Think back to all of your childhood Christmases and you probably don’t remember 99% of the crap you got. However, discounting video games and consoles, there’s probably one toy that remains in your heart. For me, it is the Etcha Sketch Animator, given to me on Christmas Day, 1986. For the whole year, I begged my mother for one. I told her I didn’t want anything else but an Etcha Sketch Animator. I might not have gotten anything else that year. I don’t remember. I don’t care because I got an Etcha Sketch Animator and, to this day, I consider it the best toy ever made.

According to its manufacturer, Ohio Art, the Etcha Sketch Animator would “bring your drawings to life”, and boy did it. Navigating the knobs and buttons, I created wonders with dot matrix image frames. One could start with the samples, such as the dancing skeleton, but the real power was creating my own animation designs. I distinctly remember animating a Star Trek intro piece. My family was amazed (or at least pretended they were). I was a regular Walt Disney: Creator of Monochrome Worlds!

What truly made this the best toy ever made was the amount of patience and perseverance a kid needed to create these animations, just like real animators. This is also why it would later fall from popularity.

Children in our current impatient, instant-gratification culture could certainly benefit from a re-release of the Etcha Sketch Animator. Perhaps Ohio Art can release an updated version. Its a great tool to teach kids that, through perseverance and meticulous hard work, one can truly create something amazing.