toys

Kid's these days are smart. Sometimes to smart, and too cute, for their own good. This little girl, for example, bargains or more correctly 'extorts' her dad to get the toy she so badly wants.

Barbie has some monster-sized competition.

Oh, the good old days! When kids could be kids and play with dangerous 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.

Ever since it was introduced in 1963, the Easy-Bake Oven has been marketed exclusively to girls, leaving aspiring boy chefs out in the cold. But that's about to change thanks to a campaign led by a teen girl on behalf of her four-year-old brother, who loves to cook.

Thirteen year-old McKenna Pope is fighting mad at Hasbro, and this little activist wants some positive changes now. The eighth grader, who hails from Garfield, New Jersey, has started a petition on Change.org asking Hasbro to make their Easy Bake Ovens more gender-neutral.

You can always spot a parent around the holiday season. Their hair is a frazzled mesh of cow licks and stray strands as if it’s been pulled by a crowd of frantic people. Their eyes dart around in all directions desperately seeking something that could suddenly appear at a moment’s notice. They break down and cry during commercials that advertise “the hottest toy of the holiday season.”

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.

Holiday sales may be up this year, but some retailers have still managed to find the cloud in the silver lining: unlike years past when hot commodities like Tickle Me Elmo or Zhu Zhu Pets pushed parents into buying frenzies, no single toy has broken away from the pack as a runaway hit.