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Thursday, December 27, 2007

FOOD PLAY : Do you prefer eating stones or sweets ?


The European regulation prevents toy makers to sell toys imitating food so well that kids would be eating them. Sadly, there is no such specific regulation in the US yet to prevent toy makers imitating food products and therefore, US kids will keep eating.... toys !

But let's take a specific extreme example. I was visiting the New York Museum of Natural History yesterday, and I came accross two different items sold by the shop that really looked alike.
The first one was a collection of real (polished) stones to encourage kids to get some interest for geology and collecting stones. Many stones were on display, freely, for children to play with.
The second item were sweets and candies imitating... stones !

Sold by two different company, the New York Museum of Natural History figured out it would be a good idea to sell both items in the same place.
I have bought both items and placed the "candy stones" on the "real polished stones", and the result is that... you can't see the difference (see photo).

Question :
How many kids will break their teeth trying to eat real stones while thinking they are putting a sweet in their mouth ?

Where you can't see the difference, food imitations is a very bad idea for the toy industry...

1 comment:

Jean-Philippe said...

Italian plastic food maker :
http://www.lap-biella.com/prodotti_scolastico.php?tipo=deco&cat=1