i made a toy

i made a toy

This morning I saw a cute orange-ish squirrel on the way to the metro station. It was a smaller, cuter, less rodent looking variety of squirrel that I have never seen before with cute orange tufts coming out of its ears. I usually think of squirrels as gross, but this one was really, really cute!

I have discovered that squirrels are a sort of novelty to Dutch people, as they only exist in small quantities in the south of Holland. Jorn and Daniel kept taking all these squirrel pictures in Central Park when we were on vacation in NY, which I found very irritating.

I couldn't get close enough to it to take a picture of it, so I decided to sculpt it. Coincidentally, I was eating a wedge of cheese with the red wax around it, so I made a squirrel toy in the spirit of spielwarenmesse. Here it is on a dessert plate.

Nuremberg, Part 3: What I saw

exhibition stand , uploaded by raisin.detre

This morning I looked everywhere for the Nintendo stand only to find out later that they aren't present at the toy fair this year. I did however see a lot of other knick knacks. I think my favorite toys at the toy fair are by far the board games and puzzles. Besides electronic consoles (that are not present at the fair), these types of games are the only ones that can hold a non-child's interest for any extended period of time while being often extremely simple.

Most of the big toy companies such as Mattel, LEGO, Hasbro, etc. including Silverlit have closed exhibition stands that can be accessed only by buyers (that can be snuck into with the exception of Mattel).

Some cool things:
1. 3D pirate ship for kids to color
2. suspended turning globes with no physical connection to its base
3. life sized terminator
4. everything LEGO (Indiana Jones!)
5. RC motorcycle with a rider that can shift his weight from side to side
6. All sorts of educational kids toys (i.e. crystal-gro variety, brain teasers)
7. Kinetic tin toys - there was one boat that could be powered by a candle across a tin of water

Many of the products seem to be for grown-up children (not adult toys, unfortunately). I am also surprised at the scale of some of the toys I have seen. In some cases, a whole room would have to be dedicated to a train set or model boat. It is funny to see that some of the model train sets developed by the Japanese are on a scale several times smaller than their competitors from elsewhere. Also, some products that don't seem to belong are products such as artist brushes, functional, toy (?) milling and lathe machines, grown up costumes, etc.

*I will add more to the list later.

Pictures of MP3 reactable toys

here are the animals i'm talking about in strange, non-western colors.


Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

Nuremberg, Part 1: Cultural Differences

I arrived in Nuremberg today via ICE (Deutsche Bahn's Intercity Express) train thirty minutes ago. Now I am sitting in my hotel room wikipedia-ing Nuremberg and waiting for our leader (just arrived from New York) to awaken from his jetlagged slumber.

On the way here I noticed a couple of things that my American mind, and maybe other people as well, might have trouble comprehending. The first point is regarding at least the Netherlands and Germany, and maybe other Europe. The second is regarding the color of U-bahn buttons.

1. In the bathroom there are two buttons for flushing one of the two major functions that can occur in a toilet bowl. One is significantly larger than the other by at least 2.5 times. The other is small and usually cut out of the larger button. Which one do you press for which function? Scroll down for the answer.


2. Buying a metro card for the U-bahn, I was confronted with a green, zuruck (back) and a red, abfart (continue). This is the complete opposite of logic especially when considering how the colors for go and stop in driving remain the same. Maybe it means CAUTION, you might be spending money on the wrong thing. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

More to come on this topic and on other toy or Nuremberg related things...

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Answer: big button = no. 2, little button = no. 1.

My logical answer would be the opposite. In my opinion, logically the button that should be bigger should be the one that is used more often not the reverse. Even after a year of pushing the wrong button, I still have the inclination to push the bigger one.

Poll: in your opinion, are the buttons logical?

Poll results, ok I lose:
Logical - 8: Athena (UNC), Gemma (UNC), Mike, Jenny, Jamie, Jean, etc.
Not-logical - 2: Shauna, Ellen

The results might be skewed by the UNC people because they are used to two flush functions.
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