Toys and Games - Reviews and News

Is it just me or are toys not made the way they used to be. I remember when a toy would last you a good 10 years before anything would go wrong with it. You could drop your wooden toy car from the top of a multi-story car park and the most damage it would receive would be a few minor scratches to the paint work. Try dropping a modern toy car from any height at all and it pretty much atomizes. You spend weeks looking for all the bits and pieces that have cracked, smashed and fallen off.

There is an argument to say that toys these days are more technical, they do more stuff and therefore there are more parts to go wrong. I don’t buy this however as some of the more simple toys made these days like Barbie dolls are more fragile than Nicole Richie.

So why are these toys being made to a low standard? Well, as you might expect it comes down to money. Some of the better retailers only sell quality toys, but most are just interested in the bottom line and so have all their toys made in the Far East and using materials that you wouldn’t even want your bin liners to be made from.

The answer? If you’re buying for a girl, hunt around for the best gifts for her on trusted websites, where you know you’ll get quality. You can do the same for boys, but take into account that boys are more aggressive with their toys so they need to be made of tougher stuff.

In recent months there have been some highly publicised reports of toys being recalled due to safety concerns. How can parents and carers be certain that the toys they are providing for their little ones are actually safe?

The recent recall of certain Chinese manufactured toys has sparked fears amongst parents and carers regarding the safety of the toys provided for their children. But these toy recalls represent less than 1% of the toys sold in the UK. In fact, only about 1.5% of all accidents that occur in the home are actually toy related and toy defects are rarely cited as the cause of accident or injury. Most toy related accidents in the home are due to adults tripping over them!

But what can you do to ensure that the toys that you buy for your children are safe? Here are a few basic suggestions that will help you to choose safe toys:

Buy from a respected, reputable toy store: Shops like these will only be stocking toys that have undergone rigorous quality control and safety checks. Many of these toys will have been used and enjoyed safely by generations of happy children. Buying traditional, maybe wooden toys is often a very safe bet.

Look for toy safety markings: The Lion Mark can only be used by manufacturers who have signed up to the BHTA strict code of practice. The CE mark indicates that a toy conforms with the European Toy Safety Directive, but is not really a mark of safety. Age indicators provide you with guidance regarding the suitability of a toy to a particular age group.

Common sense: Inspect the toy yourself. Look out for small parts, sharp edges, flaky paint, poor quality manufacture etc. Don’t go buying rubbish from the market or a car boot sale.

Keep the play area clean and tidy: Not really related to purchasing safe toys but good advice if you want to minimise the risk of accidents.

---

For top quality traditional wooden toys that have been enjoyed by generations of growing children visit the excellent Mulberry Bush Online Toy Store.

---

Storing toys can be a pain; children seem to to have no end of toys and within the space of a few seconds they can literally take over a room if not a whole house. Toy storage is essential if you want to maintain some kind of order in the home.

Without adequate storage toys simply appear to gain a life just like the characters from Toy Story.

It is fairer to say the bigger the house, the more storage options one has. I know from my own experience that toy storage is not too much of an issue, but that is because we have a great deal of space and the ability to place a great deal of toy boxes.

For me, creating a look in a play room or nursery is important which is why I tend to use wood instead of plastic. I find wood more durable and more adaptable. But then I don’t just buy any old wooden toy box, I like to know what I am getting is quality, my moto is this, ‘buy cheap, buy twice’.

Recently we have had a white furniture specialist open near to us in Chelsea. If you like all things white, this is the store for you as literally the company specialise in white furniture.

Within the products offered by the store are toy storage solutions with a delicious looking wooden toy box being the feature of this range. The nice thing with this toy box is the idea you can personalise. Within the space of a few minutes you can create a real masterpiece for your child’s bedroom.

If budget is not a problem, then I seriously suggest you look at the wooden toy boxes available from New England Lifestyle. If you are looking for solutions ona tight budget, the unpainted storage boxes from B&Q is probably the best option.

The nice thing about this toy box is you can feel the quality in the build, it is well built, strong and not easily moved around by the little ones.

Children are learning even before they are born. Every event or experience they have is educational and this is why it is important for them to have access to play facilities and toys that will make a positive contribution to their ongoing learning. Play activities contribute towards a child’s educational development in many ways including:

• Psycho-motor skills development, hand to eye coordination, manipulation, dexterity.
• Language development
• Communication skills
• Cognitive skills (concentration, perception, memory and logical thinking)
• Creative thinking and problem solving
• Personality development

Todays toy shops are full of the latest whizzy electronic toys. Many are advertised as being educational but are really simply attention grabbing. Tests have shown that humans are predisposed to pay attention to rapidly changing events, loud and unusual sounds and the like. Many modern toys exploit these predispositions with loud, noise-making flashing toys that will grab the attention of any youngster but may actually provide limited educational value.

The right educational toys will be stimulating and fun to play with rather than simply being another form of entertainment. And the right educational toy for a baby is obviously a lot different to the educational toy that will stimulate a 10 year old.

Babys and infants need things to look at, to touch, to shake, rattle and roll. Varied colours, varied textures, varied sounds and varied behaviours will all provide immense enjoyment and stimulation to an infant and they will be learning whilst having fun. For example the Baby and Blankie is a beautifully made developmental toy for babies that won the Good Toy Guide Gold Award.

Toddlers in the 1 to 2 year age range are getting to grips with language and associations with the physical world. They like to stack things, build things up and then knock them down again. The baby walker is a well known traditional toy that is loved by toddlers taking their first wobbly steps. Equipped with a cargo of assorted bricks that allow the child to stack and build and knock down whilst encouraging creativity and achievement.

As they grow, toddlers begin to try and emulate the adults around them. They will enjoy dressing up, role play games and adopting personas such as a fireman, postman, nurse or doctor. They will also derive enjoyment from problem solving, puzzle games, building kits and fantasy play.

Many of us will remember having a toy castle when we were children. Building the castle encourages children’s language skills development and creativity as the child creates their own story, imagining their castle occupied by knights and princesses, fighting off dragons and invaders.

From a very early age children will enjoy creating things by drawing, painting, gluing and colouring in. As they grow their drive to create becomes increasingly sophisticated. They will want to have a go at all sorts of creative play, from painting pictures to building a volcano. Luckily there is no shortage of creativity toys from simple sets of crayons and colouring books to bead jewellery and flower gardens.

Don’t be deceived by the hype and advertising of modern, supposedly educational toys. Many have limited educational value and are actually entertainment devices that provide little stimulation or opportunities for learning. There are many traditional toys that make ideal, traditional gifts providing a valuable educational experience for growing children.

[digg=http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Educational_Toys_and_Traditional_Gifts]

Christmas is just around the corner so pretty soon we’ll have to start thinking about Christmas shopping and gifts. Many children will have prepared lists of electronic gizmos that they are hoping will arrive magically on Christmas morning. Here we present a brief list of ever popular, slightly more traditional gift ideas, only one of which needs batteries:

Rainbow Bike
The Rainbow Brighter Bike is suitable for youngsters aged from around 2½ to 5. Without stabilisers or pedals it relies upon foot propulsion, much like the original bicycles or ‘walking machines‘ from the early 19th century. Children will develop balance and confidence as they freewheel and control their movement and speed with their feet. Progressing on to a pedal powered bicycle is easy once they have mastered the foot propelled Brighter Bike.

Junior Carpenter Set
The Junior Carpenter Set is intended for children from around 8 years old upwards. It consists of scaled down working versions of real tools housed in a tough wooden storage box. A carpentry set is a great learning toy as it can encourage an interest in producing finished products, it can help a child develop forward-thinking and planning skills and it can help them to develop psycho-motor and cognitive skills through handling and manipulating tools and measuring instruments. What’s more, carpentry is good fun and very satisfying.

Magnetic Theatre
Suitable for children aged from 3 to around 8 the Magnetic Theatre provides everything needed to stage and perform 4 classic fairy tales: Cinderella, Three Little Pigs, Red Riding Hood and Pinocchio. Magnetism is used to move the painted wooden characters around the stage which is always fascinating to young children. They will enjoy the and staging their own production for themselves and their friends.

Jumbo Car
Is this a traditional toy? It is certainly a very popular toy for the under 3’s. The Jumbo Car is a soft, padded, comfortable and safe play-car for pretend play-driving. The dashboard presents the toddler with an array of toddler friendly instruments that they find exciting as they start the engine and make the lights flash. The battery powered dashboard can be removed and attached to other play equipment or even taken in the car to keep the little ones amused.

De-Luxe Nativity Scene
Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a nativity scene. This beautifully made, hand painted wooden nativity scene is suitable for children aged from around 3 years old. It’s a great way for them to learn about the tradition and history of Christmas.

We hope that these ideas provide some inspiration for your Christmas gift buying in 2007. A visit to Mulberry Bush, the Traditional Wooden Toy specialists, will provide you with many more childrens gift ideas and you will find that many of the high quality traditional toys are very economical, unlike many electronic gizmos.

Are wooden toys betters than plastic? In order to answer this question we would need to define ‘better’. I have to admit to being biased towards wood so I’ve been pondering why this is the case.

If we are considering the environment and the ultimate destination for many toys (which is landfill) then wood is clearly the better material. If we are thinking about robustness and the resilience of the material to the treatment that toys receive at the hands of their owners then both materials can perform well, depending upon the toy.

But, since we are considering toys, what we are generally more concerned with are things like how appealing and stimulating the toy is, how the toy feels, behaves and looks and how the toy will contribute to the learning experience of the child. For a toy to score highly in these areas the material used needs to be appropriate and the toy needs to have been designed and manufactured appropriately.

When considering the purchase of a toy for a particular child there are many factors to bear in mind including the age of the child, whether the toy is primarily for indoor or outdoor use, what the child’s interests and aptitudes are and what sort of learning experience will the toy be expected or required to provide. Today there are many expensive, noisy toys which are highly entertaining but don’t actually provide much stimulation and don’t contribute towards creative, imaginative play. It’s very easy to watch a televsion programme but much more demanding and challenging to actually make the television programme. Many toys today are like the television set in that they provide entertainment but don’t actually stimulate creative, imaginative play.

It’s very easy for a child to become swamped with too many toys and too many choices but their imagination may still be under-stimulated due to the nature of the toys available.

Why do I prefer wooden toys? I think that somewhere in the mists of my memory I can recall deriving pleasure and fun from playing with certain traditional wooden toys. I can clearly remember building walls and forts using stackable wooden blocks, before progressing to plastic Lego and metal Mechano. Whilst I derived a lot of fun from my Lego and Mechano it is the wooden building blocks which have more emotional resonance for me. My mini carpentry set was the learning toy that probably seeded my inclination towards practical skills and led to my dismantling everything I laid my hands upon. When your children are all grown up, which of their current playthings do you think they will remember fondly?