With Toyi Every Kid is a Toy Designer.
With a kit consisting of wheels, feet, eyes, joints, sticks, flexible rings and junction parts, kids aged 6+ can transform any material around them to a toy of their desire. A water bottle can turn into a rocket, an old box to a train compartment or a pine cone to a cute monster. With Toyi, children can design their toys on their own or along with their friends, improve their creativity by making their dream toys come to life. In this way they become real explorers interacting with their physical and social surroundings, and their inner worlds.
More Room for Children and Play, with an Open-Ended Play Experience.
The play and toy industry is shaped by grown-ups whose creativity is limited compared to children. Play rules are set by grown-ups, they tell children how to play and what toys to make. Even with toys composed of construction blocks, the end product is shown to children beforehand. Toyi is giving priority to children’s needs and supports free play. There are no instructions or rules in Toyi kits. The entire process is left to kids’ imagination. With the open-ended play experience Toyi provides, children can make a limitless number of toys using their creativity. Toyi reminds parents, tutors and all grown-ups that child-led play is a great way for children to develop lifelong skills.
21st Century Skills improving through Play.
Toyi is designed not only to ensure that children will not lose their creativity as they grow up, but also to enable them to develop many skills that they need in this century. As children redesign the materials around them they acquire the up-cycling instinct by producing without consuming in their early ages. With the special play experience it provides, Toyi improves the 21st century skills of children such as problem solving, critical and innovative thinking, communication, adaptation, cooperation, taking initiative, and help them become more creative, productive, self-confident, nature-loving lifelong-learners.
“Let’s make everything a toy, everywhere a playground!”
Elif Atmaca, the designer of Toyi, aims to trigger children’s imaginative powers and states this necessity as follows: “Especially in regions with many disadvantaged children, it is hard to send them the desired toys; so we thought we should make something that allows these children to transform the materials around them into toys.” Toyi, which has come to life following this idea, has been developed by realizing that all children who can’t use their creativity in full due to urban lifestyle, pressure for academic success, parental instructions, and restrictions of the toy industry, can benefit from this approach and product. Toyi aims to be the toy of every kid, regardless of their sex, language, geographical location and socio-economical status.
