Why Imaginative Play Matters And Why It's Worth Protecting
Hand a child a Schleich horse or a Papo dragon and watch what happens. They don't just look at it. They give it a name, a personality, a problem to solve. Within a minute it's grazing, or guarding a castle, or refusing to go into the stable because it's "in a mood." That's imaginative play — and it's doing more for your child than it looks like from the sofa.
It's also, according to UK research, becoming harder to come by.
Why imaginative play matters for child development
A 2025 report from the Children and Young People's Alliance found that KS1 children now get 23 minutes less breaktime a day than children did in 1995. The same report found that only 29% of new primary school teachers feel confident facilitating play in the classroom, falling to 16% for lower-secondary teachers. Play hasn't disappeared from childhood — but the time and support for it has been quietly shrinking for thirty years.
Unstructured, self-directed play at home has followed a similar pattern. Save the Children UK reported in 2022 that only 27% of children regularly play outside near their homes, compared with 71% of the "baby boomer" generation when they were children. Fewer children knocking about the street, building dens, or inventing a game with whatever's lying around — and, alongside that, fewer of the small, unsupervised decisions that self-directed play depends on.
None of this means children have stopped playing. The British Preschool Children's Play Survey found that children aged 2–4 still spend around 4 hours a day playing outside of childcare, with roughly 1 hour 45 minutes of that outdoors — much of it in the garden at home. Play is still happening. What's changed is how much of it is open-ended, self-directed, and led by the child's own imagination rather than a screen, a schedule, or a set of instructions.
That's exactly where a well-made figurine or playset comes into its own.
At Toys and Learning, we've spent years helping parents choose realistic animal figures and imaginative playsets from ranges including Schleich, Papo and CollectA. We regularly hear from customers whose children return to the same figures day after day, building stories that grow more elaborate as their collection does.
Why parents already know this
It's not just researchers who've noticed. A 2025 survey of 1,000 UK parents, conducted by Censuswide, found that when asked what they most wanted a toy to develop, creativity and imagination came out on top, chosen by 61% of respondents — ahead of cognitive and problem-solving skills at 60%. Physical, hands-on toys remain the clear preference too, with 49% of parents surveyed saying they favour them over digital alternatives, rising to 59% among younger, Gen Z parents.
Parents aren't buying imaginative toys because they've been told to. They're buying them because they've watched a child invent a whole afternoon out of a horse, a fence, and a bucket, and they know what that's worth.
What imaginative play actually builds
Strip away the jargon and it comes down to a few concrete things:
- Storytelling and language. Giving a toy a voice, a name, a reason for doing something — that's narrative thinking, built entirely from scratch.
- Problem-solving. How does the dragon get past the fence? Where does the foal sleep if the stable's full? Small, self-set problems, solved without being told the answer.
- Empathy. Pretending to be another creature, or caring for one, asks a child to imagine a perspective that isn't their own.
- Fine motor skill. Positioning a figure, opening a stable door, fitting a saddle — small, repeated movements that matter more than they look like they do.
- Independent thinking. Open-ended play has no instructions and no "correct" outcome. That's precisely why it's valuable — the child is in charge of what happens next.
None of this needs flashing lights or an app. It needs a toy detailed enough to hold a child's attention and sturdy enough to survive being dropped, refought, and rescued on a daily basis — which is exactly what we look for in the ranges we sell.
Why animal figures encourage imaginative play
This is where craftsmanship and imagination meet. A Schleich horse has the anatomy of a real horse — the stance, the proportions, the way the horse stands and moves — so a child playing vet, or groom, or showjumper is working from something believable. A Papo dinosaur is sculpted with genuine detail, informed by current palaeontological understanding, which matters to a seven-year-old who already knows more about the Cretaceous period than most adults. Detail isn't decoration. It's what makes the story feel real enough to get lost in.
We'd also say this plainly: not every toy needs batteries to be engaging, and not every play session needs to teach something measurable to be worthwhile. Sometimes the point is simply that a child sat on the floor for forty minutes, fully absorbed, running a stable that exists nowhere but in their head. That's not nothing. According to the research above, it's increasingly rare — which makes it worth protecting.
Where to start
If you're choosing a first collectible or adding to an existing set, our Schleich Horse Club and Papo Dinosaurs collections are a good place to look — both built around figures detailed enough to carry a story, and tough enough for the play to happen for real.
Sources: Children and Young People's Alliance (CYPL) Report, 2025; Save the Children UK, 2022; British Preschool Children's Play Survey (Dodd & Hesketh, 2024), Journal of Physical Activity and Health; UK toy purchasing survey conducted by Censuswide, April 2025.