Toys as Therapy

Lenore Skenazy
Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:23:46 -0800
Opinion

The New York Toy Fair is a huge convention where manufacturers big and small display their toys to retailers who will hopefully buy them and sell them to the public. I've been going off and on for a couple of decades, and here's what I saw that's new:

STEM IS OUT, "MESH" IS IN:

A few years ago, it was hard to tell the Toy Fair from MIT. The aisles were filled with science, technology and math toys teaching everything from AP bio to quantum physics. Any toy that wasn't particularly scientific nonetheless claimed it was: Toy cars taught Newtonian laws of motion. Toy ovens? Thermodynamics. Slime taught the chemical properties of something so gross I can't stand touching it. It's like playing with liver.
Updated: Thu Feb 26, 2026

The New York Toy Fair is a huge convention where manufacturers big and small display their toys to retailers who will hopefully buy them and sell them to the public. I've been going off and on for a couple of decades, and here's what I saw that's new:

STEM IS OUT, "MESH" IS IN:

A few years ago, it was hard to tell the Toy Fair from MIT. The aisles were filled with science, technology and math toys teaching everything from AP bio to quantum physics. Any toy that wasn't particularly scientific nonetheless claimed it was: Toy cars taught Newtonian laws of motion. Toy ovens? Thermodynamics. Slime taught the chemical properties of something so gross I can't stand touching it. It's like playing with liver.

But now the cool thing is "MESH" toys — toys that provide mental, emotional and social health. Which are all toys ever made, of course. But today's toys insist they teach kids how to lose, or share, or "deal with big emotions." (Have you noticed all emotions have been promoted to "big emotions" lately? Another trend.)

Basically, the old parental fear that kids wouldn't get into Duke has been replaced by the new parental fear that even if their kids DO get in, they'll sit in their dorm rooms, playing with slime. So "toys as therapy" it is.

(CERTAIN) KIDS WELCOME!

The strict rule at the Toy Fair was always, believe it or not, NO KIDS ALLOWED. There were fewer kids at the fair than at Scores. But this year, they were swarming all over. Had the rule makers gone soft?

Nope. They'd gone online and realized that kid influencers are where it's at. Kids watching other kids unbox toys is actually not that different from guys watching whatever's going on at Scores — a mesmerizing, tantalizing, expensive way to unwind. So influencer kids and their stage-door moms were marching up and down the aisles, collecting swag and contracts.

Then, toward the end of the day, I saw three influencers — young boys — playing on the floor. They looked like puppies, giggling, climbing all over each other and having the time of their lives. The toy they were playing with?

Looked like an L-shaped piece of Styrofoam — possibly packing material.

JUST CHUTE ME

For some reason, Chutes and Ladders is still on the market. If that's a game, mothballs are bar food. Chutes and Ladders is about as fun as eye surgery.

Nonetheless, I found a version of the classic being sold at one of the toy booths. It remains the game where you finally find yourself just a few blessed spaces from ending the match (which began last Tuesday), when — WHAM! A chute opens up and you are back at square one.

"It metaphorically prepares you for life," the salesman told me. Thanks, Buddha. His company also sells a lot of jigsaw puzzles, which are another perfect metaphor for life: They're hard. They're briefly beautiful. And, en fin, everything ends up in a box.

OK. That's a little dark. Let me add that it was nice to see the booth doing a brisk business in old-fashioned, no-screen fun like dominoes, cards and yo-yos. Plenty of fun!

TOYS IMITATE LIFE

Another bustling booth at the fair featured dollhouses of every size and price point, with one thing in common: The more items it came with, the more that parents were willing to pay. Yet the sets also came with pullout bins to stuff all the extra stuff in.

In other words, just like our homes, they were cluttered with things we thought we needed, paid good money for, and then couldn't stand tripping over.

Play is obviously practice for adulthood. The happy fact remains: Whenever kids get together and do it, it's wonderful.

Let them play!