A walk in the snow; thoughts on the untapped potential of toy thinking

I went for a walk in the snow this morning. I was a feeling a little bummed by the storm’s impact on this year’s holiday shopping so my intrepid girlfriend took a cattle prod and forced me out the door.

As we walked we passed people shoveling sidewalks and cleaning off cars. They appeared resolute, sweaty and tired. As we entered the park, we were passed by a little girl with a shovel and a pail. She and her mom had been playing in the snow.  They looked happy.

As I considered this, I was struck by an observation made by the Strong National Museum of Play’s Chris Bensch that what is work and what is play is all about context. 

In this case, people shoveling snow off a sidewalk were working; the little girl and her mom shoveling snow into a pail were playing. This notion was reinforced when we passed parents and kids sledding in the park.  Happy moms and dads were dragging sleds up the hill so they and their kids could sled down the hill. It looked like work but it was play.

It made me wonder if we could use toy thinking to change the context and make work more fun for people. Was there a game, an activity or a technology that could have made those sidewalk shovelers experience a grueling job as a play experience? Something to think about toy industry.