A toy that's hugely popular with children at the moment is building-block sets, the kind of small plastic bricks that click together, especially the large themed kits for building spaceships, cities or castles. I'm a thirty-one-year-old aunt in Cairo, and I've spent quite a lot of time with these recently.
I know about them mainly through my nephew Omar, who's nine. Every birthday and every holiday, it's the only thing he asks for. When I visit my sister's flat, there's a whole table in his bedroom covered with things he's built. I also see them advertised everywhere online, and there are shops in the big malls that sell nothing else.
What children do is follow an instruction booklet to build a particular model, which can take hours or even days for the big sets. But what I find interesting is that, after building the official model, Omar often breaks it apart and invents something completely different. Last time I visited, he'd turned a fire station into a submarine with a swimming pool. Children also share videos of what they've built online and copy each other's ideas.
I think there are several reasons for their popularity. First, they're creative but they also feel like a challenge, so children get a real sense of achievement when they finish. Second, there are endless themes linked to popular films and games, which keeps children wanting the next one. Third, parents like them because they keep kids off screens for long stretches. The only downside is the price. They're quite expensive, and stepping on a stray brick in bare feet is extremely painful, as I discovered.