Playmobil

The official toy of Grinwout's would be the Lego, if there were an official toy of Grinwout's. Many are our hours spent building everything from little houses to intergalactic space vehicles. Even without children in the house anymore, the Legos still come out on holidays. One of our visitors used them to make the flags of many nations, which was about as un-mechanical as you can get with Legos without being banned forever. We prefer our Legos to be more complicated. That seems to be the whole point of them in the first place.

The Playmobil toys, on the other hand, would seem to appeal more to the flag-making set. You don't really build anything with them, of course. Their entire purpose is different from Legos, as they are meant to be toys for role-playing games. Of course, once you build a castle out of Legos there are plenty of options for role-playing, but that may be beside the point. These toys are apples and oranges, intended for different parts of the young brain. We never had an Playmobil toys that I can remember in our Lego household, though. Maybe we were shortchanging the younger generation in the role-playing arena. We never claimed to be expert child-rearers.

The Geek Dad blog at Wired offers a look at Playmobil in A New Generation of Playmobil Fans. We go from unboxing to assembly (some of which is required) to playing. Pretty interesting.

I’ll confess: I was never much of a Playmobil kid. I may have had a figurine or two (and, presumably, some sets to go with them) but honestly I can’t remember them and I no longer have them... Recently I was offered the chance to try out a few Playmobil sets, and I was curious: how would my daughters respond to them?... While we were at the toy store, I even showed them the Playmobil aisle to see what they thought of them. My younger daughter picked out an alligator for herself, but both of them were kind of “meh” about the idea of the sets. Until the sets arrived.

Reading this makes you just want to stop reading and, instead, do a little basic playing. Whether you'll be convinced about Playmobil remains to be seen, but at least, if you a Legonian, you'll begin to see the appeal.
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