Maybe I shouldn't speak to these things as a non-parent, but...
When it comes to kids, "toys" doesn't mean optional or wasteful things. Toys are the tools kids use for learning before we're willing to trust them with real tools. Doing crafts or building freeform with legos or tinkertoys or anything teaches creativity and spatial awareness. Dolls and stuffed animals encourage nurturing behaviors. Dress up and action figures and dolls, through make-believe play, let kids explore and experiment with interpersonal interactions and roles in society, and engages their imagination. Models or complex lego/construction sets teach kids to follow directions...a critical skill for adults assembling Ikea furniture or fixing their washing machine or filling out paperwork or formatting reports for their professor/boss/client/etc. Matchbox cars, on a large, flat surface, lend themselves to early physics experiments (as well as make-believe).
Toys are also some of the first things a kid calls their own, so they are an early way to introduce "taking care of our things" ideas. Of course there will be some stumbles along the way; we all learn best from mistakes. Dolly will have to live with her sharpie tattoo for the rest of her dolly life...which will be shortened as a result by being made unacceptable to donate. When the truck breaks from being sat on, kiddo learns that plastic stuff like the truck isn't very strong. When not cleaning up a game results in irretrievably lost pieces and makes the game unplayable, the kids eventually figure out why you insist they put the game away immediately after playing. This is the cost of doing business; I've lost numerous dishes, nonstick pans, flashlights, tape measures, etc. with time and use. Many tools wear out eventually, or we outgrow their usefulness; it's only to be expected the same happens with toys.
Of course, these lessons may stick better if the kid doesn't have 10 dolls and 20 trucks, and actually cares about them to some degree...so I'm by no means arguing against keeping the toy collection curated down to a reasonable size. I just think most kids would only be better off by exposure to and availability of at least a few toys from each category. That said, obviously each kid has independent preferences, for specific types of play that may involve more or fewer toys. Some might do more dancing or tumbling, or play with the family pet, or build blanket forts, or drum on pots and pans. What's "right" definitely varies, not arguing that. Just that there seemed to be an undertone of toys being useless or wasteful in responses and that's pretty far from true.
A final note on reading..."My kid only wants to play video games so I won't make her read" reads similarly to me as "My kid only likes McDonald's hamburgers so I won't make her eat vegetables." There is nothing wrong with video games necessarily (I hear they're great training for future pilots and possibly surgeons), but reading is crucial--it grows vocabulary, develops empathy, trains comprehension skills. They'll need it for school, college (if they go), work, life. Giving up on it entirely seems as ill advised as giving up on a kid's hygiene habits or manners. "He doesn't like brushing his teeth or saying thank you, so we aren't going to make him anymore." Really?