half-working hypothesis: whenever buyer ≠ consumer, you can't expect the product's qualities to be even remotely correlated to what would be "good" for the consumer https://twitter.com/natural_hazard/status/1246524388171710470

(for children's toys, buyer = parent and consumer = child)

if you have a small child, the biggest pain in your ass is "how the fuck do I get more free time in my life". I would be very surprised if toys for small children weren't optimized for that.