toys

Andre Cassagnes, the man responsible for inventing the venerable Etch A Sketch, a toy that inspired countless children ever since it was introduced in 1960, has died at age 86 in France.

Scandinavian Toys"R"Us licensee Top-Toy has taken a new approach to making sure kids get what they really want for Christmas: a fully gender-blind catalog that erases the line between boys' and girls' toys.

In a pleasantly surprising move, a Swedish toy company called Top Toy has made a giant leap for gender equality amongst children. Top Toy's Christmas catalog features an interesting twist: the boys are the ones who are playing with dollhouses and the girls are happily playing with the Nerf guns.

This is a timelapse video of the process involved in taking the "Success Kid" meme and turning it into a tiny sandstone statue. Don't you want a tiny "success kid" you can keep in your pocket like a lucky rabbit foot?

Toys in the '70s sure were awesome, but let's face it -- they weren't always well-thought-out. In that spirit, we present 'Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces,' a large plastic doll that surely qualifies as one of the most disturbing toys of all time. If you owned one, you have our sympathy.

As a 16-year-old, Galia Slayen made a life-size Barbie out of wood, chicken wire, paper-mache and -- of course -- two big balloons as way to deal with her anorexia. Now, four years later, Slayen is a sophomore at Hamilton College and is using the massive (but freakishly slim) doll she built to start a conversation about eating disorders and body image issues.