I’ve been talking a lot about how I don’t think the new Kinder Egg designers understand what “fun” is. I don’t have the presumption that any of them will ever read this, but I got to thinking about what actually makes a thing fun or not. Certainly, ‘fun’ is largely a matter of personal taste, but I do think there are a few points that most people could agree on.
1. A thing you put together is more fun than a thing that comes pre-assembled (or that is a single object.) More parts and more intricate construction = more fun.
2. A thing with the potential for imaginative play is more fun than a thing that provides its own limited action. Imagination is infinite; a one-trick pony is just that.
3. A thing that is cool is more fun than a thing that is not cool. ‘Not cool’ is not the opposite of cool, merely the absence of cool. The opposite of cool is phony — a thing that has been deliberately designed to be cool and failed.
4. A thing that fails at its own stated purpose is not fun.
5. A 15-piece cardstock jigsaw puzzle is not fun.
If you’ve been following this project for a while, I bet you can spot which of these toys came from the new-style Kinder Eggs, and which ones didn’t. If you’re a new arrival, I bet you can still guess.
Minimum Safe Distance 
I imagine like most companies budgetary concerns do help determine whether or not something "fun" gets produced, or something cheap and gimmicky. The puzzle? Probably cost $.002 per unit, while that nice hoverboat cost $.25 to produce or more.But I’m SOOOO down with what you are saying. I find the boats, the airplanes, the airships, SO much more fun, but then again some young kids probably find the goofy little hippos fun too. The red Anime twirly thing I’m on the fence about. Its intent is to be a kind of SSP-like thing. Pull the rip-cord and away this thing spins. That’s not all that bad.But I’ve been doing some eBay searching for various Kinder things, and I have certainly seen my share of things that are just NOT fun.Sean.
"The red Anime twirly thing I’m on the fence about. Its intent is to be a kind of SSP-like thing. Pull the rip-cord and away this thing spins. That’s not all that bad."That is fun for the first few minutes, but I don’t think that has the staying power fun-wise of something like a weird animal or a sweet car. The entertainment value of it wears off quickly.I would give it a point for cool, though. The faux-manga style is neat.
I collect hippos, so the hippos are the best–even the crappy lenticular ones. And my husband and I had the exact same WTF response to the timer–yours is at least a better color; we got two really hideous green ones.We had some fun with the disc spinner things. This may have been because we had a really long kitchen counter and could race the discs.The new eggs had some earthmover type machinery to build. Not as nice as the cars and boats, but not too bad (and there were stickers). There were also some glider type things to build; some plastic and some paper to fold/roll and attach. They didn’t fly worth shit, but kinda fun to build.And the dude on the rhino is fun for the sheer WTF factor. I like him.