The Office Playground Blog

Top 10 Toys that Promote Creativity

How important is creativity in your job? Being "creative" and thinking "outside of the box" are huge business buzzwords these days. We don't claim to be business consultants who can help you creatively "re-engineer, re-organize or re-invent" your business model. We do claim to be experts at playing with creative toys at work. We believe that if you can express creativity with desk toys daily, the bigger picture stuff will fall into place naturally. To make sure you have the right creativity toys on your desk or meeting room table, we have compiled a list of our Top 10 Toys that Promote Creativity.

Often, it's hard to have a breakthrough moment when you are focusing too hard on finding a solution. By playing with toys, you actively work your brain while giving your subconscious a chance to come up with the answer. With these fun office toys, you can maintain a clever and productive mind while creating sculptures, shapes or designs from putty, magnetic art, or buildable puzzles. Have a pumped up brainstorming session with a fun shaped wipe-off board. Take your drawings and doodles to the next level with a pin art board, magnetic drawing board, or Wikki Stix.

Check out our Top 10 Toys that Promote Creativity. What will you create?

		Magnetic Cubism
		Human Pyramid - Color
		Thinking Putty - Chameleon
		Wikki Stix
		Ball of Whacks - Red
		Incrediwall - Talk Bubble 24x18
		Executive Sandbox - Day at the Beach
		Finger Drums
		Etch A Sketch Keychain
		Pin Art - Metal 5x7"

Are you inspired? Send us a photo of your creation using a product from Office Playground for the chance to win a free surprise gift. Send entries to officetoyguy@officeplayground.com by 2/28/2010. Click here for more details.

Playfully,

Bill Ross
The Office Toy Guy
OfficeToyGuy@OfficePlayground.com

www.OfficePlayground.com
We help you play on company time.

Get Smart! - The Benefits of Puzzles

At OfficePlayground.com, we often mention that one of the main benefits of playing with office toys at work is to help reduce stress. But, did you know that playing at work can make you smarter?

Well, your IQ probably won't increase and you still might think the capital of Oregon is Portland, but you can boost your brain power with a mini-workout each day.

According to the September 2009 issue of Redbook Magazine, "research has shown that doing puzzles—from crosswords and Sudoku to Rubik’s Cube—might help ward off diseases such as Alzheimer's and dementia." Further, the recommendation is to spend 10 minutes a day exercising your brain muscle.

We've always loved the Office Playground Puzzle Category because of classics like Rubik’s Cube and the Fifteen Puzzle. And as always, these old standbys don't disappoint. But, more recent products like the Find It games and the Hoberman Brain Twist give a fun flair to puzzling.

Visit our puzzles category to pick out your next piece of exercise equipment so you can start to get smarter just by sitting at your desk and playing. No pain, a lot of gain. It doesn't get easier than that!

The Find It Expert

Find It puzzles are one of the most addictive and entertaining games we have here at Office Playground. Some of my co-workers introduced me to the Find It puzzles this past summer. One of the perks of working at Office Playground is that we get to play with sample products. I’ve found most of the hidden objects in all three of our Find It puzzles, so I now consider myself a Find It expert.

I started with the Find It - At The Beach, not even knowing we had other versions of the game. I was immediately hooked. I used a slow twisting and rocking technique to find over half of the hidden objects in less than a day. Most of the objects were easy to find with some time. At the end of my first day searching, I still had to find a few objects my co-workers had never found after their months of searching. It wasn’t long, though, until I found things they had not. The bathing suit, rock, sunshine and penny were some of the most difficult to find. The penny is supposedly the most stubborn of them all. Its weight, shape and size prevents it from appearing on the outer areas. I became rather obsessed with finding the penny and the rest of the objects. I did some research and discovered a special maneuver that uncovers the penny. I tried a few times and ended up finding the rock, which no one in the office had found yet. After some patience and persistence, I finally found the penny! Only a small amount of the penny was visible, since most of it was still covered in the tiny plastics beads, but it was certainly recognizable as a penny.

Later, I learned that there were other Find It games and we had samples of them too! I found the Find It - At The Zoo to be much more challenging than the Find It – At the Beach. It was difficult to decipher which animal I was looking at, especially if its head was still buried in the beads. The shape and the weight of many of the animals made them rather easy to find, but others were made out of unexpected materials or in a unique form. The kangaroo remains hidden.

The Find It - Original contains a diverse combination of objects, but they are very familiar. After experiencing the other Find It games, this one seemed easy. I could find several objects right away. A handful of the objects took longer to find than most, but became visible quickly. The only troublesome ones were the wing nut, popcorn kernel and the bow. I’ve searched for the bow for hours. I have come to the conclusion that the bow isn’t in my particular puzzle.

On my desk, I currently have a Find It tower of all three puzzles stacked on top of each other. It has caught the attention of co-workers passing by my cubicle and it has yet to tip over!