This year has seen thousands of new toys and board games introduced in the market. Below are some of the best toys that stand out. These include everything from a talking Dino doll and a smartphone controlled race cars, to laser controlled obstacle courses and kid sized electric guitar. All of these toys are a sure way to delight your kids.
This is a toy created by a Cellist and composer, Phillip Sheppard, to help kids compose music on their own. It comes with 60 transparent music cards, which can be combined to create different sounds and notes. The child can then use a computer program to hear their tunes as played by a professional artist, or even print out their composition and play it for themselves. The toy is available for ages 6+ and the price starts at Approx $15.
2. HexBug VEX Robotics Age of Innovation Machines
The 2014 VEX iQ starter kit was quite successful and man people thought the kit was pretty awesome. This year, HexBug is back, and this time with an even cooler addition – the Age of Invention Machines collection. The VEX Robotics designed this with the aim of sparking STEM learning. It is comprised of hinges and gears, which can be interactively used to create pint size machines. Moreover, there is the Zeotrope version, which essentially turns images into movie scenes. Another favorite feature is Orbit, which creates a depiction of the earth’s orbit around the sun as well as the moon around the Earth. The price of the kit will vary by the kit, and the toy is available for ages 8+.
3. Makey Makey
Among the best toys 2016 is an easy to use kit, which can recreate the experience of a Nintendo game controller.in essence, it is a simple kit that your child can use to make a new controller with lead from a pencil, playdoh, or even apples and bananas. How? They just need to connect the object they chose as their command button to the controller board. Then, they will have to program the board to associate the object with a particular button on the keyboard. This will in turn make a connection between the object and the board itself. The computer thinks that they actually typed in a key. This is an incredible toy for kids with limitless creativity. It is available for Approx $70 for kids aged 8+.
This is very similar to Hello Barbie, a toy that debuted this year. The CogniToys Dino can talk and interact with kids intelligently. The toy was created by a rather small startup company via the KickStarter campaign. It can intelligently answer questions asked by the kid. In addition, it can remember certain specific details about the conversation through cloud storage. While there are some fears that this information could be hacked, Dino toys open up a new niche altogether, to help kids with speech impediments or autism. It will be available in November for ages 4 to 7, at Approx $99.
Your toy enthusiast, Brenda
