The other day, my daughter ran up to me and showed me a picture that she had drawn in about 5 minutes on her Magna Doodle.
The picture was very cute, it was Madeline surrounded by hearts. I told her how much I liked the picture, but as I looked at it I couldn't help but think of how easy my kids have it.
Drawing the same exact picture when I was her age, in 1976, would have been nearly impossible.
Why?
A = Because today's magic drawing boxes, such as Magna Doodle, are so far advanced from 1976's only option, Etch-A-Sketch.Magna Doodle comes with a magic pen. You can use the pen to draw freely on Magna Doodle as if it were a crayon. When you are finished, you slide a plastic bar over the Magna Doodle to erase your picture.
With Etch-A-Sketch your entire picture had to be composed of a single line. You couldn't just draw the single line with a magic pen, you had to use two knobs. One knob made the line go up or down, the other knob made the line go left and right. So if you only twisted one knob or the other, you either got a straight verticle line or straight horizontal line.
Only the most very skilled and patient Etch-A-Sketch artists could draw a diagonal line, much less a curve or circle, by precisely turning both knobs at once. These most basic shapes were certainly beyond my capabilities.
Oh Well...
... instead of sliding a bar across the Magna Doodle to erase my pictures, at least I got to shake the hell out of my Etch-A-Sketch.
2 comments:
Oh!!! I remember the etch-a-sketch, although called differently here (don't recall the name). Once I hurt my cousin's head when shaking it to erase my drawing and was sentenced to 1 hour detention in the bathroom, for being imprudent ;-)
Man, those were odd times....
Although she may still have little scar on her 35-year old forehead
:-O
You surely bring back memories with this post...
By the way if you want the "feel" of it one more time: www.etchasketch.com go to "games"
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