Part 1: Throughout the movie, the artist—Cas—talks about her design concepts behind each project. Her central design intention was to give fundamental instead of complicated and well-designed toys to children from my interpretation. She wants to not set up as many limitations for the children when playing with the toys. On the other hand, most toys in the market give detailed instructions to the children and tell them how to go each step. Cas wants children to have fun and use their imagination when playing with the toys.
One of my favorite toys from the movie is rigmajig. Since I was younger, and even today, I am still so fascinated by toys that require more hands-on work. This toy includes several pieces of crafted wood and screws. The rest are left to the players. The screws all look the same, which means all the holes are the same sizes. It is much free assembling rather than goal-orientated.
Part 2: As I mentioned in class previously, my favorite toy would be stuff animals. I specifically love those from Disneyland, such as Duffy, Stella, Lotso, etc. I think I like them simply because they seem to be cute figures to me. I place to carry them around with me, put them on my drawers, shelves, etc. From my understanding, the target users for these toys are children and early age adults. They are still in the market, and sometimes there are special seasonal editions. They usually get sold out quickly even though prices tend to be much higher than other brand toys.
The article “toys are more divided by gender now than they were 50 years ago” mentions that we see more gender divide in toy shopping nowadays. Stuff animals specifically, I think, showcase much gender divide than other toy series. The general public tends to have a conception that stuff animal toys are for children and females only. If a boy shows a preference on stuff animal toys, people might judge him as an outlier.