My Children's Toys

I have two little boys ages 7 and 4. One of the great joys of being a parent is not passing on your great knowledge, or grooming your kids to be great leaders and possibly the next CEO of Microsoft. Not at all. One of the great joys of being a parent is being able to play with my children's toys. As we get older in life, it becomes socially unacceptable to play with cap-guns or Transformers or Matchbox cars. But with children, those things now become, not only accepted but, encouraged. Now since I only have boys, I can only list the toys that they play with, so there will be no Barbie dolls, My Little Pony, or whatever else little girls play with these days.

6. GeoTrax Train: If you don't have kids, you probably have never seen this toy because it's a fairly new one. It's really stinking cool though because it allows you and your kid to design different railroads and then run a battery operated train on the tracks. It teaches the kids a little creativity and keeps them busy for a long time, which is the main reason it makes this list. The biggest problem with this toy is when the boys get tired of playing with it, they rip it apart and leave sections of train tracks all over their room.

5. Legos: Everybody, regardless of gender, played with Legos growing up. Who can forget making a small semi-automatic rifle out of that 400 peice lego set you were given for your birthday? Certainly not me. Now I get to do the same with my boys only they enjoy making planes and cars rather than more destructive instruments of fun. But the downside of Legos is they are very small and can hide in the carpet only to be discovered not by the vacuum but by the bottom of your foot when you step on it. This great toy designed to teach my kids creativity would be higher on the list if not for that extremely painful point.

4. Spy Gear: My generation didn't really have too much formal spy gear but the recent movies Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2 have spawned a whole generation of toys that little boys want to have and will make them leave you alone. Any toy that makes your kids leave you alone are great toys. That alone would put this group of toys higher on the list if not for the fact there are so many different peices to have that it eventually costs you a month's salary to get all of them. But that is a small price to pay to have your kids play by themselves in the other room.

3. Transformers: When I was a young child playing in the 80's (yeah that's right), I remember trying to collect every Transformer I could and play with them at my buddy's house. Back then Transformers were made out of metal and sturdy plastic and held together with screws. The only way they got broken is if you attached bottle rockets or fire crackers to them like I did. This incredible toy would easily number 2 on the list if it weren't for the fact they are made so flimsy nowadays. Transformers fall apart so easily nowadays that you as a parent have to actually monitor how your children play with them and you have to actually, and frequently, repair them when they break.

2. Hot Wheels Cars: You cannot go wrong this toy. This is another toy that has transcended generations. I absolutely love all of the different designs they come up with for these cars. I could literally spend hours enacting different situations with these cars with my boys. But just like Transformers, the cars made nowadays are cheap and plastic. They aren't like the metal cars I had as a kid or my (much) older siblings had when they were kids. In fact, my kids have a number of cars I played with at their age 25 years ago. Why, because they were metal! Do you see the trend of how toys are made nowadays? Anyway, I still absolutely love playing with the cars and so do my kids and it's one of those toys that we can peacefully play with for a long time.

1. Wii: The single best gaming system for kids under the age of 10, period. This video game system is so completely awesome. When I was a kid the manufacturers of Wii, Nintendo, introduced their first gaming system. Super Mario Bros was played for hours and days at a time. I'm pretty sure Mike Tyson's Punch Out is still the greatest game ever designed. Nintendo was left in the dust for a while by all the other systems such as Sony Playstation, Xbox and other's. But Nintendo came back with a vengeance with the Wii. What other toy can teach my kids how to keep score in bowling and tennis, while also getting them to jump around and be active at the same time. My 4 year old absolutely goes nuts while playing tennis and to watch him play it is a sight to behold. I never thought a video game could make him sweat and out of breath. It's a great way for them to get some form of exercise during the cold winter months. While the Wii may cost quite a bit of money, it is worth every nickel.