All good childhoods are accompanied by wooden toys
Compared with metal and plastic, wood is more child-friendly in terms of temperature, hardness, appearance and weight. The ideal childhood has a magical synesthesia with wood: warm, soft, colorful and light.
Because of this, wood is the core material for making toys, it is easier to match with connecting pieces, and it is easy to color.
Whether it’s a team alone or dedicated to other materials, wood will always be the protagonist of Toy Story; whether it’s playing in its true colors or wearing heavy makeup, wood will always reveal a unique beauty.
Shan Xurong and Liang Niying from the School of Furniture and Industrial Design, Nanjing Forestry University wrote articles, dividing wooden toys into stacking, splicing, assembling fixed, interactive and other structural types, and the connection forms are further divided into tenon joint and glue joint. , mechanical bonding, binding combination.
The representatives of stacked wooden toys are building blocks and jigsaw puzzles. In industry, plates are usually planed, sawed, milled, and turned into the desired shape, and then drilled as needed, and finally polished without sharp edges.
Common splicing toys include wooden puzzles, three-dimensional assembling toys and Luban locks. Most of these toys have the characteristics of “burning the brain”, which can exercise people’s deep thinking and concentration, so some adults also like it very much. Most of these toys require the processing of the connecting structure, and the unevenness is made by laser cutting or wire cutting.
Assembled fixed wooden toys are generally fixed in shape, representing Trojan horses, abacuses, drag ducks, etc. The structure of such toys is more complex, and attention should be paid to the concealment of tiny fasteners when designing the structure.
Interactive toys include baby wooden percussion piano, mini wooden drum, mini wooden piano, etc. Such wooden toys are generally heavier, have more complex external shapes and internal structures, and belong to the “high structure” part of toys.
There are various forms of connection for wooden toys.
The tenon joint does not require extra parts, and the traditional Chinese wood structure provides it with a source of wisdom.
Adhesive bonding is quick and easy, but requires attention to environmental, health and safety standards.
The mechanical joint adopts the achievements of modern industry, and the connection between the nail and the nut has a strong mechanical style.
Snaps, bindings, and the mix and match of wood and other materials make wooden toys more diverse.
The development of wooden toys reflects people’s attention to green, health and environmental protection issues. Really high-end wooden toys, from the design of the pursuit of pure natural, pollution-free, recyclable. The products of Wonderworld, a well-known toy brand in Thailand, and Medicom Toy, a well-known toy company in Japan, often highlight the feelings of environmental protection.
The artistic sense of wood is more vividly reflected in the hands of designers. The natural form expresses the essence of the toy, giving people spiritual comfort; the abstract form expresses the intellectual factor of the toy, attracting people to explore; the artistic form expresses the aesthetic value of the toy, giving people a sense of beauty. The Swedish PLAYSAM brand pursues a clean and abstract style that is loved by adults and children alike.
The most common materials for wooden toys sold on the domestic market are: pine, lotus, basswood, basswood plywood, MDF, beech, and rubber wood.
Adler said: “The lucky people are healed by childhood all their lives, and the unfortunate people are healed by childhood all their lives.”
Cao Wenxuan, winner of the International Hans Christian Andersen Award, said: “In fact, people can’t get out of their childhood in their entire lives.”
Then, the childhood warmed by wooden toys will become an important source of happiness in everyone’s life.
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