tough to beat cardboard tube imo, though I did always enjoy a good box.

box only if its a giant box

Box

You can play with dirt well into adulthood and senescence.

Box http://vimeo.com/12470044

I was pretty obsessed with Maniac McGee as a kid, and I would ask my dad to tie the most tangled and complicated knots he could come up with so I could sit around untying them. Voted string.

And now I KNIT and knots are my enemy but I am considering “string” the same thing as yarn.

Kids + sticks = school holiday classic

Cardboard tube is the obvious choice for all the dwarf hamsters voting in this poll.

look at how happy this hamster is with his balls hanging out of a cardboard tube

once asked for “big box” for christmas. Got it, too.

Cardboard tube indoors, stick outdoors. They both convey immense powers upon the wearer/wielder.

Bah, what is this, the 20th century? All the kids want a multitouch iBox(tm).

no ball no credibility

I remember when you could kick a ball in the street. Now you need a proprietary ball, a special ‘ball kicking’ street zone, a ball kicker’s license from the council, and a special pair of steel toecapped ball kicking boots.

fuck’s sake even at the weekend there’s some sod blamin the council for his woes on ilx

All I’m saying is that the ball kicking exam could do with being a bit less stringent. I mean, when are you ever going to have to kick a ball into a rectangular space 8 yards wide by 8 feet tall? Not even England’s professional football kickers could do that!

itsa football zing there innit

More like exasperation disguised as comedy.

Maybe football wouldn’t be such a minority sport in England if we were better at it.

I voted dirt. It is so freeing to have an expanse of dirt to play in.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

We play in it when young and continue to look for it the rest of our adult lives. Dirt ftw.

I don’t think you can really know joy until you have beaten your siblings with a cardboard tube.

or yr children tbf

I still use cardboard tubes as telescopes.

Dirt!

A single cardboard tube is great. With multiple ones you could literally construct the world.

literally

yeah but look what happened to the ilx server

Voted stick

paper got robbed

Scissors is all cut up about not being included. Stone should have been covered.

I gave up and let my little baby roll around in the dirt a bunch last weekend. She loved it so much that she tried to kiss it. It went very well with stick.

My 7 year old has not quite grown out of sticks. I have several in my car. A few stacked by the front door. Several in a bin in his room along with actual toy swords and guns that we bought for him.

Stick’s the only one I could imagine still having some fun with. String’s the only one I don’t really get, string’s just boring isn’t it? Rubber bands on the other hand...

Cardboard tubes are fun, but voted boxes for sheer versatility.

Oh could still have a lot of fun with a cardboard tube, now I think if it

Manny: “All I needed was a... was a breezeblock. And... and a bit of an old bone.”

Bernard: “I bet you could make whole worlds with just those.”

Manny: “Oh, I could! One minute I’d be laying siege to a castle with a bit of an old bone, and the next minute I’d be setting sail on a Spanish galleon towards a breezeblock.”

String’s the only one I don’t really get, string’s just boring isn’t it?

Have you talked to any cats lady?

Or to Mary Everest Boole, who made string AND math fun...together?

I can thank her for all the groovy thrift store string art I have on my walls.

Scissors is all cut up about not being included. Stone should have been covered.

― yes this is the real (snoball), Monday, December 5, 2011 8:03 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

hmm, I heard scissors was pretty crushed by its exclusion

Voted box. Stick = things in the universe, while box = the universe.

my 3 year old son had so much fun with a huge cardboard box this weekend it made me wonder why I even bother buying regular toys for him

See: Calvin and Hobbes

hmm, I heard scissors was pretty crushed by its exclusion

No, it just went and got blunted.

Meanwhile, stone went out and got hammered.

if i had to pick which one to give to my 2-year-old son to play with, it’d be a box. he loves containers, of any size, anything he can put or pour inside them, or put on his head, etc. he likes sticks too but he’ll just start wacking everything with one, string and cardboard tubes he might get bored with by themselves, and dirt is well too dirty.

Boxes offer up so much possibility.....

Historically I have had the most fun with dirt and boxes, but string was my accomplice in what could have been the crowning achievement of my childhood. I took the kitchen twine and wound it decoratively around all of the trees in our backyard — a lot of trees, we lived right over the Cuyahoga valley — and then attempted to set it on fire so I could watch the fire zing around the string. Biiiiig trouble.

my childhood was more about testing electric fences and jumping off high things and throwing water at each other

lol xp

Automatic thread bump. This poll’s results are now in.

Cardboard tube in with a decent showing, but it was always gonna be box.

Best toy of all time is a slinky, no ifs ands or butts!

sorry, buts

Todd

nintendo is better than a box

Last weekend, one of my kids’ friends brought over a Samsung laptop that he made out of a cardboard box.