From the category archives:

Toys

Vilac Toys

November 7, 2008

Vilac is an 80 year old French toy man­u­fac­turer mak­ing beau­ti­ful wooden toys that are described as works of art that are exten­sions of their cre­ators’ per­son­al­i­ties.  The Vilac web­sites lists shops and online shops car­ry­ing their toys.  Addi­tion­ally, Vilac is sold by baby-and-friends.com in Germany.

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Furnis-- the doll for every child

October 30, 2008

Due to the vari­ety of races in our house­hold and lives, I wanted to find my son a doll that would bet­ter rep­re­sent a side of his race that is less promi­nent. We do not try to iso­late our­selves, but when I look around. Most of our friends are white. Some are black, don’t get […]

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Holztiger wooden toys

October 26, 2008

Holztiger is a Ger­man toy com­pany that makes brightly col­ored, hand-carved, hand-painted ani­mal fig­urines.  There are hun­dreds of ani­mals to choose from, many avail­able in var­ied poses, so your child can have a herd of cows, a clow­der of cats, or a gag­gle of geese.  There are over a dozen trees, a barn­yard, and even […]

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Glueckskaefer wooden puzzles

October 20, 2008

Some­thing else I ran across in Nikolai-Eck dur­ing my visit to Leipzig, were Glück­skäfer nest­ing toys.  These are beau­ti­ful, Ger­man pro­duced, heir­loom qual­ity, wooden nest­ing puz­zles.  Glück­skäfer has been in busi­ness for over 60 years and believes in pro­duc­ing qual­ity over quan­tity.  For Ger­man speak­ers, they’re avail­able from the Glück­skäfer web­site in Ger­many.  They’re also […]

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Janoschik Toys

October 14, 2008

Last week, I found the most amaz­ing toys in a reli­gious run shop, Nikolai-Eck, at Niko­laikirch­hof in Leipzig (if you’re in the area, def­i­nitely pay it a visit). I’ll post about them over the next few days. First up is Janoschik Toys (Ger­man site, Eng­lish site). These are seri­ously cute wooden toys in the shapes […]

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The BVS Top Ten Toys of 2008

October 11, 2008

For your play­ing plea­sure, here are the top ten toys of 2008 as judged by the Ger­man BVS, Bun­desver­band des Spielwaren-Einzelhandels (Fed­eral Asso­ci­a­tion of Toy Retail­ers).  They’re not all avail­able out­side of Ger­many, but most are.  Have fun! Bis­cuit the Golden Retriever from Fur­real Friends by Has­bro — A sur­pris­ingly real­is­tic robotic dog.  $179.99 from HasbroToys […]

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Crayon Rocks rock our world!

September 14, 2008

Not so long ago, my mom pur­chased The Boy some Crayon Rocks. I admit to plant­ing the seed after see­ing them on another blog, and they are won­der­ful. For young hands, they are eas­ier to hold, encour­age the tri­pod hold for older chil­dren, and color beau­ti­fully. Crayon rocks are made of soy wax and minerals. […]

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Not So Good Stuff: Bino Wobbly Stacker

August 12, 2008

I really, really wanted to be able to write a great review for this Czech-produced wooden Wob­bly Stack­ing Pyra­mid by Bino World of Toys, but that’s not going to be pos­si­ble. We bought this from a local fur­ni­ture store and it was the first stacker I’d seen that I really liked. Unfor­tu­nately, after get­ting it […]

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Moov: Make your own vehicle

August 11, 2008

Strug­gling with what to get for that bud­ding engi­neer in your life? Check out the Moov 4-in-1 vehi­cle kit. It’s not cheap, at 250 Euro, but if your kid gets bored of their scooter, just take it apart and make a trike. Trike not good enough? Go for a racer. Racer ain’t quite fast enough, […]

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