Fun Ho! Toys Go On Forever...

Toy hunters are on the prowl. They're searching the shop shelves for presents like AIBO the robotic dog. He's a smart toy. Inside AIBO is a 64- bit processor and a 32- megabite RAM. He has a digital camera for eyes.

There was a time when toys were simple. They were tough and real looking and made your brain tick. The more you thought about them the more real they became. They grew to great sizes inside your head. You drove them, raced them and took them to war. They were amazing. They were made in Inglewood. You could leave them in the rain!

Rewind

Jack Underwood first tinkered with his Fun Ho! toys in 1935. What else was happening way back then?

True or false? In the 1930s:

1. People can buy a chocolate covered ice cream for the first time. It's called an "Eskimo pie".

2. The Government builds the first state houses so that some New Zealanders can live in well built homes and pay a low rent.

3. There are less than a thousand doctors in New Zealand.

4. People pay about 10s 6d to visit the doctor. That's $1.05.

5. All school children make it past Standard 6. (Year 8).

Now and then

Try this activity in a group of four and pair up. Look at the photo below. One pair draws up a newspaper advertisement to sell this toy to children from the 1960s. The other pair draws up an ad for a similar but more sophisticated car-one for today's kids!

Your ad needs a headline, a picture, some details about the toy and it should give the name of the shop.

Sell this toy!

Tall tale?

Decide in your group which parts in this story are fact and which parts are fiction.

This week's story calls the toy pictured below "very un-PC".  Kids ran around shooting each other with these guns in the 1950s and 60s. If you were shot you made your legs go all wobbly and dropped down dead. That was okay because if you counted to 100 by 5s you could come alive and sneak off to shoot the shooter that shot you. It was all good fun and you learnt to run fast and dive for cover behind pot plants and under hedges. The same skills were useful on the rugby field and one of the reasons the All Blacks didn't win the World Cup was that they didn't grow up with these toys. Toy guns had become very un-PC and as children they didn't learn to run and dive quite fast enough.

Would this make your legs go all wobbly and make you drop down dead?

Word wise

All these words are in this week's story. Decide whether the best meaning will be (a) or (b) and then check your choice when you read the story.

1. irresistible (a) fascinating (b) avoidable

2. fleeting ghost (a) a fast moving ghost (b) a ghost you only see for a brief moment

3. PC (a) politically correct (b) personal computer

4. hardy (a) easily damaged (b) strong and sturdy

5. inspired (a) getting too warm (b) triggered

6. wane (a) decline (b) increase

7. another nail in the coffin (a) a step towards the end (b) a step in the manufacturing process

8. evoke (a) get rid of (b) call up

9. avid collector (a) a part time collector (b) a very keen collector

Read on

Read the story but as you read look for these things:

The way the writer heads back into her own past to introduce the story.

How the writer describes the way young playmates will bring diggers and tractors to life.

Why these toys are still around today.

The one museum toy that isn't a Fun Ho! toy.

How this museum will change for the better one day.

Why the firm that made these toys had to close down.

Thumbs

Do this in your group of four but take a look at this Fun Ho! site first.

Your group needs one A3 piece of paper folded into two columns. At the top of one column print, "Thumbs up because:" and at the top of the other put, "Thumbs down because:"

1. The firearms in this museum are called, "very un-PC". Talk about what this "PC" term means.

2. Now decide whether you agree or disagree with this statement:

"Today's Playstation games that involve war and shooting should be banned in the same way the toy guns and rifles of earlier generations should have been banned."

3. Jot down some ideas in the thumbs up and the thumbs down column and share them with the rest of the class or another group.

Built to last

Fun Ho! toys are tough. Check them out here and to find out just how tough they are read about the bus crash at the start of this story. Read a little further to see what a Fun Ho! toy once did to a car tyre!

Lead warning!

This week's story shows that toys were once made of lead. This was in the days before people realised just how dangerous lead could be. Lead is especially harmful to children under 6 but anyone who eats, drinks, or breathes something that has too much lead can get lead poisoning. 

New Zealand's house paint had high lead levels until 1965. The lead toys have gone but little kids can still get sick by chewing on lead painted window sills or paint that has flaked off. Lead dust is dangerous too. It's very fine and can be invisible. It gets onto little hands and into mouths.

Read the first part of this and then write a safety message for a sticker to go on paint cans.

Nail in the company coffin

Underwoods hasn't been the only Taranaki workplace to close in the last 20 years. There have been others too like clothing factories, a freezing works and even a car assembly factory. Richard gives three reasons for Underwoods closing. He blames plastic, the long life of the toys and cheap imports from other countries.

Think, pair and then share your ideas with a classmate.

1. Which of the three was probably the main reason for Underwoods closing?

2. Once upon a time the Government used to stop low priced imports like clothes and toys coming into New Zealand. Decide whether they should still do this.

Now share your ideas in class.

Super salesperson

What if Fun Ho! toys could be found on toy shelves of The Warehouse this Christmas? Would they still be popular? Pick any Fun Ho! toy from here. Your job is to "sell" it to your classmates. Convince them they really need one of these toys to give as a present this Christmas. Show them how it works and give examples of games that can be played. Work it out, think of the person they might give the present to and then do the big sell.

Fast forward to 2003

Smart toys! 

Toys are getting smarter. 60% of preschool toys now have some sort of computer chip in them. You play with the toy and the toy plays back. Teddy bears have been integrated with a one way cordless phone so people can leave messages. The bear giggles when the message arrives and the child can listen to the message by pressing the bear's left paw. Press the right paw and they can listen to a story that mum or dad has downloaded. There's a polar bear and panda bear model too.

There's a  baby doll that is so life like it wriggles and cries if it wants to be fed or changed. It even blinks at random and then there's Elmo who asks kids to help him up if he falls down. 

Some people are worried that toys may be getting too smart! The toys are deciding how to play instead of the kids. Rank that statement on the  "believable scale". Number 1 is "absolutely true!" and  number 5 is "absolute nonsense!" Compare your ranking with others.

Top toys?

So what's tops in 2003? Toys from the 1980s are making a comeback. Carebears, Tranformers and My Little Pony are twice as popular as last year. Strawberry Shortcake dolls are four times as popular.

Spongebob Squarepants is a big hit and toy websites say the number one toy for girls this year is a Bratz doll. Right now though these toys have more hits on the internet than any other. It's said they are this year's top five.

1. Playstation
2. Xbox
3. Barbie
4. Bratz
5. Yu Gi Oh! cards.

Make your own top five toy list of all time and compare it with your classmates.