Toys, Today & Yesterday

The international toy industry unites in Nuremberg and New York each February, at the cities’ respective trade-only Toy Fairs. While the general public beaver away to pay for recent holiday season excess, bets are placed on what products will garner the biggest ‘nag factor’ from kids next fall. February is also Black History Month, and hey its now year of the Rabbit: Gung Hay Fat Choy! C'mon, February's not so bad...

One (1) Keep an eye out for Tandar’s, recently launched at the Vegas CES show -- an interactive plush creature modeled on the endangered Tarsier, among the smallest primates on the planet, and nocturnal.

Two (2) At the Royal Ontario Museum currently, Playful Pursuits: Chinese Traditional Toys and Games. The only material used in the collection

is paper, wood and clay. These are not the toys of today.

My fave: the cricket house and 6 teeny plates for feeding your pet cricket. Crickets featured large in the Chinese culture, which we know from Mulan (the Disney version). Adults even held -- wait for it --cricket fights. Mellow.

Three (3) Also at the ROM: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa.

The exhibition is a lesson in material as vocabulary and African history seen through the lense of visual artist, El Anatusi.

Anatusi constructs massive wall hangings from materials he finds in Narobi, where he lives, which are mostly pieces of aluminium and liquor bottle caps. The artist notes that liquor was first introduced to Africa by European traders in the exchange for African goods.

Anatusi’s Open(ing) Market installation represents local & global African Markets, featuring hand made tin boxes, product brand logos & adinkra symbols, a West African writing system made up of ideograms.

This is the exhibition’s first stop on a 3 year North America tour, which closes at the ROM on February 27^th. ROM.on.ca

Shown here: Playful Pursuits Photos courtesy: © Royal Ontario Museum, 2010. All rights reserved | El Anatsui, Three Continents, 2009 Aluminum and copper wire Photo courtesy: Jack Shainman Gallery