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The authors examined technological and traditional infant toys to understand the U.S. toy market facing today's care givers. They found significant differences in the two types of toys in terms of their developmental targets-with more traditional toys aimed at physical development and more technological toys aimed at cognitive development. Given that the toy market is so vast and that technological toys sometimes come with considerable costs, they argue for the need to understand more precisely how toys are marketed to prevent exploitation based on the pursuit of a so-called "brainy baby"
Key words: educational toys; gender-specific toys; developmental toys; technical toys; traditional toys; toy marketing
FROM MOTOR MILESTONES to language acquisition and developing social relationships, the experiences that happen during infancy set the stage for the rest of our lives (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council 2015). In particular, play (both with and without physical toys) is, according to research, an essential component of infancy, which significantly affects an infant's physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development (Healy, Mendelsohn, and Council on Early Childhood 2019; Landry et al. 1998; Ruff and Rothbart 1996). At the same time, care givers' perceptions and beliefs, as well as the ways in which toys are marketed (Al Kurdi 2017; Hassinger-Das et al. 2021), have an impact on the types of toys that care givers purchase for their children (Boe and Woods, 2018). This leads us to two important questions: what do the toy boxes of today contain, and how well do today's toys promote child development as evidenced from play research?
Toys designed for young children made up approximately 10 percent of the U.S. toy market in 2021, which was valued at approximately $38.2 billion (The Toy Association 2022). Despite the broad impact of and the high demand for toys for infants from birth to twenty-four months of age, America's toy indus- try often does not consult experts in child development when designing toys (Gardner et al. 2012). Indeed, although research is limited, extant evidence about care giver and child use of technologically "enhanced," battery-operated toys can result in significantly different interactions than those with traditional toys (Bergen et al. 2009; Zosh et al. 2015).
We aim to expand the literature examining the marketplace for technological and traditional toys...