Judging Goldie Blox on its Essentials: Is it Fun?

Putting together the front axle of the parade float.

When the Goldie Blox video went viral, I not only saw it everywhere, but got tagged by a number of friends. Apparently, as the educator, feminist mom of a just-about-to-be-three girl, I was the target audience.

My first thought: yay!  What a cool idea. There's the birthday gift I was looking for!

Then (within what, a day?) the backlash began: Is it feminist enough? (There are princesses and pink and purple pieces!) Creative enough? (Kits encourage not free play but building a particular structure from specific plans.)  Empowering enough? (Parade floats?) Smart enough? (Perhaps the Goldie Blox folks are better at PR than at building toys).

One question I could answer for sure. There was truly far too much talking, writing, blogging, tweeting about this toy.  But, although I gave up my Goldie Blox research without buying a kit, the drama was really just a symptom of my (our?) general toy-buying neuroses. I continued to angst over every toy I did consider for my daughter.  She loves baby dolls, but should they have blue eyes like hers?  Or, explicitly non-blue eyes?  Should they have light skin or dark skin?  Can I buy her a broom and dust pan (as she always tries to use grown up ones and ends up knocking down every picture frame in the house?) or is that gender normative?  Should I buy her letter toys and games? She really prefers (and learns a ton from!) the letter games on the Kindle -- but of course Kindle time is screen-time, which might be frying her brain. And thus, every shopping trip was psychologically fraught.

When I finally came up for air, I thought (as usual) about our students. Kids really have only one criteria for a toy: is it fun?  And, our students' parents -- who come from all walks of life but include a lot of working class and first generation immigrants -- tend to use the same criteria my parents did: is the fun worth the money?  

Seriously. How did this happen?  It just shouldn't be this hard to buy gifts.

In the end I bought very few. Lots of people buy my child too many gifts.  I decided let other people make these decisions and just watch.

And, at her birthday party: GoldieBlox and the Parade Float arrived.

After it was unwrapped, I quietly set it aside.  Despite the angst, I was excited. I wanted it to get a fair shake, not get lost in the morass of wrapping and other small pieces.

So yesterday, I brought the box to the breakfast table.  I wanted to get her excited.  But, I also wanted to prep.  Nothing kills the joy of a new joy like watching a parent read the instructions!

But, no instructions necessary; there was just a molded plastic box of parts, figurines, and a story book.  Every few pages the book presented a new creation with basic instructions on how to build it. The main attraction, the "Parade Float," had a blueprint.

With some prompting (and a number a breaks so that her doll could "help" put pieces together -- tricky with tiny plastic hands), we built each part of the float. Then we harnessed up the dog figurine who was meant to pull the float and we "played."  When I had to go, she called dad in to keep playing with her. The dog pulled the float; the little bear figurine was an "engineer" ( a mechanical engineer or more of a train engineer? -- hard to be sure) and various friends "rode" the float.

The three-year-old's verdict: fun.

The social scientist, feminist, educator, over-angsting mom verdict:

1. Ruby, the over-dressed, float-riding girl is sort of annoying.  But, Goldie wears overalls.  I can live with it.
2. The book's illustrations are helpful and clear, but leave enough wiggle room for the kids to figure out some of the details. As an experienced Ikea builder, I give them a thumbs up.
3. The story is super thin. If you're going to center your product on narrative, can you write a better story?  It reads like such an after-thought.  For a story-lover, that was disappointing.
4. Why aren't there Goldie and Ruby figures?  When my kid plays, characters are key. The story was weak, so she pretty much made up her own, but it seems like we should have figurines of the two main characters, not just the secondary ones (maybe they come in another set?)
5. It's all very doable. My just-turned three-year-old did most of the building herself and, while I had to do a lot of pointing and prompting, she followed the directions pretty well.  An older kid could sit down and execute on her (or his!) own. And the pieces are flexible, so the kids do have to fiddle a little to get the pieces of work as they should (unlike, say, a snap together model that has a "correct" fitting for each piece).
6. My favorite part: there are six more structures drawn out at the end of the book.  We didn't get to them this time, but we will. They are drawn in detail, but do not come with step by step instructions. 

Many of the critiques that I read about Goldie Blox state that it doesn't really encourage inventive thinking because it gives explicit instructions to build an item. Many critics suggest that Legos are superior -- allowing kids to just build.  I disagree.  As a kid I had a Lego house. I loved building it.  But, I didn't really have the creativity to build anything else. I wished they had given me some thoughts for next steps. And, as an educator, I find that a lot of kids are like I was as a kid. The kid who is born to be an engineer is going to build. Give her some tinker toys and she's making vehicles. But what about the kid who may not have innate engineering genius, but who you want to encourage to be an engineer (or think like an engineer)?  She needs some steps. Give her detailed instructions, then some more ideas, and then she will be more likely to make the leap and start inventing herself.

When I teach writing, I find that there are two types of kids. Those who love to write, write. You can teach them style and form but they give you plenty of content to work with. They will take writing classes and listen to their writing teachers and over time their writing will improve. Then there are kids who hate to write. And it's hard to teach them because they produce nothing to give them feedback on. Give then a blank piece of paper and those kids can return to you, in an hour, a blank piece of paper.  

"I can't think of anything to write," they will wail.  And no matter how many blank pieces you give them, they won't write.

And, all rambling evidence to the contrary, I was one of those kids.  Now, when I teach writing, I steal techniques from Ms. Dexter, the teacher who taught me to write. Give explicit assignments (in my writing camps, we start by replacing adjectives in someone else's stories, then move on to "Show-not-tell" essays -- write an essay that shows me that the teacher was boring without ever using the word boring!, then exposition pieces where they explain something they know how to do). We take tiny steps to help them get words on the page. After time and practice the  blank page is not so daunting and, via baby steps, all of the kids in my writing camp write a personal essay by the end of the week.

So, although Goldie Blox is far more explicit than creative, I think it serves a purpose. Goldie Blox gives structure to a kid who could learn to love building but may not be bursting with ideas. And, yes, it uses pink and purple, but whoever said that a feminist can't enjoy pink and purple.

So, although it's not the perfect toy, I'm going to stop reading about Goldie Blox and just keep playing with it. I think it's kind of fun.