These pictures of toys around the world show how much we have in common

If you want to understand the world, look at how people live. Toys are a good place to start.

Dollar Street, a soon-to-launch project from the Gapminder Foundation, went into hundreds of homes at different income levels around the world to photograph people's possessions. It makes clear a few things:

-Some people have very, very little.

-People at similar income levels lead similar lives, a sign that economics matter more than culture.

-People at all income levels have lot number of similarities too. Among them: toys.

"It's striking to see how similar our lives are," Gapminder co-founder Anna Rosling Rönnlund told Business Insider. "It makes the world less scary to see that most people struggle with everyday business most of the time and they are not so exotic and it's not so scary."

With Dollar Street's official launch coming soon, check out some favorite toys around the world.