It's a magical world

I dunno, as far as kids playing that way these days I think it does still happen, but depends a lot on what kind of toy is being played with. Like little boys seem to be more likely to be playing with video games, which don't lend themselves to independently making things up. But dollhouses and legos and individual stuffed animals/beanie babies or what have you still do, I think. I dunno, something I noticed at the tail end of my childhood that I found worrisome is the tendency for toy branding... like even if a kid has a lot of legos, they are harry potter legos, so she will just be acting out the harry potter storylines instead of making up new stuff. I dunno, we probably don't have a large enough sample population to make any definite statements, and I am inclined to think that this sort of thing directly depends on the intelligence of the child, but maybe I am just biased.