The Best Toys of 2006 – School-aged

Speed Stacks

Manufacturer: Play Along
Ages: 4 and up
Suggested Retail Price: $40

What it is
Sport stacking, a new competitive sport, involves up stacking and unstacking 12 specially designed cups in predetermined formations at incredibly fast speeds.

Speed Stacks are the official equipment for this fast-action game of speed and skill and include the stacking cups, a carrying bag, a stacking matt with electronic precision timer (known as a StackMat), and an instructional DVD.

The DVD is particularly good because it helps kids to break down the process and learn it slowly and step-by-step. The focus is on learning core basics of the activity/sport and then building proficiency.

Why it's fun
Speed Stacks are all about the challenge of beating your opponent's, or your own, fastest time to stack and unstack the cups. Beating your own time quickly becomes addictive and you may find yourself working up a sweat trying to top your last score.

Sport Stacking is challenging and requires a great deal of coordination and agility with the payoff being the reward of successfully accomplishing a goal.

Who's going to love it
Although Speed Stacks are suitable for kids as young as 4, it seems the biggest fans are between the ages of 6 and 12. Speed Stacks is appealing to both boys and girls within that age group and even into teens.

The ever-increasing level of challenge keeps kids engrossed in this, and we've observed kids actively involved in this for hours at a time.

What to be aware of
Speed Stacks have already been included in the Physical Education curriculums of over 12,000 schools for its physical benefits. Sport stacking's popularity led to the creation of the WSSA (World Sport Stacking Association), which hosts the World Sport Stacking Championships every April in Denver. This year's championship attracted over 1,100 competitors from around the world, and the event was telecast on ESPN in August.

There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to suggest that this activity sharpens coordination, reasoning skills and even enhances other study such as music-as performers use stacking as a warm-up. Teachers we've interviewed are highly enthusiastic about this and have found that kids from kindergarten to high school become passionate about it.

One of the most important elements of this, however, is that kids really have to work at it to develop a skill. In addition to the physical benefits, we have consistently found through interviewing kids who are engaged in this sport that they accept the learning process as part of the game. In other words, when they fail or completely choke, they try again, which makes success all the sweeter.

We also find that this is good for kids who might not get involved in competitive sports for whatever reason. It gives them a sense of accomplishment and success. Learning this is deceptively simple. The basics can be acquired in about half an hour, but it's the refinement of the skill and the desire to always do better that keeps kids engaged.

---