You want to buy them tasteful, eco-friendly wooden jigaws. They want Bratz. But it’s not impossible to find toys that will please children and their parents
EDUCATIONAL TOYS are the organic lentil bake on the menu. We want our children to love them instead of the branded plastic junk that lights up their eyes. Today’s children may sob into psychiatrists’ couches in decades to come: “They only bought me the wooden stuff. Damn my middle-class upbringing, my unbleached washable nappies and my tasteful Mini-Boden wardrobe. All I wanted was a fistful of chicken nuggets and a Ben 10 Omnitrix.”
But at this time of the year Santa can side with the grown-ups and deliver something that is not plastered with TV references, is not a princess and doesn’t come with packaging shots designed to promote perpetual longing. The chilly winds of recession may be blowing round the North Pole but educational toys need not be boring, worthy or expensive.
Here’s a selection of the best from Ireland and beyond:
Lego can be a great toy from a certain age. But for the under-fives it tends to involve pestering a parent to make it and then frustration as the construction falls apart under robust play conditions. Into the breach comes Playmobil, bigger, chunkier pieces that take a bit of battering as well as building. At Nimble Fingers in Stillorgan, Dublin (nimblefingers.ie) they have the Playmobil Mega Farm Set that comes with everything a young farm fan might need. There are buildings, a combine harvester, tractor, tailor, animals, farmers and more than 70 accessories. In a refreshing sterling/euro comparison they are offering it at €115, while they say the recommended retail sterling price is £199.
They also have the Sylvanian family Courtyard Restaurant for €89.99. The set includes the restaurant furniture counter along with food and drinks for serving.
Getting children to grow things may be top of the list of worthwhile endeavours but rain-sodden weather can make it a challenge in the winter months. The Hydro Greenhouse (€24.99) by Uncle Milton promises to produce a small herb garden, vegetable plot or flower bed without mess. The plants are fed a nutrient mix and hothoused under a 10-inch-high plastic greenhouse. The kit is available to buy from pressieport.ie.
In Jody and Mélanie Dillon’s house in Kilpedder, Co Wicklow questions about Santa’s workshop can prove tricky. The Irish engineer and his French wife run woodentoys.ie, a website offering the kinds of toys they wanted for their eldest daughter and couldn’t find. A doll’s house that Santa brought to a neighbour’s daughter provoked a pointed question last year. But Jody believes that while children apply extreme logic to most situations, they let Santa off the hook a bit.
His two top picks are the Sophie’s House dollhouse, which sells at €94.99 for the house on its own or with a family and furniture for €141.99, and the Wishbone three-in-one balance bike (€79.99), which converts from a trike to a pedal-less balance bike as your child gets bigger.
At the quirky Mabel and Violet website (where I imagine its creators sit in tea dresses sipping Earl Grey from bone china cups) they will sell you a strand of bespoke bunting with your child’s name sewn on. A six-flag string costs €15 with a charge of €2 per piece for each extra piece. The bunting can be personalised, with favourite colours or items included. It’s perfect for a baby’s room, a small child learning to read or a precocious teen with an eye for provocative or ironic statement. The website is mabelandviolet.com
The US-based crafts website Etsy.com sometimes feels like home to slightly too many creepy crocheted kittens. But in between the twee offerings are some beautifully made and reasonable additions to a toy box. Despite my feelings about princesses, I love the felt crown ($18) and the fact that it will fit every head in the house from the smallest to the biggest. Its maker, Dream Child Studio, charges reasonable postage of $5.50 bringing it to a total of under €15. See www.etsy.com/shop/dreamchildstudio, or search Etsy for other options.
Over at the Irish-based No Fixed Abode website, they sell a Make Your Own Monster kit in a bag for €15, allowing children to design and stuff their own creature. Their Fold and Behold Christmas Cards also turn into nifty hanging angels that you can put on your tree (€10 for a set of four). See nofixedabode.ie.
The Dragons' Densuccess Animatazz (€29.99) is widely available and allows children from eight years up to create Wallace and Gromit-style stop-motion movies for YouTube.
Another Hiberno-Franco toy partnership – see woodentoys.ie above – is Irish-French couple Myles and Mimi Doyle, who were mentored this year on John Murray's RTÉ radio show The Business, and who have an impressive array of toys at Mimitoys.ie. They have two lovely puppet theatres which become shop fronts when you turn them around. The wood and fabric version costs €66.95 and the wooden puppet theatre with chalkboard costs €68.95. Both look like something kids will be playing with long after Christmas.
It may be an example of Newton’s third law of motion but a balloon-powered boat will mainly be a bit of fun at bathtime. This wooden boat putters around the bath with just a bit of blowing up by a grown-up. It looks like a great stocking filler at £2.99 from toyday.co.uk.
RETRO TOYS MAKE ANOTHER COMEBACK
Dear Santa, this Christmas, I’d like a Meccano set, Monopoly, a wind-up tin robot and a Hornby train set. I’ve been a very good boy . . . A letter to Santa from long ago? Not necessarily. It might read like a list of bygone toys, but the above items can still be bought in Christmas 2009 – you just may have to look a bit harder to find them.
Classic toys are making a comeback this year, as beleaguered parents search for something more meaningful to place under the Christmas tree. The UK Toy Retailers Association reports an upsurge in sales of trusted, reliable toy brands such as Lego and Monopoly. The recession, says the association, is making parents more cautious about spending money, so they’re avoiding faddish gifts in favour of more down-to-Earth toys.
Many classic toys and games, such as Monopoly and Lego, have had an upgrade (Lego’s tie-in with Star Wars has been hugely successful), and this generation of Transformers makes their 1980s ancestors look dull. Remember Airfix models, and how we used to sit for hours piecing together a Spitfire? Nowadays, kids can control a whole squadron using their consoles, but it’s just not as satisfying as the moment you stick that last decal on your scale model. Luckily, Toysonline.ie stocks a range of Revell scale models and a Meccano Spitfire (€35.99).
Another staple of long-ago childhood was the little red wagon and the classic trike. Radio Flyer, a US company that’s been producing toys for 100 years, is still rolling them out to the same sturdy standards that applied a century ago. The company also makes classic ride-on toys, including a Little Red Roadster (€120, ages one to four), and the famous Trike. Both from the Toy Store, Dawson Street, Dublin.
Many grown-ups buy retro toys to relive their own childhood; certainly the sales of Hornby train sets are driven by dads trying to track back to a more innocent time. Top Gearco-presenter James May's recent series on classic toys was proof that you're never too old to have a second childhood.
The Toy Store’s owner Alison Wright does brisk business in such classic games as Scrabble, chess and Monopoly, and is seeing more kids collecting old-fashioned model soldiers, knights, and – perhaps not quite politically correct – cowboys and Indians. Spinning tops and jack-in-the-boxes also seem to pop up on customers’ wish lists. “A lot of dads would come in and say, ‘I had one of those when I was a kid,’ and then buy it for their own kids,” says Wright.
With the trend in retro toys set to continue, you might want to start rummaging through your attic to see if you can locate those old toys you put away along with other childish things. Who knows, you might uncover a whole lost world of play.
KEVIN COURTNEY
