Toy gears didn’t originally make it onto my top 10 list of the “Best Toys of All Time” until “art supplies” got thrown out due to the fact that they can’t be classified as toys. Even though we don’t own this set any more, my children played with it for hours upon hours during the 5 years we owned it when they were younger. It seemed to me like it wasn’t as versatile as some of our other construction sets.
However, this didn’t keep my kids from inventing things that had something to do with what we were studying. One of my sons built a Greek structure based on a picture from a book, and a year later, he built a spit for roasting meat during our medieval feast. He did this without any prompting from me. I never would have come up with these structures myself.
Of course, all sorts of airplanes and robots can be made, as well as crazy contraptions. Even my young daughter enjoyed playing with the toy gears because she liked turning a crank and watching all the colorful gears go round and round. For this reason, toy gears earned its way to #9 in our countdown for the best open-ended toys.
