First, getting into Harvard should not be the goal of a child's toy. Not touching that, though.<p>More importantly, they're getting children wrong. In the US, since the 60s, children (teens) have been treated as a market demographic. Since the 80s even pre-teen children have been. Children should not be marketed to. Period.<p>I'm not only complaining about makeup sales or frivolous things like frisbees. I'm not only complaining about Transformers: more than meets the eye, because it's a bunch of media starring dolls you can buy.<p>Beyond those things, rather than target adults directly, for many decades now we have what is effectively corporate-funded psyops aimed at people's children.<p>We somehow care about the relative non-issues of drunk driving, child abduction and "stranger danger!", drugs, and more. Yet we don't seem concerned at all about children's desires being subverted to coopt their parents. We don't care about highly effective, efficient mechanisms of market capitalism pointed directly at our kids!<p>Thanks, the Guardian, for trying to raise the alarm while also raising a smokescreen.<p>Also:<p>> The history of toys is the history of teaching children to preoccupy themselves usefully and solitarily<p>WTF? No. The history of toys is largely the history of children creating play (where adults didn't intend it) and then sharing it. Humans are social. We make and use toys. We use toys other folks invented, too, and often in new ways. Toys are not anti-social.<p>That quote reads like someone who's only ever heard about vibrators and has heard that they're only used alone! (Out of touch, as it were.)