HABA Toy Food

I’ve always loved toy shop­ping, even before I had a child. Choos­ing gifts for nieces and nephews and think­ing about what I would have loved (or what I DID love) at their ages gave me a thrill. And I know wasn’t the only adult wish­ing I could spend an after­noon play­ing with that Bar­bie Corvette (well, now it’s prob­a­bly a Bar­bie Smart­Car) before send­ing it on its way to the lucky recip­i­ent. I know adults who drool over huge LEGO kits. Oth­ers covet their kids’ minia­ture musi­cal instru­ments, hop­ing for an excuse to play that mini ukulele. We all have our secret child­ish longings.

For me, it’s fake fruit.

Ger­man toys are widely rec­og­nized as some of the most beau­ti­ful in the world, and I spent three years liv­ing in the toy cap­i­tal of Deutsch­land, host to the world’s largest toy fair and an exten­sive toy museum. HABA, maker of high-quality games and wooden and fab­ric toys, was my obses­sion long before I even con­tem­plated hav­ing a child. Its beau­ti­fully designed play­things appealed to my retro tastes – no licensed char­ac­ters, sim­ple aes­thet­ics, sturdy con­struc­tion – and I found that they were some of the few prod­ucts that were actu­ally less expen­sive to pur­chase in Ger­many than in the USA.

I often found myself stray­ing from my usual shampoo-shopping in Mueller (a Ger­man chain that’s about as close to Tar­get as it gets in Deutsch­land) over toward the toy area. And once I learned I was preg­nant, I finally felt like I could indulge my child­hood yen. I’d seen the bins of brightly-painted pears and string beans before; now I had an excuse to actu­ally put some in my shop­ping bas­ket. Each lovely bunch of grapes, each shiny apple cost just a euro or two. So every time I strolled through the store on a mis­sion to find ball­point pens or razors or, even­tu­ally, dia­pers, I found a bit of delight in pick­ing up another piece of HABA toy food. I brought it home and stashed it all away, impa­tiently wait­ing for my son to arrive and then for him to be old enough for me…erm, I mean HIM to play with it.

You can imag­ine my excite­ment, then, when my son recently reached his sec­ond birth­day and I real­ized he could under­stand and safely play* with these toys I’d been buy­ing for him since before any­one but his father and I even knew he existed. I pre­sented them to him, know­ing that chances were good that he would take one look and turn his back on my favorite morsels in favor of his beloved cars. But, thanks to his healthy appetite, he fully embraced my favorite play­things, bak­ing me a “cake” of car­rots, sausage, and a green-leafed bunch of pur­ple grapes.

HABA makes a huge array of won­der­ful children’s prod­ucts, but their culi­nary delights were the first to cap­ture my heart. Their toys con­form to high safety and envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards. Now that I’ve left Ger­many, I miss being able to just pick up a sturdy straw­berry or break­able egg on my reg­u­lar shop­ping excur­sions. But the good news is that HABA food is widely avail­able indi­vid­u­ally and in sets all over the world and all over the web.

Bon Appetit!

*As with all toys, espe­cially play­things that look like they could be tasty, pay care­ful atten­tion to size and dura­bil­ity before judg­ing whether they are safe to give a small child.

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Tagged as: Europe, Germany, HABA, kids, kitchen, online shopping, play food, product review, reviews, toddler, toy food, Toys, United States, wooden toys