Wooden Train: A Classic Toy

We all love toys. Adults love toys too though the kind of toys may differ from what kids like. Actually, some adults do enjoy playing the same toys they enjoyed as children; they like to maintain that childlike sense of wonder and reminisce their childhood memories. Other adults collect toys for the sake of collecting them.

One of the most popular toys is the toy train. There is something romantic about trains that adults appreciate. For children, trains are fun because they move quickly and make funny noises. Toy trains never really fall out of favor. Most toy trains now are made of plastic, but wood used to be popular. Wooden kids’ trains are classic, but increasingly rare.

There are a few advantages to using wood for toy trains. Children can be quite rough with their toys. Even if a child does not really have much strength, they can still cause significant damage through repeated impacts. Who has not witnessed a child banging his toys when he is having a tantrum? Wood absorbs impacts better than plastic. Where plastic will crack and fracture, wood will just get nicks and dents. On occasion, the impact travels along the wood grain and a part chips off, but that’s about it. In the end, wood is sturdier than plastic.

Wood also has a feel that you cannot compare to any other. It has weight, and even toys made of the lightest woods have good hefts. Best of all, wood is non-toxic and is likely to cause damage when ingested accidentally. Lead-free paints are of course the norm for toys intended for children. Giving a child a wooden toy early on will also teach him to appreciate the material, in a world increasingly more reliant on plastic, metals, and concrete.

While there are advantages to wood as a material for toys, there are disadvantages. Wood needs skilled carving to come out looking good; plastic is easier to use as you only need to inject it into molds to form shapes. Wooden toys can also be more expensive than plastic ones because of the labor and material involved. While wooden toys usually have metal screws and other metal parts to hold them together, it is possible to make toys completely of wood; these purely wooden toys are even more expensive because of the skill and effort put into them.

Wood can also suffer from water exposure. If the wood is not sealed with resins properly, moisture could seep in and start rotting the wood. Children, especially the younger ones, might not like the weight of the wood and reject the toy. Lastly, wood is seen as an outdated material, at least as far as toys and children are concerned.

These toys are rare now. Children’s toys are mostly made of plastic these days, and kids are really not fond of wood now. Trains are also no longer as popular as they used to be. Regardless of these factors, wooden kid’s trains are a part of toy history, and the joy it gave to so many children long ago is priceless.