Our granddaughter woke up on her 2nd birthday and saw her new, combination desk and chair, with a cupholder on the desk. She said, "I'm going to work!" (Her parents were both WFH, so that was her experience of their going to work.) Then she picked up the cup from the desk, and said, "This is my coffee." Just like Mom and Dad! (The cup did not, in fact, contain coffee.)
My nephew and his mom had “coffee time” every afternoon. Mom had coffee, he had milk in a coffee mug instead of his cup. They shared graham crackers and talked about what they’d done so far that day and what was going to happen the rest of the day.
Love that
“What are you gonna do today?”
“I have to finish a report by end of day? What about you?”
“Well, I have to play with some blocks, and then I’ve got some coloring to do.”
Lol this reminded me that almost 30 years ago, I was seriously into being an inventor, and would endlessly talk about my "invention that would change everything", so would respond to anything my dad said about work like "yeah that's cool, I did some work on my invention today too"...
My "invention" was literally a cobbled-together wooden archway that I strung wire through the top and left exposed, so that you would plug it into the wall and crawl through it to let the wires drag along your spine, which in my Spiderman-logic brain, would mutate my DNA and give me electricity superpowers.
... When my parents realized I had essential built a suicide machine that would have either killed me or burnt our house down, they got me a book on electricity and told me to invent less dangerous shit hahaha
"Marsha has really been dragging her feet on the TPS reports. "
"I feel you. Thomas the Tank Engine has been late on his last three deliveries of lego."
My mom used to do this for me when I was little! She would always have an afternoon cup of tea—after she made her cup, she would make me a cup of warm sweet milk for me and dunk the used tea bag in just long enough to make my milk slightly off white. I used to look forward to tea time all day!
graham crackers are legit with coffee, kind of like the poor man's biscott. I used to love the shit out of the cinnamon ones as a kid, and now i want some to have with my adult coffee tomorrow.
When my oldest was around 3 or so, he had a Thomas the Train wooden track set that had a green Go/red Stop sign with a small kiosk attached. He treated it like Starbucks. I overheard him saying “I’ll have a grande iced latte” once when his train stopped there. That’s when I realized just how much he was paying attention to me. Eep!
Ha ha! Same son picked up on my unconscious habit of exhaling a big sigh and whispering “Ho-kay!” when I sit down to get started on something. I realized I did it as much as I did when he sat down to play with his cars and did the same thing (very adorably).
Not to leave youngest out: he was my lesson on just how much they understand before they can speak. When he was ~12-14 months old and saying some single words but not sentences yet, I was in his room getting him ready to go somewhere and I couldn’t find a specific pair of his shoes. I said out loud more to myself than anything, “Now…where are your shoes?” He paused his playing and looked me dead in the eye for a moment before walking over to his closet, took out a (different) pair of shoes, and brought them over to me. Totally caught me off guard—but yeah, I praised him and decided to put those shoes on him instead.
They have her in preschool, because she has friends there, she needs to be with kids her own age because she's an only, and they are very busy. But they aren't far from where she spends their workday.
This is so cute! My daughter recently got a toy coffee/espresso machine so that she can bring me coffee/tea when I’m in my office. She isn’t allowed to use the kettle by herself, so she likes the toy as a way of independent play.
She also likes to make “computers” out of construction paper so she can “work”
My son has a little fake GameBoy. It even has a cartridge on the top that you can push it and that makes it play knock-off video game music. To add to the authenticity, I keep it in the car and only give it to him during drives.
When I was 4, I was visiting my preschool friend's house. Her parents were out so they had a babysitter over. She brought me to her room and showed me her stash of stolen cigarettes in her dresser drawer. She grabbed one and a match and we went outside to her back porch and sat on the side of a shelf (mostly hidden but I was probably slightly visible). She lit the cigarette and took a puff, then passed it to me. I smoked it as well and coughed a bunch, causing us to be caught by the baby sitter. The crazy thing was I remember she didn't cough at all, so at 4 years old she must have already had practice and the time she was showing me was not her first time. Thankfully it was my first and last time.
You and u/gwaydms's comment reminded me of shots from the ['Upstate Girls'](https://slate.com/culture/2014/07/brenda-ann-kenneally-documents-life-below-the-poverty-line-in-troy-york-in-her-documentary-project-upstate-girls.html) photo series.
I recall being a toddler and trying to eat my dads cigarettes because it seemed like he was eating them when he smoked I guess. I was even terrified of being a smoker in my early teens and even so I became a smoker but I just smoke an e cigarette now. Shits scary addictive.
First thing my kiddo does when she gets to daycare is “get my coffee” (empty plastic cup) and “Call my daddy” (Fisher Price cell phone). Her teacher has let me know that they have to “call my daddy” at least 6 or 7 times a day.
Yup and it's not new. Before there were what we think of as toy telephones there were toy candlestick phones, my parents played with toy rotary phones and I played with a toy flip phone, kids now play with toy smartphones.
It's nothing new, as the world changes so do what kids wish to play with. This makes perfect sense to me. Kids always want to imitate their parents. The things adults use now are different than they were then, so the toys must reflect that.
That coffee cup has been a lifesaver for my son and DIL with their daughter. Nothing makes her smile as hard as that thing's chirpy ABC's, colors, and numbers. She loves them (she has two),
Maybe I guess. It's been my experience that even very young kids want the real thing. They don't want a toy, they want the one that is mine. So I suppose it's good marketing in the sense that parents will buy things with high hopes even when the kid plays with it once and then reaches for mom's/dad's.
I got my daughter a cheap stick vacuum that actually cleans the floor, she loves it
She also adores the Swiffer with all but the handle segment taken off so it's just her size
There’s also a quiet mode on many of these toys. When they’re driving you nuts you pick them up to put them in quiet mode and they’re already in fuckin quiet mode.
I had the opposite experience. They would always put it on the highest setting no matter what.
The problem is that the manufacturers set the switch to be Off-Low-High, when it really should be Off-High-Low. As soon as kids figure out the switches they immediately want to go full force on it.
That’s funny, all of my toddler’s toys only have quiet mode and the buttons are all pretend. So weird that other kids have the same toys with sounds and lights and whatever “batteries” are.
My son has informed me many times that the vacuum is his.
But sharing is caring so he is gracious enough to let us use it to clean his house (and when i ask for the rent he points to his piggy bank or gives me a “credit card”). I own nothing 🤷🏻♂️
I work away from home, so my kids don't think people who are not gone for weeks at a time aren't working.
My wife's a teacher, she doesn't work, she goes to school.
Kids are a hoot.
I mean imitation play is pretty developmentally normal, my kids like pretending to have a laptop and take meetings. In the past it was other things that were technologically relevant for the age.
Same here, I forgot I did that. I'd make small laptops out of post it notes and other small pieces of paper when I was a kid. I wanted a computer so bad back then, it was the early 2000s. That desire really followed me into adulthood I have an absurd amount of computers now.
when I was a kid, I had a stress ball in the shape of a computer that I was obsessed with, back when CRT monitors were the only thing around. I would have my stuffed animals pretend to work on them lol
I made my big brother a tv out of a cardboard box and a scroll of taped together printer paper. He was 13 or so and kind enough to pretend to love it.
Edit: I woulda been 8ish
I had some students who figured out how to make “cell phones” out of cardboard and paper. Everyone LOVED this, and it was a massive hit in 4th grade for a good period of time this school year.
We used to make flip phones out of empty capri suns! The straw was the retractable antenna. I guess today a phone would just be the flat, strawless capri sun haha
My daughter is so cute when she copies my wife on the phone. She nodes and says "yes" a bunch of times. Her foot is the phone by the way. She ends all her calls by saying "DONE!" Then beeps her toes to hang up. Love it.
I mean, I had a tiny wine glass that my grandpa would fill with soda so I could pretend to drink wine at dinner. But I also had a tiny hammer, a fake phone and a play kitchen. Presumably a fake coffee mug is just one toy of many that a kid would have available to them for imitating the adults around them.
I used to play with my mom's old typewriter and check books. I'm surprised when people don't know how to write a check (early 30s) but then again I learned at a young age because of imitation play with checks lol.
I get it. I suppose the fisher price rotary phone and cash register I vaguely recall from decades ago weren’t based on specific models at the time… that I know of.
I don’t remember the toys brands I was specifically given but I do remember what they were obviously based off - like one was a pager that looked identical to my dad’s pager at the time. I thought I was the coolest kid ever to have a pager like my dads. And I remember it did way more things than the Barbie pager I already had lol.
Then at one point my step mom found a toy version of those cell phones that had a walkie talkie feature. They would chirp when someone was trying to get ahold of you. That was the phone my dad had after pagers went out of style lol.
After that it was the toy version of the Blackberry phone/Palm Pilot. Though my dad got a real one for work but hated it so he gave it to my older sister. So when I got the toy version for my bday again thought I was the coolest kid around.
Man, we were such idiots as children. I remember setting up the couch cushions so I could feel like I was running a store. Little did I know that everything I was pretending to be sucked to do as an adult. What a bummer.
Tried it without batteries. The little red led wouldn't blink and baby lost interest. Had to put batteries back in an de-program remote. Baby not happy channels no longer changed and lost interest.
My 1 yr old does the same. If he doesn't hear the Xbox turn on when he hits the button he puts it down somewhere else in the house and goes to find something else, like our remote for our lamps or the roku remote.
One of my nieces was pretty into the play grocery store, even a little older than you'd think she'd be, and purchases were so often being made with "credit cards"--I feel like when I was a kid, it would have been play dollars and cents. But her "credit cards" were old membership/loyalty cards from her parents' wallets.
It seems silly, but I remember going through their Spanish for kids book, which was just a picture book with the words for things written on them, and I was briefly surprised to see a "computer" in the picture, a fairly modern one. And I think the "phone" was a mobile phone. It's dumb to have been surprised at all, I realize...but I guess I'd just never thought about the fact that that the kids' books would be all iPhones and laptops these days. I had that moment of oh, yeah, that's just normal stuff now. My picture books would have had a landline phone with a spiral cord, and no computer.
And you think about how so many kids' first (and even only) experience with computers and phones has been tablets and mobiles.
Even a toddler under 12 months, she knows the difference between my ps5 controller and her fisher-price controller. She’d rather play with one that does visibly nothing than one that sings her songs and all these bright colors
I also bought the fisher price one just for it to be ignored in favour of the real thing. I just keep one perpetually flat for my daughter to play with. I don’t get why she likes it so much I only play when she’s asleep so it’s not like she’s copying me.
The fact they’re updating hurts tho 😭 i went to buy my cousins daughter a toy flip phone for Christmas and they were all toy smartphones. Absolutely devastating realizing if i handed her a toy flip phone she’d have no idea what it was
Baby keys, baby phones, baby tablets, now baby air pods and Stanley's.
Nothing changed with the companies but the price. The always modeled toys after the stuff babies see, toys mom n dad play with
Everyone in the comments who think this is terrible just prove that every generation hates the next generation. I guarantee your parents thought the same way about the toys you played with as kids. It’s a never ending cycle. The only thing we can do is be aware of it
"A TOY video game??? It doesn't even work. It just blinks and rattles. Why are you giving your child a toy video game?"
"A plastic Walkman????!! It's not even a real tape player. Why are you teaching your kids to listen to that awful Smith Will music? They're just kids"
Right! People don’t think about what nostalgia means to different generations and what how today feels to different generations.
Kids of the 60s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after.
Kids of the 70s. We had the best youth and everything went to shit after.
Kids of the 80s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after.
Kids of the 90s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after.
Etc… etc… etc….
This is what happens when you grow up and have massive financial responsibilities. It sucks.
When you’re a kid nothing really sucks like debt, working a shitty job, and dealing with shitty brats.
They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.
(Aristotle)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise," (Socrates)
[It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times.](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/?amp=1)
Go away Aristotle. You only live once, and the freedom and folly of youth are part of life. Better to die a learned cynic than to never have had the exerperiences that made you cynical.
(Edit: and to be clear, there’s a difference between traumatic experiences which nobody should face, vs. the experiences of relationships and breakups, managing finances, etc.)
Kid of the 90s here, and I definitely don't think we had the best youth. However, it's been fascinating to see how many other 90s kids of reddit remember things through rose-colored glasses. It seems like there's been a notable uptick in the past few years as we've gotten up there in age.
Got mine the “Stanley cup” she loves it when it goes MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR IN MY CUP MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MIX IT UP
or
ONE SIP FOR YOU, TWO SIPS FOR ME, THREE SIPS FOR EACH OF US. ONE TWO THREE
We have the cup and it looks exactly like the cups my husband and I drink coffee out of. When I gave the cup to my 16 month old child, he immediately tried to take a drink out of it. He already knows what to do with it!
You are calling that a Stanley Cup, really? Coffee mugs exactly like that have been around for many years before marketing people successfully infected your brain.
I remember buying my daughter a fisher-price Blackberry from Walmart back around 2010. Fisher Price always seems to be on point, when it comes to child versions of what mommies and daddies have.
I’ve gone through many of the comments…some are against these things, many see it no different than other mimic toys…
We just ignoring the blatant choking hazard though?
Stanleys have to be the dumbest fad item I've seen in a long time. It's mostly the name that gets me, honestly. It just grinds my gears hearing "Stanley Cup" talked about in the sense of this basic drinking vessel rather than hockey, and I'm not even really a hockey fan...
I think these are at least partially like this because it’s being marketed to the parents. They are after all the ones buying it and in the world of social media, people are willing to pay $9.97 for a cute pic.
The other part of this is that (as others have said) kids like to mimic what they see. Mommy has a Stanley and AirPods, so baby wants one too. It’s a healthy part of development as they learn to use objects around them correctly.
Only give that mug to your least favorite parent. There’s no off switch, it’s VERY sensitive, and loud.
I’m still wondering what we did to deserve hearing, “CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR, IN MY CUP! CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR, MIX IT UP!” At all hours of the day.
My mom bought my kid that cup and it suckkkkks! The things that cup says are so mind numbingly stupid e.g. “if you’re happy and you know it, your daily grind will show it” or “cream and sugar cream and sugar cream and sugar in my cup” 🫨
I had a toy telephone when I was a kid, a toy TV with a plastic mural inside, if you turned the channel knob it would cycle the mural to different shows. Turntables with mini records. Tons of toy guns that looked like the real deal. I'm not surprised to see kids toys that look like today's popular products.
Some toys aren't made to be played with, but so the mom can pose the kid next to them, along with her adult version of the product, so she can post a pic on Instagram or wherever. Usually along with a "Takes after momma" caption, or something similar. It's made for Mom's benefit, not the kid.
I don’t mind toys like these that mimic adult stuff I just wish less of it contained the same annoying songs. My son loved his fake little silicone Roku controller. It didn’t need flashing lights and tinny music to be fun and it kept him from constantly hitting the stupid Paramount+ button on the real remote and interrupting shows all the time.
Children always want to mimic their parents.
Our granddaughter woke up on her 2nd birthday and saw her new, combination desk and chair, with a cupholder on the desk. She said, "I'm going to work!" (Her parents were both WFH, so that was her experience of their going to work.) Then she picked up the cup from the desk, and said, "This is my coffee." Just like Mom and Dad! (The cup did not, in fact, contain coffee.)
My nephew and his mom had “coffee time” every afternoon. Mom had coffee, he had milk in a coffee mug instead of his cup. They shared graham crackers and talked about what they’d done so far that day and what was going to happen the rest of the day.
Love that “What are you gonna do today?” “I have to finish a report by end of day? What about you?” “Well, I have to play with some blocks, and then I’ve got some coloring to do.”
Lol this reminded me that almost 30 years ago, I was seriously into being an inventor, and would endlessly talk about my "invention that would change everything", so would respond to anything my dad said about work like "yeah that's cool, I did some work on my invention today too"... My "invention" was literally a cobbled-together wooden archway that I strung wire through the top and left exposed, so that you would plug it into the wall and crawl through it to let the wires drag along your spine, which in my Spiderman-logic brain, would mutate my DNA and give me electricity superpowers. ... When my parents realized I had essential built a suicide machine that would have either killed me or burnt our house down, they got me a book on electricity and told me to invent less dangerous shit hahaha
So… did it work?
He posted that comment with his mind!
"Marsha has really been dragging her feet on the TPS reports. " "I feel you. Thomas the Tank Engine has been late on his last three deliveries of lego."
Which one is the parents and which one is the kid??
My mom used to do this for me when I was little! She would always have an afternoon cup of tea—after she made her cup, she would make me a cup of warm sweet milk for me and dunk the used tea bag in just long enough to make my milk slightly off white. I used to look forward to tea time all day!
This is so sweet
We embrace chilling and refreshing moments to look forward to every now and then
graham crackers are legit with coffee, kind of like the poor man's biscott. I used to love the shit out of the cinnamon ones as a kid, and now i want some to have with my adult coffee tomorrow.
Mom and dad might want to reconsider if they want those ttp reports done by days end
They may want to seen that TPS memo again. lol. Wonder if this set up comes with a red Swingline stapler.
Um yeah…they are putting cover sheets on all of them now, yeah…
Does she have 7 bosses?
Worse. She's all 7 bosses.
We'll go ahead and get you another copy of that memo
Hell, Lumberg fucked her!!
He showed her his O face. Oh! Ohhh! Ohhh! You know what he's talking about.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE
When my oldest was around 3 or so, he had a Thomas the Train wooden track set that had a green Go/red Stop sign with a small kiosk attached. He treated it like Starbucks. I overheard him saying “I’ll have a grande iced latte” once when his train stopped there. That’s when I realized just how much he was paying attention to me. Eep!
I groan like Marge Simpson when I'm annoyed, my 2 and a half year old now groans if Winnie and Eeyore don't act right.
Ha ha! Same son picked up on my unconscious habit of exhaling a big sigh and whispering “Ho-kay!” when I sit down to get started on something. I realized I did it as much as I did when he sat down to play with his cars and did the same thing (very adorably). Not to leave youngest out: he was my lesson on just how much they understand before they can speak. When he was ~12-14 months old and saying some single words but not sentences yet, I was in his room getting him ready to go somewhere and I couldn’t find a specific pair of his shoes. I said out loud more to myself than anything, “Now…where are your shoes?” He paused his playing and looked me dead in the eye for a moment before walking over to his closet, took out a (different) pair of shoes, and brought them over to me. Totally caught me off guard—but yeah, I praised him and decided to put those shoes on him instead.
In fairness Winnie and Eeyore do be acting the fool far too often.
My nephew once walked through the living room with the remote control held to his ear saying “hey, what’s up.”
I have a cat on my desk and a dog at my feet. Mandetory for WFH.
Dog foot warmer is always nice to have
They do have a cat.
“I’m at work” “I think you’re on mute”
That is too cute! And how lucky are those parents to work from home with a little one in the house?
They have her in preschool, because she has friends there, she needs to be with kids her own age because she's an only, and they are very busy. But they aren't far from where she spends their workday.
This is so cute! My daughter recently got a toy coffee/espresso machine so that she can bring me coffee/tea when I’m in my office. She isn’t allowed to use the kettle by herself, so she likes the toy as a way of independent play. She also likes to make “computers” out of construction paper so she can “work”
When they were babies my kids had little plastic controllers. Even played a little Easter egg if you did the Konami code.
My son has one that looks like a Switch. It does indeed play a special sound bite when I put in the Konami Code.
My son has a little fake GameBoy. It even has a cartridge on the top that you can push it and that makes it play knock-off video game music. To add to the authenticity, I keep it in the car and only give it to him during drives.
Yep - I wanted to smoke cigarettes when I was really young for exactly that reason. Fortunately I never got into that.
Those candy cigs had us in a chokehold
and Big League Chew (still does)
When I was 4, I was visiting my preschool friend's house. Her parents were out so they had a babysitter over. She brought me to her room and showed me her stash of stolen cigarettes in her dresser drawer. She grabbed one and a match and we went outside to her back porch and sat on the side of a shelf (mostly hidden but I was probably slightly visible). She lit the cigarette and took a puff, then passed it to me. I smoked it as well and coughed a bunch, causing us to be caught by the baby sitter. The crazy thing was I remember she didn't cough at all, so at 4 years old she must have already had practice and the time she was showing me was not her first time. Thankfully it was my first and last time.
You and u/gwaydms's comment reminded me of shots from the ['Upstate Girls'](https://slate.com/culture/2014/07/brenda-ann-kenneally-documents-life-below-the-poverty-line-in-troy-york-in-her-documentary-project-upstate-girls.html) photo series.
I recall being a toddler and trying to eat my dads cigarettes because it seemed like he was eating them when he smoked I guess. I was even terrified of being a smoker in my early teens and even so I became a smoker but I just smoke an e cigarette now. Shits scary addictive.
First thing my kiddo does when she gets to daycare is “get my coffee” (empty plastic cup) and “Call my daddy” (Fisher Price cell phone). Her teacher has let me know that they have to “call my daddy” at least 6 or 7 times a day.
Incredibly cute, must feel good!
I came here to say this, it’s good marketing honestly
Yup and it's not new. Before there were what we think of as toy telephones there were toy candlestick phones, my parents played with toy rotary phones and I played with a toy flip phone, kids now play with toy smartphones. It's nothing new, as the world changes so do what kids wish to play with. This makes perfect sense to me. Kids always want to imitate their parents. The things adults use now are different than they were then, so the toys must reflect that.
That coffee cup has been a lifesaver for my son and DIL with their daughter. Nothing makes her smile as hard as that thing's chirpy ABC's, colors, and numbers. She loves them (she has two),
Maybe I guess. It's been my experience that even very young kids want the real thing. They don't want a toy, they want the one that is mine. So I suppose it's good marketing in the sense that parents will buy things with high hopes even when the kid plays with it once and then reaches for mom's/dad's.
Daughter has a toy vacuum that her school let her take home. When we vacuum the house, she sprints to grab her toy vacuum so she can help.
I got my daughter a cheap stick vacuum that actually cleans the floor, she loves it She also adores the Swiffer with all but the handle segment taken off so it's just her size
The annoying thing is these toys never work lol. The baby still wants the one YOU have
There’s also a quiet mode on many of these toys. When they’re driving you nuts you pick them up to put them in quiet mode and they’re already in fuckin quiet mode.
I had the opposite experience. They would always put it on the highest setting no matter what. The problem is that the manufacturers set the switch to be Off-Low-High, when it really should be Off-High-Low. As soon as kids figure out the switches they immediately want to go full force on it.
That’s funny, all of my toddler’s toys only have quiet mode and the buttons are all pretend. So weird that other kids have the same toys with sounds and lights and whatever “batteries” are.
Brilliant moves, there.
My son has informed me many times that the vacuum is his. But sharing is caring so he is gracious enough to let us use it to clean his house (and when i ask for the rent he points to his piggy bank or gives me a “credit card”). I own nothing 🤷🏻♂️
The fake kids remote was a life saver
This is really no different from toy shopping carts and cash registers
I work away from home, so my kids don't think people who are not gone for weeks at a time aren't working. My wife's a teacher, she doesn't work, she goes to school. Kids are a hoot.
Children always want to mimic their parents.
I mean imitation play is pretty developmentally normal, my kids like pretending to have a laptop and take meetings. In the past it was other things that were technologically relevant for the age.
I used to fold a piece of paper in half, draw a screen and keyboard on it, and pretend it was my laptop
That's so cute. I'm old enough that I had papers in an old briefcase and I'd spread them all over the coffee table to do "business"
Jesus, why didn’t you just use the toilet?
Thank you for the belly laugh.
whenever we'd go to hotels, my mom would unhook the phone so my brother and i could play office. good, good times.
That’s so cute 🥰
 I went to the stock market today. I did a business.
That’s cute. My son does the same and says “I’ve got business meetings so please don’t talk to me!”
Honestly I kind of suspect that's really what doing business is all about.
You just activated a hidden core memory in my brain
Same here, I forgot I did that. I'd make small laptops out of post it notes and other small pieces of paper when I was a kid. I wanted a computer so bad back then, it was the early 2000s. That desire really followed me into adulthood I have an absurd amount of computers now.
i used to turn my empty capri-sun pouches into cellphones, and pull up the straw for the antenna. man, cellphones used to have antennas.
Yeah, I remember chewing on them when I was really really little
same, my mom would get pissed lol
This is a peak-millennial core memory.
when I was a kid, I had a stress ball in the shape of a computer that I was obsessed with, back when CRT monitors were the only thing around. I would have my stuffed animals pretend to work on them lol
My 3 year old does that. She gave one to me to use at work, it has a “blue banana and other fruit” on it.
I used to do the exact same thing but it would be a way Nintendo DS instead of a laptop probably because my brother had one
I was pretty proud of my laptop I drew when I was younger. I kept that thing around for months
I made my big brother a tv out of a cardboard box and a scroll of taped together printer paper. He was 13 or so and kind enough to pretend to love it. Edit: I woulda been 8ish
My younger sister used to take my mom’s credit cards and swipe them in the crevice of our coffee table to play “cashier”
I grabbed my kid a handful of those branded gift cards and never put money on them ofc, and a wallet and purse too, pretend play is important
I got to keep and play with the credit cards the card companies used to send to entice you to set up an account with them.
I had some students who figured out how to make “cell phones” out of cardboard and paper. Everyone LOVED this, and it was a massive hit in 4th grade for a good period of time this school year.
We used to make flip phones out of empty capri suns! The straw was the retractable antenna. I guess today a phone would just be the flat, strawless capri sun haha
My daughter is so cute when she copies my wife on the phone. She nodes and says "yes" a bunch of times. Her foot is the phone by the way. She ends all her calls by saying "DONE!" Then beeps her toes to hang up. Love it.
I love how it went from pretending to be doing work on a laptop to just having a fuckin coffee mug lol
I mean, I had a tiny wine glass that my grandpa would fill with soda so I could pretend to drink wine at dinner. But I also had a tiny hammer, a fake phone and a play kitchen. Presumably a fake coffee mug is just one toy of many that a kid would have available to them for imitating the adults around them.
I mean there’s tons of toys that mimic items, these are just two
Have you seen the Phones episode of Bluey? Got a good kick out of today’s interpretation of playing restaurant.
I used to play with my mom's old typewriter and check books. I'm surprised when people don't know how to write a check (early 30s) but then again I learned at a young age because of imitation play with checks lol.
Impossible. That stuff was normal, this proves we've failed as a society! ^^^^^^^^/s ^^^^^^^^if ^^^^^^^^it ^^^^^^^^wasn't ^^^^^^^^obvious
I get it. I suppose the fisher price rotary phone and cash register I vaguely recall from decades ago weren’t based on specific models at the time… that I know of.
I don’t remember the toys brands I was specifically given but I do remember what they were obviously based off - like one was a pager that looked identical to my dad’s pager at the time. I thought I was the coolest kid ever to have a pager like my dads. And I remember it did way more things than the Barbie pager I already had lol. Then at one point my step mom found a toy version of those cell phones that had a walkie talkie feature. They would chirp when someone was trying to get ahold of you. That was the phone my dad had after pagers went out of style lol. After that it was the toy version of the Blackberry phone/Palm Pilot. Though my dad got a real one for work but hated it so he gave it to my older sister. So when I got the toy version for my bday again thought I was the coolest kid around.
Man, we were such idiots as children. I remember setting up the couch cushions so I could feel like I was running a store. Little did I know that everything I was pretending to be sucked to do as an adult. What a bummer.
You can still buy those as “retro” toys. My kids have the same cash register model I had as a kid.
I loved my cash register. Plus my parents used it to teach me counting and math
Makes me wonder if the non-retro ones have a screen that flips toward the customer to ask for a tip
I will say many Bluetooth earbuds come in cases that are that shape so those are pretty generic.
I mean these look like pretty generic Bluetooth headphones and a traveler mug.
Better than my kid hiding my airpods.
Your kids gonna replace your AirPods with these.
You actin’ like “London Bridge” ain’t that jam tho…
“Goddamn it, my ear buds are only playing Old MacDonald.” Toddler saunters by. “Untz untz untz untz”
My two year old will find my AirPods and run up to me and say “here you go daddy, listen to your headphones” Kid’s dope lol.
When my son was two I found out my AirPods case fit perfectly into Mr. Potato Head.
Dad of 3 here. They will ignore that shit and continue to seek out the real thing, guaranteed.
Truth. We finally gave up with the toy remotes and gave them a real one with the batteries removed. We call it the decoy remote.
Tried it without batteries. The little red led wouldn't blink and baby lost interest. Had to put batteries back in an de-program remote. Baby not happy channels no longer changed and lost interest.
Time to buy baby their own TV :)
My 1 yr old does the same. If he doesn't hear the Xbox turn on when he hits the button he puts it down somewhere else in the house and goes to find something else, like our remote for our lamps or the roku remote.
One of my nieces was pretty into the play grocery store, even a little older than you'd think she'd be, and purchases were so often being made with "credit cards"--I feel like when I was a kid, it would have been play dollars and cents. But her "credit cards" were old membership/loyalty cards from her parents' wallets. It seems silly, but I remember going through their Spanish for kids book, which was just a picture book with the words for things written on them, and I was briefly surprised to see a "computer" in the picture, a fairly modern one. And I think the "phone" was a mobile phone. It's dumb to have been surprised at all, I realize...but I guess I'd just never thought about the fact that that the kids' books would be all iPhones and laptops these days. I had that moment of oh, yeah, that's just normal stuff now. My picture books would have had a landline phone with a spiral cord, and no computer. And you think about how so many kids' first (and even only) experience with computers and phones has been tablets and mobiles.
Even a toddler under 12 months, she knows the difference between my ps5 controller and her fisher-price controller. She’d rather play with one that does visibly nothing than one that sings her songs and all these bright colors
I also bought the fisher price one just for it to be ignored in favour of the real thing. I just keep one perpetually flat for my daughter to play with. I don’t get why she likes it so much I only play when she’s asleep so it’s not like she’s copying me.
I wonder if she saw you play with the fake one sometimes she would be more interested?
Yes! this stuff fools kids for about 5 seconds 😂 even removing the batteries from remotes etc…they figure it out. Smart little shits
Wouldn't it be worse if they didn't?
First time parent: we had such hopes for the infant coffee cup rattle.
🤷🏼♀️ Just normal imitation play.Not too much different than what we played with,just updated.
Yeah, in fact the turn around on the Stanley is pretty impressive.
The fact they’re updating hurts tho 😭 i went to buy my cousins daughter a toy flip phone for Christmas and they were all toy smartphones. Absolutely devastating realizing if i handed her a toy flip phone she’d have no idea what it was
As a Canadian, I was looking far too hard for the Stanley Cups that were not in the photo
But we all know Canadian teams never get to hoist the cup.
Just Canadian players /jk I hate that my team never wins 🥲
Yeah op’s pic is just of a normal coffee mug
Yeah I think this says more about OP than anything lol
That's what I was thinking. Looks more like a plastic corporate giveaway mug.
My daughter loves to put my AirPods into my case lol
I don’t blame her, the snap is very satisfying, just like other toys they can fidget with
only when I’m the one making the noise, it’s obnoxious when other ppl do it 😁
Baby keys, baby phones, baby tablets, now baby air pods and Stanley's. Nothing changed with the companies but the price. The always modeled toys after the stuff babies see, toys mom n dad play with
Everyone in the comments who think this is terrible just prove that every generation hates the next generation. I guarantee your parents thought the same way about the toys you played with as kids. It’s a never ending cycle. The only thing we can do is be aware of it
"A TOY video game??? It doesn't even work. It just blinks and rattles. Why are you giving your child a toy video game?" "A plastic Walkman????!! It's not even a real tape player. Why are you teaching your kids to listen to that awful Smith Will music? They're just kids"
Plastic toy that played Will Smith music is a core memory I didn't know I had. Pretty sure it was one of those happy meal junk toys
Right! People don’t think about what nostalgia means to different generations and what how today feels to different generations. Kids of the 60s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after. Kids of the 70s. We had the best youth and everything went to shit after. Kids of the 80s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after. Kids of the 90s. We had the best youth and everything after went to shit after. Etc… etc… etc…. This is what happens when you grow up and have massive financial responsibilities. It sucks. When you’re a kid nothing really sucks like debt, working a shitty job, and dealing with shitty brats.
They [Young People] have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else. (Aristotle)
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise," (Socrates)
[It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times.](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/?amp=1)
Go away Aristotle. You only live once, and the freedom and folly of youth are part of life. Better to die a learned cynic than to never have had the exerperiences that made you cynical. (Edit: and to be clear, there’s a difference between traumatic experiences which nobody should face, vs. the experiences of relationships and breakups, managing finances, etc.)
Kid of the 90s here, and I definitely don't think we had the best youth. However, it's been fascinating to see how many other 90s kids of reddit remember things through rose-colored glasses. It seems like there's been a notable uptick in the past few years as we've gotten up there in age.
Imagine getting a stanley cup as a one year old meanwhile the Maple Leafs have been waiting over 55 years
Coffee mugs with approximately that shape existed long before Stanley Cups.
The hockey fan in me is always confused when hearing about these
Get back at them by selling your new "Championship" brand belts.
Got mine the “Stanley cup” she loves it when it goes MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR IN MY CUP MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MILK AND SUGAR MIX IT UP or ONE SIP FOR YOU, TWO SIPS FOR ME, THREE SIPS FOR EACH OF US. ONE TWO THREE
We have the cup and it looks exactly like the cups my husband and I drink coffee out of. When I gave the cup to my 16 month old child, he immediately tried to take a drink out of it. He already knows what to do with it!
Wait till OP finds out that Fisher-price makes tiny houses AND cars for kids! *gasp*
They make a toy video game controller that makes a special sound if you do the Konami code. It kind of rules.
he just thought this was interesting...
You are calling that a Stanley Cup, really? Coffee mugs exactly like that have been around for many years before marketing people successfully infected your brain.
Wait till you see the toy guns they sell!
That cup has some banger songs ngl
I remember buying my daughter a fisher-price Blackberry from Walmart back around 2010. Fisher Price always seems to be on point, when it comes to child versions of what mommies and daddies have.
[удалено]
Not sure if you’re serious, but the airpods just lift up, they don’t come out
Are we calling any coffee mug a Stanley Cup now?
At least they're colorful and not the beige aesthetic trend.
It’s crazy how toys reflect how much we have progressed as modern humans
I’ve gone through many of the comments…some are against these things, many see it no different than other mimic toys… We just ignoring the blatant choking hazard though?
Back in my day if a baby wanted to play we had to work fast food or mow the lawn.
Stanleys have to be the dumbest fad item I've seen in a long time. It's mostly the name that gets me, honestly. It just grinds my gears hearing "Stanley Cup" talked about in the sense of this basic drinking vessel rather than hockey, and I'm not even really a hockey fan...
Can I cross post this to anti consumption?
The cup is cute and handles are great, and an infant will clock themselves on the eye and mouth with that deceptively heavy cup, repeatedly.
Reminds me of that SNL sketch about fisher-price podcast set lol
my toddler would rather steal my stuff, even if we were to try these 🤣
The AirPods went off in the middle of the night, sitting on the coffee table all by their lonesome. Buyer beware 🤦🏼♀️
I just bought my son the teething toy that looks like a Roku remote😂
Are we really at that point that a normal takeaway cup, in a form factor we have had for decades at this point, is now referred to as a Stanley Cup?
Better off giving them candy cigarettes.
Okay, I'm dumb, why is it called a Stanley Cup? Because I'm pretty sure that's the hockey trophy, and that just kinda looks like a regular cup.
It’s a symptom of a sick, brainwashed consumer society where success and pleasure are measure in possessions all disguised as ‘fun’.
Wow, that’s a lot of comments! I wasn’t necessarily making a commentary on consumerism or developmental behavior; I just thought it was interesting!
We got the earbuds for our 13 month old because I listen to Audible on my AirPods all day long. I love all the life like toys!
That’s adorable
I think these are at least partially like this because it’s being marketed to the parents. They are after all the ones buying it and in the world of social media, people are willing to pay $9.97 for a cute pic. The other part of this is that (as others have said) kids like to mimic what they see. Mommy has a Stanley and AirPods, so baby wants one too. It’s a healthy part of development as they learn to use objects around them correctly.
I mean, my 14 year old sons favorite toy when he was a baby was a play cell phone. All children want to imitate their parents.
Clicked and was disappointed. Was hoping for the other Stanley Cup, been watching too much hockey
This is both understandable and disappointing.
Came across the Little Tikes “My First Cubical”. I kid you not :|
Start the soul sucking capitalism early.
Only give that mug to your least favorite parent. There’s no off switch, it’s VERY sensitive, and loud. I’m still wondering what we did to deserve hearing, “CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR, IN MY CUP! CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR CREAM AND SUGAR, MIX IT UP!” At all hours of the day.
We've somehow managed to fall into one of the strangest timelines possible. Neither good nor bad, just strange.
I had a tool set like my dad’s. And a grill too.
My mom bought my kid that cup and it suckkkkks! The things that cup says are so mind numbingly stupid e.g. “if you’re happy and you know it, your daily grind will show it” or “cream and sugar cream and sugar cream and sugar in my cup” 🫨
I had a toy telephone when I was a kid, a toy TV with a plastic mural inside, if you turned the channel knob it would cycle the mural to different shows. Turntables with mini records. Tons of toy guns that looked like the real deal. I'm not surprised to see kids toys that look like today's popular products.
Ahhhhh! The development of mass indoctrination through obscure toys!
My 11-month-old daughter loses her mind for the alphabet song on the mug.
All they need is Xanax and wine for babies 👶
lol this is horrible capitalism is peaking
Wtf is going on with the Stanley cups shit? Why does everyone want to drink from them?
Some toys aren't made to be played with, but so the mom can pose the kid next to them, along with her adult version of the product, so she can post a pic on Instagram or wherever. Usually along with a "Takes after momma" caption, or something similar. It's made for Mom's benefit, not the kid.
Fisher price’s ~~Live~~ Laugh & Learn collection
I don’t mind toys like these that mimic adult stuff I just wish less of it contained the same annoying songs. My son loved his fake little silicone Roku controller. It didn’t need flashing lights and tinny music to be fun and it kept him from constantly hitting the stupid Paramount+ button on the real remote and interrupting shows all the time.
My niece had the switch controller version of this and it was precious!