Category archive: toys

November 28, 2016

Runbike Racing Is The Muttonbusting Of Japan

image: rfj We have come a long way from the Like-a-Bike. Balance bikes are called runbikes in Japan, and so the competitive racing circuit is known as the Runbike Challenge Series. It is organized by the RFJ, Runbike Foundation...
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November 16, 2016

Zombie FAO Schwarz Slips The Surly Bonds Of Toys R Us, Earth

your #FAOMemories will be assimilated image: fao.com My kids could be in college and writing papers about surviving the trauma of their dad exploiting their childhoods on a dadblog designed to make the money to pay for their college,...
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August 5, 2016

This Is Fine. Dog Plush On Kickstarter

You're on the internet, so you know KC Green's This is fine. dog. We are all KC Green's This is fine. dog now. And now your kid can be, too. Green has launched a Kickstarter campaign to make a...
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July 2, 2016

Bayou Meth Lab Raid Lego

Zander's niece got a bayou meth lab police raid Lego set, which Playmobil must answer, or risk losing the edgy playset realness crown. Riot police and security checkpoints just ain't cutting it anymore. [twitter, @zander] Buy a Lego City...
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April 10, 2016

Kid Snuggles Owl

Most kids have a stuffed animal or blankie. My niece has one of those plastic owls u put outside to scare away birds pic.twitter.com/U3CX3Gcb0V— pat tobin (@tastefactory) April 10, 2016 Wait, you didn't mention it was a Bobble Head...
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January 24, 2016

#WheresRey's True. All Of It.

For my kids Star Wars was last month. But sexism springs eternal. And the attitudes about what boys do or don't or will or won't play with that come up in Michael Boehm's account of #WheresRey are girl problems...
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January 6, 2016

Rocking Horse Rattle By Antonio Vitali

Design scout Aaron Cohen's finds have been on Daddy Types before, but this 1960s molded plastic rocking horse rattle by Antonio Vitali is the first I've seen anywhere. It's from Otto Maier Ravensburg, the German board game company that...
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December 31, 2015

The Best Thing About Disney Princesses Is The Business Case

Wow, it's been quiet on the Daddy Types front. Too quiet. But there is no better topic to end the site's 12th year [!] on than Disney Princesses. Or specifically, the play-by-play Business Week story of Mattel's bungling of...
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November 22, 2015

Sweet Naef Lacing Horse By Fredun Shapur

This is one of four wooden lace-up toys-a pony, a camel, a sheep, and a lion-designed by Fredun Shapur in 1969, and manufactured by Naef. They're referred to as Schnurpfeltier, which, Schnur means "cord," and so pfeltier probably means...
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October 20, 2015

London Real Estate Market Not Ready For Kaleidoscope House

London's housing market has been off the charts lately. And with local art fair Frieze, the contemporary art market's circus came to town last week, too. Yet this unholy confluence, along with the ascendance of Lena Dunham to the...
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October 8, 2015

10 Years A Playmobil Slave-Turned-Pirate

A woman bought a big Playmobil pirate ship for her nephew, and then got Facebook-upset when the instructions said to put a slave collar on the brown-skinned pirate. Other people got Facebook upset back, pointing out how the pirate...
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October 6, 2015

Here Is A Rocking Llama.

The contemporary art world is lately up in arms over flippers, speculating collectors who hoover up paintings by hot emerging artists, only to hype and dump them at auction, ideally for quick 10-100x returns. It is not clear if...
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September 9, 2015

Nautical ABC Blocks Among Many Nice Blocks by Uncle Goose

These alphabet blocks with nautical flags on them are quite nice-looking. In fact, many, many of the alphabet blocks by Uncle Goose are nice-looking. Like these Hindi blocks. Oh man, gorgeous. In fact, many non-alphabet blocks by Uncle Goose...
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July 5, 2015

I'd Like To Be Set Out To Sea On An Octopus-Shaped Float Toy

Not that you should plan for it, of course, but it's nice to know that if you did forget about her, an Octopus Mini Lilo can keep your 10-month-old afloat a kilometer out to sea until the coast guard...
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June 20, 2015

Renate Müller Playsculpture At Design Miami/Basel In Basel

Renate Müller is still alive and awesome, and for the last few years R&Co. in NYC has been bringing new creations by Müller alongside her pioneering East German-era designs. This is a play sculpture R&Co. are showing at Design...
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June 12, 2015

Mad Max Fury Road Ponies By Kelsey Wailes

Speaking of clay, here are some Mad Max Fury Road My Little Ponies. Mad Max Fury Road Ponies [savethewailes via dt reader jp]...
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June 11, 2015

Pourquoi Pas? Make A Barbapapa House

Barbapapa, the iconic and friendly French Jabba The Hutt, lives with all his ancillary characters in some kind of Pierre Cardin-lookin' bubblehouse. Which you can buy, but why would you, when you can make your own Barbapapa house out...
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June 7, 2015

play / Ply: 1960s Toy Exhibition In London

An exhibition of 1960s modernist toy designs by Roger Limbrick. Patrick Rylands, Fredun Shapur, and Ken Garland, has opened in London. "play: toys, sets, rules" includes some "extraordinarily generous, humane and beautiful objects" which grew out of their designers'...
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May 30, 2015

Dollhouse Painted To Look Like London Junction Box Painted To Look Like Dollhouse

"Junction box made up like a trippy doll's house on Whitecross Street, EC1 pic.twitter.com/dLjeAORR3U" Let everyone adopt+paint a junction box?— Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) May 30, 2015 This would be a legitimately cool dollhouse, btw. If Barry McGee or some...
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May 26, 2015

ADO Dollhouse Furniture By Ko Verzuu

We need this right now. This ADO dollhouse sitting room set was designed by Ko Verzuu sometime around 1926-32. I saw it on aapc, but now it's gone. I'm leaving this photo and a link to an old Gemeentemuseum...
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May 18, 2015

Zombie FAO Schwarz To Shamble From Fifth Avenue To Times Square

FAO Schwarz, the toy brand that wouldn't die, will close its Fifth Avenue store this summer, and it's not coming back. Tourist mobs should be able to find it again next year somewhere near Times Square, possibly in a vast...
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April 23, 2015

Come Celebrate With Us! And Maybe Just Bring Cash

More news from England, that just happens to be America: Lately I find that I leave things alone for a few days, see if they remain interesting. And then I decide whether to post them. It gives time for...
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April 14, 2015

Arion Youth: Blingy Rocking Unicorn By Marcel Wanders

Moooi is launching a bunch of merch at the Milan thing this week, including this limited edition, rhinestone-covered rocking unicorn by Marcel Wanders. Called Arion--which, be sure you hit that ON in there, otherwise, kind of awkward--I assume they're...
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March 24, 2015

Kid Meets Heroes

2yo Quincy got to meet his heroes Friday, the guys who collect garbage on his Cincinnati street on Fridays. And it was a little overwhelming, reported his dad. To the local news station, because I guess nothing more awesome...
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February 20, 2015

LAMA Presents The Bojesen Menagerie

It sounds like a Robert Ludlum book posing as a Tennessee Williams play, but it is actually a mid-century nurseryful of Danish teak toys for sale in one fell swoop. If you don't mind a bear three-way and some...
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February 18, 2015

Arman Dollhouse

The French artist Arman first received critical attention in the late 1950s for his Accumulations and Poubelle works, in which he stuffed plexiglass vitrines with as many identical objects or garbage as he could fit, respectively. Violins, mussel shells,...
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February 17, 2015

Meccano Home. You Know, For Kids

Meccano Home exists. It was conceived by a constellation of designers and engineers in France whose names appear on various websites in varying pairs, so who knows, Meccano Home has a thousand fathers. The brand is licensed from the...
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January 19, 2015

Rescuing Dolls From A Life Of Bratz

The Tasmanian artist behind Tree Change Dolls rescues dolls from the streets and helps them turn their young lives around. With a gentle make-under and some more fun, age-appropriate clothes, the only scars of their Bratz past are on...
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January 17, 2015

'Handcrafted With Lots of Fun In Thailand' Until They Folded

I love thinking about the Thai workers who had so much fun handcrafting this toy for my kid pic.twitter.com/UvL6sxT0FH— Gabriel Roth (@gabrielroth) January 17, 2015 @gregorg @gabrielroth @daddytypes A doll so magical as to relieve bourgeois guilt. Worth tracking...
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December 26, 2014

Paulsberg Concrete Toy Trucks Belong On Grownup Desk

Here are a gorgeous toy cement mixer and a steamroller from Studio Paulsberg of Dredsen. They are made from actual concrete. The word for concrete in German is Beton, just like in French. You can learn these words now,...
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December 21, 2014

Onesie Shopper Does Not Simply Walk Into CIA Gift Shop

The Washington Post went shopping at various government agency gift shops, and all I got is this CIA Onesie made in one of the Agency's growth markets: Pakistan. Kind of has a Circle of Life-level warm fuzziness to it,...
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December 12, 2014

Labours Of Love And Plywood Floors At Wilton House

Sometimes one cannot improve on the copy one is presented with, and so one just runs with it:Few boys get to play with their model train set surrounded by exquisite hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, but that was the backdrop for...
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November 8, 2014

New Born Fame: App Mobile Put Social Media Power In Babies' Clueless Hands

New Born Fame is a series of social media-enabled baby gear created by Laura Cornet for her graduation show at Eindhoven Design Academy. It went viral during Dutch Design Week. Though kid-free herself, Cornet studied the steady stream of...
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October 22, 2014

Snohetta Dollhouse, For SFMOMA

The Norwegians-in-Brooklyn architecutre firm Snohetta are doing the new SFMOMA building. So when the museum leaned on them to donate work to a fundraising auction last year, they put up a dollhouse. It is an insane, psychedelic wunderkammer of...
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October 8, 2014

Doppelganger Ace Bike, The Adjustable Japanese Pushbike

The pushbike space has been looking pretty stable lately, with the OG German plywood Like-a-Bike being rather completely surrounded with Chinese knockoffs in dozens of variations. Hundreds, even. But this is pretty interesting. It's the Ace Bike from Japanese...
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July 21, 2014

Videos Of Toys Popular Among Ignored Children

OK what, this Buzzfeed article about the anonymous, disembodied hands behind DisneyCollectorBR, a YouTube toy unboxing and play demo channel is utterly bonkers. Apparently the 55 million views/week translates into between $1 and $13 million per year in ad...
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DT Outer Banks Report

That Point In The Family Vacation Where Two Of The Twelve Cousins Open The 3,800-Piece LEGO Death Star On The Coffee Table...
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July 14, 2014

Bid Along If You Feel Like A Seasons Natural Treehouse Without A Roof

On the one hand, this Seasons Natural Toys treehouse is a survivor, the first I've ever seen from the eco-friendly, indie toy company started by Jennifer stickley and Lynn DeRose in the early 1990s. And gone now--the last online...
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June 30, 2014

Not Free, Not For Target: Philippe Starck Mustache Ride

Philippe Starck's The Face haunts Daddy Types like a kids' design version of recovered memory trauma. The Face was introduced in 1997, and was briefly sold in FAO Schwarz, not, as the current seller on eBay UK claims, as...
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June 25, 2014

!Playmobil Limpieza en la Casa! ¡Diversión de Verano!

Esta muñeca de limpieza de Playmobil viene con todo lo que necesita para limpiar las habitaciones de hotel en todo el día, salvo un salario digno, la reforma migratoria, y la representación sindical! Y gracias al descuento de Amazon,...
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June 5, 2014

LEGO Spaceman Will Hold Your Charger Cable

Why has no one thought of this before. WHY. pic.twitter.com/fmT3azBVzG— Techmog (@Techmog) June 5, 2014 All you need is a little Kragle....
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June 4, 2014

Target

Seriously, this is the perfect before and after at Target picture about open carry yahoos pic.twitter.com/4sjNFNaNo0— Abe Sauer (@abesauer) June 4, 2014 Wasn't giving ribbons to everyone in peewee league supposed to cure this generation of its insecurities? Can we...
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May 27, 2014

Sushi Blocks

These handmade sushi blocks are awesome. They were created by Tokyo creative design firm Plaplax for a food-themed exhibition in Okazaki. They will be produced in a limited edition of 20 by woodworker Mochizuki Tsutomu. The 48-piece sets reserved...
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May 19, 2014

Gunnersaurus Had A Playdate

As recently as 2012, when they were still in the middle of a long, cupless losing streak, Arsenal was so desperate to keep its fans happy that they'd send the team mascot Gunnersaurus out on playdates with largely immobile...
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May 8, 2014

Mr Potato Head Had A Posse

Everyone has a past, I suppose. Take Mr. Potato Head, whose head used to be made out of real potatoes. The Hassenfeld Bros. Company used to just sell a box of face parts with pins on the back, for...
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April 23, 2014

Antonio Vitali Hand Puppets In Paris

It wasn't until DT reader and Antonio Vitali puppetmaster Aaron sent along a link to these photos of Vitali's handpuppets at the Louvre's Musee les Arts décoratifs that I realized they're mimes. Moody, manic, silent, creepy, Frenchy mimes. Oh...
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April 18, 2014

WHOA, Edward Durell Stone Kids Furniture Exists

Architect Edward Durell Stone designed MoMA, the Kennedy Center, and the house next door to us on the Upper East Side, but I had no idea he ever designed kids furniture. Yet here some is. In 1969 Stone built...
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April 11, 2014

'We Are Mint In Box': The A.I. Super Toy Teddy

I was kind of into it at the time, but Stanley Kubrick & Steven Spielberg's A.I. is one of those movies I just can't watch since becoming a parent. [Also on that list: Marc Forster's dystopian suburban stillbirth saga, Everything...
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April 1, 2014

What's Up, Doc?

I designed this nursery for my son Kimmo. He shall never be scared and aim for the stars. pic.twitter.com/u3HhxqRr1H— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) April 1, 2014 Mazeltov to the whole Dotcom family, though I don't think fear is necessarily something...
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February 25, 2014

Antonio Vitali Creative Playthings Family Ahead Of Their Time

It's always nice to see an Antonio Vitali Creative Playthings family come up for sale on eBay. It's especially nice to see one come up with a superlow starting bid; it always makes for good action. And when the...
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