Why Everyone Is Yelling at Their Phones for FunThanks to screen-recording features on iOS and social media platforms, the game you play by yelling at your phone has had a surprise resurgence.
Kids’ Toys Run Out of Brooklyn on a Rail Brooklyn preschoolers who think they can and think they can are being confronted with a rude reality: They can’t. Play with their Thomas the Tank Engine toys, that is. Two dozen wooden trains and accessories from the wildly popular Thomas & Friends line are being recalled over fears of lead in the paint. Thus, many parents spent the weekend swiping their kids’ favorite toys. “My son is a Thomas freak,” says Kate Myers, mother of a 4-year-old and owner of Brooklyn Play Spot. “I picked up all the trains, and my son said, ‘Get me my trains!’ Like a dictator. He’s totally panicked. I said, ‘We have to be careful and make sure the trains aren’t sick. We’ll all have to get Band-Aids if they’re sick.” The manufacturer, RC2 Corporation, announced the recall last Wednesday on 1.5 million toys sold between January 2005 and June 2007. Stores were apparently informed earlier than the public and returned their stocks immediately.
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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Internet ExhibitionistsOh, for the days when a parent’s major concerns were merely junior choking to death on a stray Lego or being burned alive in non-retardent PJs. But no more. As Wired News reports, this week’s Toy Fair at the Javits Center was not only a festival of the intellectually uplifting — like, say, the “sculpture in a box” for the mini-Calder in your life — but also a smorgasbord of digitally locked-down playthings designed to keep children from BlackBerrying themselves (or texting or IMing or whatever kids do these days) into the arms of dirty old perverts.
