Pseudo-Creative Toys

Posted on December 27th, 2009 by toymaven

Okay, so the wrapping paper’s in the trash, the cookies have been devoured and the poor little Christmas tree is dry as a bone. There are a lot of new toys in my house at the moment – toys I’ve purchased and toys my children have received as gifts. The next few posts will be solely devoted to the aftermath of Christmas toys. What worked? What didn’t? Well, we’re still discovering this, but I have to say that there is one toy I’ve been watching that I’m still kind of on the fence about.

That toy is (are?) PixOs, which are basically tiny little plastic dots that kids can form into shapes by placing them beside each other in a sort of plastic grid thingy. They then spritz them with water and the dots stick together forming a plastic dot sculpture which is pretty sturdy. Here’s an example:

I generally run from toys like PixOs since they contain several very bright red flags as follows:

1) They’re expensive – even the smallest PixOs product is about $10.00 for what amounts to a hand full of plastic dots, a special PixOs “pen” and a plastic grid work surface that’s about 4×4 inches. So basically $10.00 buys about 20 minutes of “creativity” and then your child is done with the product until you scarf up another $10.00 for the refills.

2) They have lots of brightly colored plastic pieces – after years of buying toddler toys that fit this description (think “Little People”), I have a strong aversion to any toy that can’t easily be thrown in a bin and stored out of site. PixOs has the added fun of a zillion tiny little plastic beads which are now forever stuck in between my floor boards. I only hope they’re not toxic to pets. Here’s what the set I bought for my kids looks like (this was about $26.00 at Target):

See what I mean? So now we own two of those monstrosities. But I have some more reservations…

3) PixOs are a pseudo-creative toy. Yep, so many of these types of toys exist (think “shrinky dinks”) that I’ve been inspired to create a whole new category for them. What makes a toy pseudo creative? Well, we’re not talking real art supplies here – this isn’t clay or colored pencils and a sketchbook or paint and popsicle sticks. PixOs holds the sweet promise of creativity which almost always ends in tears, boredom or disappointment. First of all, unless your child is extremely creative – and you know who you are – you’re pretty much stuck with the templates that come with the thing. You can buy PixOs refill packs with additional templates and beads (and you’ll have to fairly quickly) or go to the PixOs site and print some more templates, but there’s not a whole lot there. I do like the fact that you can design your own template on the site and print it out – so PixOs gets some points for that.

4) They aren’t entirely age appropriate. PixOs is indicated for children aged 4+ but my 5.5 year old (who is VERY artistic and good with her hands) can only conceptually deal with 2D PixOs designs of her own creation – she hasn’t tried following a pattern yet. So we now have a pile of useless PixOs asymmetrical sculptures which can’t really be played with. I can’t imagine a 4-year-old having a successful playtime experience with these things that doesn’t involve a very patient parent working with them.

5) They are useless when you’re not actually creating anything. Okay, I suppose this is debatable. I can envision my children making PixOs animals and people and playing with them – but the beads do tend to fall apart with too much handling and there really isn’t a lot of “playability” with finished pixOs sculptures. So you’re stuck with completed masterpieces that you have to throw away after you’ve moved them around the house fifty-seven times and finally got fed up with keeping them (or maybe that’s just me).

My Conclusion: Get a small kit first before you go all out like I did and get the large set. I would, in fact, avoid buying the larger sets altogether and just stick with buying a starter set and refills if your child really loves these things. Remember – toys that can be stored in drawers and bins are a-okay!

Amazon has starter sets for about $15.00 each:

Pixos Starter Set

| Category Christmas Unwrapped, Pseudo-Creative Toys