What is a toy?

What is a Toy?

(Comments I make on my research will be in red and the pieces of research I find the most important will be in green)

A toy is any item that can be used for play. Toys are generally played with by children and pets. Playing with toys is an enjoyable means of training the young for life in society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable to both young and old. Many items are designed to serve as toys, but goods produced for other purposes can also be used. For instance, a small child may pick up a household item and "fly" it through the air as to pretend that it is an airplane. Another consideration is interactive digital entertainment. Some toys are produced primarily as collector's items and are intended for display only.

The origin of toys is prehistoric; dolls representing infants, animals, and soldiers, as well as representations of tools used by adults are readily found at archaeological sites. The origin of the word "toy" is unknown, but it is believed that it was first used in the 14th century.

Toys, and play in general, are important when it comes to growing up and learning about the world around us. The young use toys and play to discover their identity, help their bodies grow strong, learn cause and effect, explore relationships, and practice skills they will need as adults. Adults use toys and play to form and strengthen social bonds, teach, remember and reinforce lessons from their youth, discover their identity, exercise their minds and bodies, explore relationships, practice skills, and decorate their living spaces.

The difference between a Toy and a Game

They are related of course, but there are a few differences. First and foremost, toys don’t have rules. Toys can be played with in any way and only your imagination sets those boundaries. In that sense, toys are more open ended and can be played with in many different ways. Digital toys are the same, but even more versatile since so many can fit in each device.

Games, however, have specific rules and a way of playing them that is “the right way” of doing it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is different.

Comparing and analysing real and virtual toys

Examples of Virtual toys:

screen shot from virtual toys.net

This has given me the idea to perhaps make a virtual colouring book-simple, easy and has no rules (making it a toy and not a game) Colouring books are fun too but are mainly aimed at children which makes it quite restricted.

This is another virtual toy from the virtual toy website 

These are some photos of my sketchbook work from throughout this project as I developed my ideas and came to grips on how to use Unity. 

The above and to the right image, is me brainstorming ideas on what direction to go in for making a virtual toy. 

The bottom two are my notes I took as we were taken through the program Unity3D step by step. It was a really helpful workshop and considering pretty much no one in my class had ever come across the software before, we all managed to become familiar with it in not too much time. 

Physical toys- Children's toys

toyrus.co.uk

Simple and easy to use, no rules.

Are physical/real toys more fun to play with?

Pepper pig puzzle 

Sylvanian Families Cafe Waitress Set

Puzzles

Virtual Puzzles @ jigzone.com

"How much time do you have?

JigZone is an online Jigsaw Puzzle where you choose the level of difficulty from a simple 6 piece cut to a challenging 247 piece cut."

Add caption

Online puzzles, come with timer to make it more challenging/exciting and the fastest recorded time and average time too. It also comes with the option to choose how many pieces to break the image into (level).

The virtual puzzles are free where as physical puzzles you have to buy and you cannot change how many pieces it will be, you are set with the amount you buy it with. 

Cat Puzzle

Dolphin Puzzle

Adults Easy Puzzle

Real Toys

Although doing things physically and by hand can feel more rewarding, you are much more limited with puzzles when they're physical and not virtual.

Child's Toy

Other Virtual Toys

http://www.virtualitoy.com

On another virtual toy website, the following toys were the most popular. The one when you dress up your boyfriend and another playing guitar. What makes these so popular? 

myBoyfriend Movie

myGuitar Guy

There are loads of games for girls to dress up dolls. When I was young, we did this using actual dolls, such as Barbies. I do remember as a child it being great fun though.

There is also one to dress up a horse! And make up dress up is another. Is this something that the public really like? I am torn between doing a dress up toy or a jigsaw puzzle. 

Dress Up Show Horse

I think I am going to go with doing a virtual jigsaw puzzle. This is because I personally find them much more enjoyable than dressing up a barbie doll and they are appealing to all ages. I would want to do one with exciting and different shapes though with jagged triangular edges to make it more fun and interesting.

I could perhaps draw an image myself and make that into a jigsaw so that it 

On the website jigzone.com, you can choose between a number of different ways to divide the image you like up to make a puzzle. Here are some examples that I like:

Crazy

Swirls

USA

I am very keen on the triangular and jagged shaped puzzle.

To be able to do this I need to research how to make a jigsaw puzzle on Unity.

This was the best explanatory video I found, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSteq3uzICI

The man shows us how to make a sliding jigsaw puzzle which is perfect for what I want to do!

 

Because I'm not at a very high standard on Unity3D yet, I may struggle to do what I planned to do with the triangles and different shapes. But I can still try.

This tutorial is fantastic!
I have started following it now on Unity and have managed to create a puzzle block so far:

I have yet to make a java script but am happy with my progress so far.

In my next lesson I managed to do the javascript to create the movement to create the sliding blocks. It was quite difficult but I got there in the end.

This is what my sliding puzzle looks like so far. Every other block has been coloured red to make it easy to use the puzzle. My next challenge is to work out how to add an image to the puzzle. It needs to be something fun but I would also like it to have some personal element to it. I originaly started playing with an image of the streets in Bath with the Christmas lights because I was feeling festive. However now, it's not only not Christmas anymore but the image is also not fun, at all!

This is the java script I made for the movement of the sliding puzzle. It has been so far successful.

Here are some screenshots of my java script working on my jigsaw. Unfortunately I don't think I have the time or the skills yet to make the jigsaw into complicated shapes. I am very happy with my progress so far though.

This is an example of me playing about with applying an image. I am having to do it square by square though which is proving to be quite complicated but I'm slowing grasping it. 

I am unsure of what sort of image to go for. I have decided to go with one of my own photographs though for it is more personal. I looked through many albums and these were the ones that I narrowed my search down to. I am torn between going for a funny animal one or a funny one of myself or my friends.

This dog is my favourite thing in the whole world. The pictures of her are also very funny because she is so ridiculously wonderful. I will probably select one of the three of her.

These are very funny pictures too and slightly bizarre. The bottom one is more cool and quirky than funny, a crisp with a love heart cut out of it. But I think my best bet is probably going with an animal because an audience will warm to it much more. The majority of puzzles I found online were either of a nice scenery or an animal.

I am going to go for the below image. It's funny, bold and adorable at the same time.

 After getting a little help from my tutor I managed to work out how to apply a separate image to my puzzle. It is all done on Adobe Photoshop. The image needs to be square at 1024 x 1024 pixels. It also needs to be flipped upside down for it to work. I applied the new and final image I wanted to use by just replacing the old one. This way everything was already all set up so it would be connected to Unity.

The image is split up and to apply each square I had to enter the measurements of x and y, duplicating it first, and then drag onto the jigsaw. Each Offset point changed by 0.2 per cube. 

This is a screen shot of me in working progress on my jigsaw. I still have a few things to work on before I am happy with it but I am happy with my progress at using the program. 

Background colour?

I am torn between going for a basic white to prevent drawing attention away from the jigsaw, or maybe a nice teal colour. Black doesn't work because you loose parts of the jigsaw where it blends with the background. The blues are too bold and a bit boring. 

I think I will go for the white. It looks more professional than the others and keeps all the focus on the image on the jigsaw.

So there it is, my 3D Jigsaw Puzzle that works on Unity. I am very happy with this and especially that it works. My very own sliding jigsaw puzzle.

Research

History of Toys

http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Toy_Inventions_2.htm

Toy manufacturers and toy inventors use both utility and design patents, along with trademarks and copyrights. In fact, many toys especially video games take advantage of all three types of intellectual property protection.

Toys as a "big business" did not begin until after the 1830's, when steamboats and steam trains improved the transportation and distribution of manufactured goods. Early toymakers used wood, tin, or cast iron to fashion horses, soldiers, wagons, and other simple toys. Charles Goodyear's method for "vulcanizing" rubber created another medium for manufacturing balls, dolls, and squeeze toys.

Toy Manufacturers

One example of a contemporary toy manufacturer is Mattel, an international company. Toy manufacturers produce and distribute most of our toys. They also research and develop new toys and buy or license toy inventions from inventors.

Mattel began in 1945, as a garage workshop belonging to Harold Matson and Elliot Handler. Their business name "Mattel" was a combination of the letters of their last and first names, respectively. Mattel's first products were picture frames, however, Elliot started making dollhouse furniture from picture frame scraps. That proved to be such a success that Mattel switched to making nothing but toys.

Electronic Toys

In the early 1970's, Pong, the first patented video game was a great hit. Nolan Bushnell created Pong along with a company named Atari. Pong debuted in arcades, and was soon ported to home units. The games Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Tron followed. As technology advanced, the dedicated single game machine was replaced by programmable machines that allowed different games to be played simply by exchanging a cartridge.

Inventions in circuitry and miniaturization in the early 1980's produced handheld games, as Nintendo, a Japanese electronics company, along with many others, moved into the video game market. Home computers created a market for games that were versatile, action packed, challenging, and diverse.

As our technology progresses, so does the complexity and diversity of our amusements. Once, toys simply reflected everyday life and activities. Today, toys create new ways of living and teach us to adapt to changing technologies, and inspire us to follow our dreams.

It is very interesting to see how toys have developed dramatically with technology. This research talks of toys as being computer games. This was something I wanted to distinguish between for there is a big difference between a toy and a game.

History of Jigsaw Puzzles

The origins of jigsaw puzzles go back to the 1760s when European map makers pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces. The "dissected map" has been a successful educational toy ever since. American children still learn geography by playing with puzzle maps of the United States or the world. The eighteenth century inventors of jigsaw puzzles would be amazed to see the transformations of the last 230 years. Children's puzzles have moved from lessons to entertainment, showing diverse subjects like animals, nursery rhymes, and modern tales of super heroes and Disney. But the biggest surprise for the early puzzle makers would be how adults have embraced puzzling over the last century.

Puzzles for adults emerged around 1900, and by 1908 a full-blown craze was in progress in the United States. Contemporary writers depicted the inexorable progression of the puzzle addict: from the skeptic who first ridiculed puzzles as silly and childish, to the perplexed puzzler who ignored meals while chanting "just one more piece;" to the bleary-eyed victor who finally put in the last piece in the wee hours of the morning.

The puzzles of those days were quite a challenge. Most had pieces cut exactly on the color lines. There were no transition pieces with two colors to signal, for example, that the brown area (roof) fit next to the blues (sky). A sneeze or a careless move could undo an evening's work because the pieces did not interlock. And, unlike children's puzzles, the adult puzzles had no guide picture on the box; if the title was vague or misleading, the true subject could remain a mystery until the last pieces were fitted into place.

Because wood puzzles had to be cut one piece at a time, they were expensive. A 500-piece puzzle typically cost $5 in 1908, far beyond the means of the average worker who earned only $50 per month. High society, however, embraced the new amusement. Peak sales came on Saturday mornings when customers selected puzzles for their weekend house parties in Newport and other country retreats.

The next few years brought two significant innovations. First, Parker Brothers, the famous game manufacturer, introduced figure pieces into its "Pastime" brand puzzles. Figure pieces made puzzles a bit easier to assemble. But the fascination of pieces shaped like dogs, birds, and other recognizable objects more than offset the somewhat reduced challenge. Second, Pastimes and other brands moved to an interlocking style that reduced the risk of spilling or losing pieces. Pastime puzzles were so successful that Parker Brothers stopped making games and devoted its entire factory to puzzle production in 1909. Following this craze, puzzles continued as a regular adult diversion for the next two decades.

With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, puzzles for adults enjoyed a resurgence of popularity, peaking in early 1933 when sales reached an astounding 10 million per week. Puzzles seemed to touch a chord, offering an escape from the troubled times, as well as an opportunity to succeed in a modest way. Completing a jigsaw gave the puzzler a sense of accomplishment that was hard to come by when the unemployment rate was climbing above 25 percent. With incomes depleted, home amusements like puzzles replaced outside entertainment like restaurants and night clubs. Puzzles became more affordable too. Many of the unemployed architects, carpenters, and other skilled craftsmen began to cut jigsaw puzzles in home workshops and to sell or rent them locally. During the 1930s craze for puzzles, drugstores and circulating libraries added puzzle rentals to their offerings. They charged three to ten cents per day, depending on size.

Another important development was the introduction of die-cut cardboard puzzles for adults. Mass production and inexpensive cardboard allowed the manufacturers to cut prices substantially. There was a vogue for advertising puzzles in mid-1932. Retail stores offered free puzzles with the purchase of a toothbrush, a flashlight, or hundreds of other products. What better way to keep a brand name before the public than to have customers working for hours to assemble a picture of the product?

The autumn of 1932 brought a novel concept, the weekly jigsaw puzzle. The die-cut "Jig of the Week" retailed for 25 cents and appeared on the news stands every Wednesday. People rushed to buy them and to be the first among their friends to solve that week's puzzle. There were dozens of weekly series including "Picture Puzzle Weekly," "B-Witching Weekly," "Jiggers Weekly," and (featuring popular films) "Movie Cut-Ups." With the competition from the free advertising puzzles and the inexpensive weekly puzzles, the makers of hand-cut wood puzzles were hard-pressed to keep their customers. Yet the top quality brands like Parker Pastimes retained a loyal following throughout the Depression, despite their higher prices.

Indeed the Depression led to the birth of Par Puzzles, long dubbed the "Rolls Royce of jigsaw puzzles." Frank Ware and John Henriques, young men with no job prospects, cut their first puzzle at the dining room table in 1932. While other firms were cutting costs (and quality), Par steadily improved their puzzles, and marketed them to affluent movie stars, industrialists and even royalty. Par specialized in customized puzzles, often cutting the owner's name or birth date as figure pieces. Ware and Henriques also perfected the irregular edge to frustrate traditional puzzlers who tried to start with the corners and edge pieces. They further teased their customers with misleading titles and "par times" that were unattainable for all but the fastest puzzlers.

After World War II, the wood jigsaw puzzle went into a decline. Rising wages pushed up costs substantially because wood puzzles took so much time to cut. And as prices rose, sales dropped. At the same time improvements in lithography and die-cutting made the cardboard puzzles more attractive, especially when Springbok introduced high quality reproductions of fine art on jigsaws. In 1965 hundreds of thousands of Americans struggled to assemble Jackson Pollock's "Convergence," billed by Springbok as "the world's most difficult jigsaw puzzle."

One by one, the surviving brands of wood puzzles disappeared. Parker Brothers discontinued its Pastime puzzles in 1958. By 1974, both Frank Ware of Par and Straus (another long-time manufacturer) had retired from the business. The English "Victory" puzzles, easily found in department stores in the 1950s and 1960s, almost completely vanished.

As the true addicts of wood puzzles began to suffer withdrawal symptoms, Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbetts saw an opportunity to fill the void. They founded Stave Puzzles, and within a few years had succeeded Par as the leader in wood puzzles. Indeed, Stave went several steps beyond Par, by commissioning original artwork that was specially designed to interact with the cutting patterns. Experimentation with pop-up figure pieces led to three-dimensional puzzles such as a free-standing carousel. Over the years Richardson invented many trick puzzles that fit together in several different wrong ways, but with only one correct solution. Stave emphasizes personalized puzzles and service, even remembering its customers' birthdays.

Stave's success with luxury puzzles convinced others that a market could be found, leading to a broader resurgence of hand-cut and custom puzzles. The last decade has brought many design innovations as new craftspeople have turned to jigsaw puzzles. There are even some wood puzzles cut by computer-controlled water jets or lasers.Puzzle aficionados of today can choose from a number of different styles of wood puzzles to suit their passions for perplexity. And quite a few are graduating from cardboard to wood puzzles, as they discover the satisfying heft of the wood pieces, the challenge of matching their wits against an individual puzzle cutter, and the thrill of watching a picture emerge from a plain box with no guide picture on the lid.

http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.mgcpuzzles.com/mgcpuzzles/puzzle%5Fhistory/

It is so fascinating finding out all about the history of jigsaw puzzles in depth. I had no idea they were so massively popular during the depression. It makes a lot of sense thinking about it. Puzzles are a little bit like reading, in that you can get completely lossed and engrossed within it. 

My next bit of research I have found is all about modern jigsaws and their benefits.

A Modern Approach to Jigsaw Puzzles

Physical Jigsaw Puzzles

Solving jigsaw puzzles established among many as a captivating family tradition, as a stimulus for children and adults to train their mental capacity and memory. The first appearances of puzzles can be traced in year 1800 when puzzles were made to educate wealthy children. The puzzles continued to be made of various materials in various sizes of pieces and evolved to modern day in sophisticated 3D puzzles and other modern and interesting features that make this game more sophisticated and mind challenging.

The transition from physical to online jigsaw puzzles is more and more frequent. Many people prefer solving online puzzles in their little breaks at work, in offices, in internet clubs and at home, without the necessity of purchasing large boxes and with a risk of losing a piece somewhere…

Online Jigsaw Puzzles

Online Puzzles Games can be psychologically beneficial as well and in turn biologically positive. Those activities that help us relax can only be of benefit. When you sit down on a computer to do a jigsaw puzzle it gives you a chance to forget the world around you and get lost in the challenge and achievement of the puzzle you trying to solve.

By relaxing, you are giving your body and your mind a chance to rest and get caught up. It has been proven by physicians that stress lowers the immune system, causing us to be more vulnerable to disease and illness. By finding ways to relax we are protecting our mind and body from the pressures, bad events and illnesses that surround us. Jigsaw puzzles are an important way to elevate your mood and calm the nervous system.

If you are a competitive person and you like brain teasing games playing puzzles online is the best way to discover a challenge that will fit your needs to progress and establish a useful leisure. The large variety of online resources with puzzles will allow you to choose the design, the pictures categories and themes, the levels of difficulty that are suitable for you.

Modern Jigsaw Puzzles

Another advantage of modern online jigsaw puzzles resources is the possibility to save more money, even if you are a member of a paid puzzles service it will still allow you to spend less money that buying large boxes or wooden puzzles in the local store.

Online puzzles will allow you to compete in your hobby with people you don’t know, to make new acquaintances and friends from all around the world, to meet people that share the same interest with you and to share with them your experiences and find the answers to the questions related to puzzles and other brain teasing games.

The modern tendencies of our new digital word transcended perfectly the puzzle solving hobby from your kitchen or living room table to your computer’s desktop.

http://webregency.hubpages.com/hub/play-jigsaw-puzzles

Sliding Jigsaw Puzzle 

Before you read any further, you should be aware of reports that sliding puzzles can cause insanity. There's no doubt they're addictive and they've certainly made some puzzle solvers tear out their hair and swear a blue streak. When the first sliding puzzle was invented it set off a worldwide craze. That same simple puzzle is still challenging puzzle solvers more than a century later.

Sliding puzzles are cousins of mechanical puzzles, like those that require you to disentangle two twisted nails or to fit a collection of blocks into a cube. They're also related to jigsaw puzzles and to mazes. Rubik's Cube is a3-D variation on a sliding puzzle.

Most sliding puzzles are two-dimensional. The pieces cannot be lifted out of the frame or rearranged in any way, except by sliding them into an empty space. They are also called sliding-block puzzles or simply sliders. The goal of a sliding puzzle is to arrange the pieces in a particular pattern. That might mean putting together the elements of a picture, forming a shape, or creating an array of numbers or letters. Movement of the pieces is restricted so that you have to move one piece in order to shift another. That's where the madness comes in.

What makes sliding puzzles so alluring? The best of them are deceptively simple in appearance. They might involve rearranging only a half-dozen pieces. A child can understand the idea, and it might look like child's play to solve the puzzle. You don't have to learn any complicated rules. Yet the solution can be so complex that it seems impossible. Some solutions involve 100 moves or more. The puzzles demand logic, problem-solving and sequential thinking skills, combined with a dash of intuition and a healthy amount of patience.

Sliding puzzles started as actual mechanical devices, blocks of wood or plastic in a frame. But they were easy to translate into computer programs and to offer over the Internet. Hundreds of sliding puzzles are available online, and now you can play sliding puzzles on your smartphones and mobile devices.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/puzzles/sliding-puzzles.htm