want to do when you grow up."[/ot]

The alternate being "You can't always be young, but you can always be immature".

 

[Michele Zone]

My version is: I am trying to make-up for my Misspent Youth, which I Wasted on Being Serious and Responsible. So, now, I am on a Mission to Entertain Myself.

As for childhood dam building: The whole neighborhood used to get together once in a while and build a huge dam across the wide, shallow, channelized part of the creek in the little patch of woods behind our house. It was most fun when there had been a lot of rain and the creek was carrying more water than usual. (Last time I was there, the patch of woods had been replaced with more subdivision.)

I had a store bought doll house. But I still liked to make houses for my dolls with cinderblocks and the like. And when my kids were little, we had a folding dining table and I would fold one side of it down and drape blankets over it and furnish it with kid sized furniture. The roll-up door for accessing the folding chairs was their back door and if I set it up in the hall way, we could turn each section of the hall around the table into some other "room" of their "house".

 

[Cardinal]

Donk, SGB, Tranplanner, Biscuit, Martini and Mendelman - You guys really are planning geeks. (Of course, I also re-routed streams, built "forts" in the woods, laid out cities on the beach to be destroyed by tsunamis, played in the sandbox, etc., so count me among the planning geeks.)

How about model railroads? I used to have a 4x8 layout that my parents let me build in the rec room. I'd love to start one up again, keeping it in the 1930's-50's, during the transition from steam to diesel.

 

[SGB]

Just to reinforce my geek status: I had a HO train set on a 4x8' table as a kid, too.

My son has a 3x5' table for his wooden "Thomas the Tank Engine" train set.

 

[Downtown]

Mwa ha ha! Begin the indoctrination! Rob is dying to get jack one of those mats for the floor that is the city with the highway system that you can "drive" your matchbox cars on.

question: do they have matchbox bicycles?

 

[JNA]

question: do they have matchbox bicycles?

I think what you are describing is a good old fashion pedal car http://www.pedalcarusa.com/firetruck_big_red.htm

or even more expensive are those electric cars?

Start them young thinking rugged with this
Power Wheels Jeep Wrangler Restage by Fisher-Price
[url
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000J41W.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg[/url]

 

[donk]

question: do they have matchbox bicycles?

They are called finger bikes...

 

[Tranplanner]

How about model railroads? I used to have a 4x8 layout that my parents let me build in the rec room. I'd love to start one up again, keeping it in the 1930's-50's, during the transition from steam to diesel.

I am an active model railroader, though my stuff is in storage until the basement gets renovated. Already planning where the layout is going to go...

 

[martini]

My dad still has his train set up in his basement, It used to be two 4x8 sheets large, but my mom is requesting hobby space in the same room, so he cut it down.

I used to have the AFX slotcar tracks too. Not really plannign based perse, but still involved getting the tracks to loop together. I think the longest I ever had it set up for was almost 30 feet.