Toys x100

Produce a body of workthat investigates 100 by collecting 100 facts, opinions and objects on a specific content. Deliver good quality research demonstrating an appropriate broad range of approaches to visual and conceptual enquiry.

I decided upon toys as I find them interesting, and especially how they have changed over time, both in appearance by new materials and also by interactivity by new technologies.

Facts
For my 100 facts I decided to use the internet as my source of information as there is so much available on the web and also items are updated daily, whereas books are created for longevity and may include out of date facts. I used a variety of websites to collect my facts about toys.

• Play-Doh was originally used as wallpaper cleaner.
• It requires 63 feet of wire to make a Slinky.
• Barbies real name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
• There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 possible colour combinations on a Rubik's Cube.
• Twister has sold more than 22million.
• The original Mr Potato Head came with eyes, noses, mouths and ears... but no potato.
• Mattel sell around 1.5million Barbie's a week, equating to 2 per second.

Opinions
I created a Questionnaire to collect my opinions with the intention that people would express their views on set questions such as wooden vs plastic. My questionnaire had 6 questions and i received 46 responses. The opinions gathered were useful as they presented toys which I hadn't though about including.

• Plastic toys tend to be more appealing to kids.
• Wooden toys are probably more durable.
• All toys should be fun.
• When I was little I wanted one of those small electronially powered cars you could sit in and control yourself.
• Some toys are educational without realising it, like Lego.
• Wooden toys remind me of Victorian times.

Objects
The objects were quite tricky to collect as I don't know many people who had children or toys from their childhood and also I was not allowed to take pictures in some shops. I raided the loft and found a load of my brothers old toys and asked others to let me borrow if they had any. I intended to take pictures of all my images in he same location, for better comparison and so they look better visually as a collection. However, with some object I was unable to do this.

I got some feedback on my collection which was pretty positive. It was suggested that I could gather more opinions, visit car boot sales and also look in charity shops. It was also suggested that I could look into how toys were advertised compared to now and think that could be quite interesting. I can use a lot of categories for my collection including toys for girls/boys/unisex, plastic/wooden, modern/old, colour, scale and in a timeline.