It’s hard to believe, but I’m in New York for my 10th Toy Fair. Which sounds like a lot, until you discover Toy Fair is celebrating its 110th birthday this year. Also, a lot of other retailers I know have been attending this show since before I was born. Even after all this time, I’m still a relative newbie around ... Read More »
What do you get when you combine a catalog with a magazine? Our magalog, Surprises, is your guide to the best of our baby gear selection and the top toys of the season. But there’s more: each issue of Surprises is loaded with informative articles about babies and kids, and common-sense advice that you can use. Just in case you ... Read More »
If you’ve been enjoying a staycation this week while the kids are out of school, chances are you’re looking for activities to keep them busy as this (or any) weekend approaches. Craft kits are a perfect way to pass the time, especially when it’s cold outside. Here are five of my recent favorites, and all but the last one are ... Read More »
Every year, Magna-Tiles top our list of holiday best-sellers, and for good reason: they’re terrific fun for everyone, and are one of the rare toys that can captivate a preschooler or a teenager. But this year, they will be in very short supply — and for a very sad reason. Magna-Tiles are manufactured in Thailand, which has suffered catastrophic flooding ... Read More »
On Saturday mornings in the early 1980s, it wasn’t hard to find my sister and me: like millions of other kids, we were sunk deep into the living room sofa (a plushy red relic that sits in my current living room today), drinking chocolate milk and watching the Smurfs. The Hanna Barbera show was based on the comics by Belgian ... Read More »
Unstructured, imaginative play is loads of fun for kids – plus, it helps them to develop their creativity, and learn social skills. Playmobil sets give kids a setting and some characters to populate a fantasy world and then interact within it, and the Playmobil Lion Knight’s Castle, today’s giveaway, is full of fuel for an active imagination. The enormous castle ... Read More »
If you’ve got kids, chances are you’ve got a menagerie of stuffed animals too. Most children have an almost magnetic attraction to stuffed animals. There’s just something about those cute, fuzzy faces that kids (and gift-giving relatives) can’t resist. And while a select few might make for snuggly bedfellows and cute room accents, they can easily get out of hand. ... Read More »
On a hazy Sunday morning, you step out of your house to get the paper, bleary-eyed, coffee in hand, and instead of being battered and chafed by winter winds, you feel… warm. The air smells a little damp and you can sniff the plants growing. The birds are chirping. Little green tendrils are peeking out of the earth. Spring! It’s ... Read More »
When you were a child, how did you picture the year 2011? The TV series Lost in Space suggested that we’d be traveling in space with robots by 1997, not to mention the colonies on the moon and creepy Artificial Intelligence made popular in 2001: A Space Odyssey. By now we should at least be surrounded by Jetson-style flying cars, right? The reality ... Read More »
After watching the Yookidoo Stack n’ Spray Tub Fountain in action at our magalog photo shoot, I was really excited to bring the sample home for my 2-year-old son. Since that day, it has become his absolute favorite bath toy, eclipsing a full bin of other options. I have to admit, I love it too, if only for the belly ... Read More »