The Joy of Toying!

 Toy-makers contribute largely to our GDP, do we owe them something in return?

Image by cliff1066™ via Flickr

Prologue

Every finished product that we use since the daybreak to switching off the bed-side lamp at night has been put together by a skilled worker. Skills thus are quite essential for our routine life and more so if you have an ever-demanding toddler at your house who needs a soft-toy for every occasion as small as a weekend or a national holiday.

It was during my last visit to the toy shop with my bundle of joy that I got this idea of penning down the skills required for becoming a toy-maker. Every child, let alone mine, has his/her own stock of toys, which become quite an inherent part of his/her development. Their toys not only help them develop motor or/and sensory skills but also facilitate the development of problem solving skills. If chosen with a little discretion, toys can engage children for hours along with teaching them simple concepts of shapes and colors. Toys are the best friend of a child, irrespective of his/her age and are therefore found in abundance in almost every Indian family (the range may vary). The maker of toys therefore, is quite crucial as s/he designs and manufacturers an assorted range of toys for children.

Introduction –

Toy – the very word excites people and reminds our childhood to most of us. I still remember the toys that my mother used to make for me from sand during my summer vacation. Coming over that nostalgia, let me drive home the point that we have traversed far away from the sand age and the toys now are as advanced as an I-pad. But the average middle class children or the common man’s children still play with traditional toys which are made of a variety of material. Right from wooden toys to plastic toys, children enjoy all of them. But plastic toys dominate the toy-industry and have captured 80% of the market space, earning a regular profit of 10-20% per year. Some other popular types of toys include fabric toys, metal toys, paper toys, and arts and craft toys. Cottage industry is the major producer of the last category in India. Metal toys being sharp are not extremely popular and paper toys, being fragile and less durable also score less on the popularity chart. The category, which is becoming extremely popular these days thus, is the soft toys.