Toys for teams

Given the way this election is going and the time at which this is written, it looks like a lot of team building is going to be needed. Another hope-building trend for the playful team builder? Take a look at this online catalog from one of my favorite team building resources.

Personally, I was most excited by the Co-operBand. As I said, my reasons are personal. It just so happens that I invented something very much like it. In the 70s, even. Only I called it the "Group Loop." The only thing that kept me from going further with it was fun. Because one of the most fun things we found to do with it was to play something very much like group suicide. Four people inside the Group Loop stretch the loop significantly. Two opposite people then exchange sides. Rather rapidly. Empowered, so to speak, by the elasticity of it all. Getting actually kinda shot across the circle. And when they hit the band, their weight and inertia pretty much made the other pair of people also shoot across the circle. And you got this wonderful oscillation, which eventually became overpowering in its giggly implications, especially as more and more near misses occur as people shot across and pass each other. Until, almost unavoidably, someone smashed into someone else or fell down. Matt eventually changed the name of the thing from Group Loop to "Danger Band."

But we still loved it. And the Co-OperBand goes several much safer steps further with a bunch of really fun exercises, all of which challenge physical and social skills.

Then there's Team Tracks, a pair of what you might call "group skis" very similar (only much more nicely manufactured) to things we used to gleeful effect at the New Games Tournaments.

As with New Games, what makes these Team Toys really "new" is that they are fun. And as long as fun and teamwork are two separate concepts, these toys will remain new, and just as vital to the health of teamwork as fun can be.