Puritanical attempts to cure society by taking toys away from children are hypocritical and futile.

If you are going to take away war toys, then what are you to replace them with? Children need to feel courageous, brave, and assertive. They need to feel strong; that is the purpose of their play.

The main point for me is that toys are incredibly more important than we realized.

The connections in the brain fade away unless used. We know that early stimulation of children leads to higher cognitive scores.

Adults spend $500 billion on games and leisure activity each year, and some adults lament that kids get $15 billion for toys.

The imaginary child implied by the toys on exhibit in Hong Kong was impossible to reconcile with my actual child. I didn't think I'd like to meet the imaginary child they implied. That child was mad with contradictions. He was a machine-gun-toting, Chopin-playing psychopath with a sugar high and a short attention span.