I notice sometimes that there's a feedback loop where children like things that look like toys. Sometimes they say it out loud - look, it's for kids! - and they like these objects because of a sense of automatic ownership. So the whole brightly-colored-sparkly-smiley-plastic aesthetic might have only slight inherent interest for them, and more interest as a signal saying "this is yours, you have permission to play with it". Being covered in writing is the opposite signal.

It's a feedback loop because then of course toys are designed to look more and more like toys.