Sucker-Me Elmo

What Children Learn from Their Robo-Toys
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Adults of a certain age remember with fondness their first electronic toys: the halting digital commands of the learning game “Speak & Spell,” introduced in 1978, or the plastic flashing lights of the memory game “Simon.” Compared to contemporary toys, such retro electronica appears quaint. The recently released Robosapien V2 biomorphic robot, a “fusion of technology and personality,” includes 67 preprogrammed functions such as “throw, kick, dance, kung-fu, fart, belch, rap, and more” and Hasbro’s three-foot-tall Butterscotch FurReal Friends pony shakes her head and emits contented whinnies when you brush her mane. The most popular toy in the 2006 holiday season was the T.M.X. Tickle Me Elmo, a 15-inch-tall electronic terror that performs histrionic giggling fits to entertain children ages 18 months to 7 years. Even old-fashioned toys have been updated to suit our technological age: owners of the first Baby Alive doll, introduced in 1973, worked a lever on the doll’s back to make her swallow mushy concoctions with names like “Cheery Cherry” and “Yummy Banana” that you shoveled into Baby’s mute, puckered mouth. Today’s Baby Alive is a robotic little marvel who blinks, grimaces, sleeps, and precociously informs you when she “has a stinky.”

According to the NPD Group, the average American planned to spend $153 on toys during the 2006 holiday season. Much of this money was spent on electronic toys, and industry analysts expected toy manufacturers to enjoy considerable sales gains, much of it fueled by consumers’ purchase of pricey electronic playthings like Robosapien and Butterscotch. Six of the top ten toys in FamilyFun magazine’s Toy of the Year Award list for 2006 are electronic.

In addition, parents continue to buy “educational” electronic toys from companies like LeapFrog, hoping to give their infants and toddlers an academic head start. Toy companies market “learning laptops” with Batman, Barbie, or “Disney Princess” themes to toddlers. VTech promotes its game console, V.Smile, to children ages 3 to 8, and claims the device, which uses a wireless connection to project content directly onto your television, “goes beyond passive developmental videos with a breakthrough, interactive approach to learning.”

But two recent studies suggest that the oft-touted educational benefits of such toys are illusory, and child development experts caution that kiddie electronics, even those bought purely for entertainment, can have negative side effects such as inhibiting creativity and promoting short attention spans.

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Christine Rosen, "Sucker-Me Elmo," The New Atlantis, Number 15, Winter 2007, pp. 119-122.