When I was in first grade, I cut the fur pom-poms off of my dad’s mukluks. (If you didn’t grow up in the Canadian North and you don’t know what mukluks are, here’s a picture.) My dad’s mukluks were specially made for him, so he was pretty sore. I cut the pom-poms off because I had just seen The Trouble With Tribbles at a friend’s house, and I desperately wanted some Tribbles. I kept them in a shoebox, named them, brought them to show-and-tell, and pretended they were real.
It’s exactly this kind of imaginative play that a lot of parents are afraid is being lost as toys become smarter. And in exchange for what? There isn’t any real evidence yet that smart toys genuinely make kids smarter.