January 21, 2009
Maybe the problem is that crunchy liberals have been out of power for several breeding cycles? But it's not like the neo-con's Torture Me Elmo was a big hit, either. Maybe making toys that are simultaneously propagandistic and fun...
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1:08 PM
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It was always said that Elsie could craft in a day what a 100 other etsy.com sellers could craft in a week. I hope it's not too Henry B. Swap of me to point out there are enough buttons...
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8:48 AM
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January 20, 2009
The catalogue copy for the Ferrari children's bicycles is maybe more revealing than intended about exactly who they're for:This licensed Ferrari bike is simply beautiful in every detail. The perfect first bike when your child has to have the...
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5:18 PM
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January 19, 2009
90% of dadblogging is just what shows up. Just a few hours after I stumbled across Multiplications, I stumbled across the Yoshitomo Cube. Here's the deal: In 1969, The Museum of Modern Art commissioned artists and designers to create some...
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9:40 PM
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As soon as Los Angeles plush artist Wendy Bryan found out that the plush ovaries and Fallopian tubes on her I Heart Guts plush uterus posed a choke hazard, she immediately announced a recall. Even though the plush uteri...
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9:24 PM
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January 14, 2009
If you thought the recent eBay appearance of some unusual--and unusually well-preserved--Creative Playthings toys being sold from Hamilton Square, New Jersey--a town within easy commuting distance of CP's vintage headquarters in Princeton--was a fluke, think again. The same eBay seller...
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10:50 AM
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January 13, 2009
Does the sender of the first photo of a Little Marc Jacobs X Bugaboo in the wild still win a 'daddy type' t-shirt if she's also a Bugaboo publicist? Yes she does, but I'll keep the offer open for...
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7:43 PM
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Comments (10)
January 8, 2009
Interesting. Skip*Hop keeps expanding its product line beyond the low-profile diaper and stroller bags which gave the company its start. And now they've picked up what I believe is their first distribution deal; they're now the US distributor for New...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 AM
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Comments (2)
January 6, 2009
I want to fix the CPSIA, the CPSC's new lead testing law, and save all the various children's product industries from regulation-induced bankruptcy and collapse on February 10th as much as the next guy. But I would like to do...
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Posted by greg at
12:18 AM
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Comments (3)
January 1, 2009
So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
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Posted by greg at
8:36 AM
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Comments (3)
December 31, 2008
Uhh, wow. Just, wow. With only a few hours before the deadline, I have found The. Craziest. LIFE Magazine Archive Photo of 2008. It's by Ralph Morse, and it was a, uh, well, it's about the introduction of Troll...
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6:54 PM
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Comments (0)
Hmm, look what else is in that New Jersey basement. An unopened Creative Playthings Playsack, which, as you could probably guess, is a giant paper bag that a kid is supposed to play in. The eBay description is intriguingly...
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2:57 PM
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Comments (0)
December 30, 2008
The Alurunner sled answers the burning question absolutely no one who hasn't just downed an entire bota bagful of schnapps is asking: What would you get if a German performance tuner like AMG, Brabus, or RUF started with, not...
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3:42 PM
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Comments (3)
December 29, 2008
Which is to say, the top-of-the-line Porsche sled is an over-engineered, high-performance, aluminum-and-steel category killer of almost obnoxious simplicity. The cheaper one is plastic, and it tries to make you to forget that it's basically a Volkswagen. Also, it...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (1)
December 27, 2008
That's how I like to see my favorite Ladislav Sutnar prototype blocks: in a giant photo in the New York Times, accompanying an excellent review of Vik Muniz's awesome "Rebus" exhibition at MoMA. Roberta Smith says "Rebus" is fantastic...
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1:22 AM
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December 23, 2008
Anyone who has ever seen the 1978 variety showsploitation travesty that was the Star Wars Holiday Special cannot pretend to have been betrayed by the treacly offenses of baby Annakin and Jar Jar Binks. We knew Lucas had it...
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4:27 PM
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Comments (1)
And no, it's not sunglasses. It's an awesome, giant stuffed ball made from a muted-yet-whimsical selection of 100% recycled wools. Hopefully, your Oakley's parents aren't too hippieish about natural fiber stuffing, because anything but polyester turns this into Oakley's...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 AM
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Comments (4)
Until the real estate market exploded, modular prefabricated modernist houses that were intended to combine the quality finish and economies of off-site construction, but that ended up costing as much as, if not more than, straight-up custom design were...
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Posted by greg at
1:44 AM
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Comments (0)
December 22, 2008
Etsy seller Petit Flaneur makes this interesting-looking little doll house--and I mean little, it's only a foot high--out of printed, papered hardboard and filled with "birch micro-plywood" furniture. Including a sweet, micro-plywood crib that should give the CNC types...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (0)
December 20, 2008
Don't not buy this incredible hand-carved wooden donkey pull toy from Antonio Vitali's early, Swiss National Crafts Store days before he started working with Creative Playthings, because the opening bid is a whopping $399. Don't buy it because the...
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Posted by greg at
10:06 AM
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Comments (4)
Uh, wow. OK. Calvin Klein, which is now owned by Phillips-Van Heusen, commissioned Josh Prince-Ramus, the guy who bailed on Rem Koolhaas to start his own firm REX, to design a dollhouse for the Madison Avenue store's holiday display....
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12:08 AM
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December 17, 2008
I lost the pictures, but when we went to the Pioneer Day parade in Ivins, Utah last summer, there was, in the parking lot next to the inflatable slide that got so hot in the desert sun, kids would come...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (2)
December 15, 2008
They sure don't make'em like they used to. And even as the safety-loving half of me is relieved, the awesome, molded plywood simplicity-loving half of me is in mourning. Just take a gander at this vintage portable slide from...
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8:39 PM
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Comments (0)
December 13, 2008
With the US government busy de facto nationalizing major swaths of our crumbling economy, this Christmas season is a good time to turn our attention to the glorious, proud, worker-owned co-op factories of Europe--and then go all capitalist on...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 PM
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Comments (0)
December 11, 2008
Wow. I wanna go to the crocheting party in etsy seller Crafty Is Cool's tummy, too. Sure, she's created plans and kits for making your own amigurumi versions of Yo Gabba Gabba! characters. Which is great. But if you...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 PM
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December 10, 2008
We're not hippie freaks about it, but we don't let the kid have toy guns, play with toy guns, or pretend that she's playing with a gun. When she started pointing sticks and Lego structures at us and looking...
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Posted by greg at
11:00 AM
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Comments (2)
December 8, 2008
Back up a minute, comrade. Can somebody explain how it is that we--the Americans--supposedly won the Cold War, and yet I'm the one who has to wrestl with a pile of catalogs as big as a bear cub and...
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Posted by greg at
11:20 PM
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Comments (0)
December 7, 2008
The Washington Post has taken a moment at its parenting blog On Parenting to note the impending demise of skanky mall makeover chain Club Libby Lu. The editors mourn the loss with deep sadness, and the comments are filling up...
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2:09 PM
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Comments (2)
December 5, 2008
I'm going to operate on the assumption that some people, somewhere have actually been buying Sirch's Villa Sibi. One possible explanation for the the nearly 50% price increase for new Villa Sibis [from $600 in 2004 to $855 today]...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (1)
December 4, 2008
You know, people bitch and moan about the out-of-control litigiousness of the American corporate landscape, and particularly intellectual property laws and the stranglehold rabid trial lawyers pursuing frivolous copyright infringement cases have on good old-fashioned creativity. But then you read...
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Posted by greg at
9:48 PM
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Comments (10)
Chibi Kinoko, aka Little Mushroom, is an adorable little character Takashi Murakami introduced on his line of exclusive Louis Vuitton bags and accessories. And there's a 9-inch plush version available, too, because as anyone who loaded up at Murakami's in-museum...
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Posted by greg at
3:18 PM
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Comments (0)
December 3, 2008
Are you on a sacred quest to find a Kay Bojesen pull toy dog woodworking project that's larger than a tuna can? Because it appears that an outfit called Find The Grail Auctions has posted one on eBay. But...
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4:24 PM
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Comments (0)
December 2, 2008
Because the board games teach kids what their parents don't have time to say, Greg Costikyan has an in-depth analysis of Candy Land, the board game created by Eleanor Abbot and first published by Hasbro in 1949. Costikyan lifts the...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 AM
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Comments (5)
November 28, 2008
If you shop at only one blogger-curated pop-up store this holiday season, make it Andy Beach's Reference Library Mini-Exhibition at Kiosk in SoHo. Despite his fame as a retail artist/design guru/dad/ex-DT guest blogger is probably best known for his...
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1:09 PM
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From Lladro hacker Jamie Hayon's website: The chicken, a rather unexplored shape, found its place amongst my green dreams. I wanted to portray this common bird as a sensational object by amplifying its characteristics and dimensions, turning it into...
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Posted by greg at
10:41 AM
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Comments (0)
November 25, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Ikea play kitchen in the Elizabeth City, NJ store, originally uploaded by daddytypes. When I...
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Posted by greg at
8:53 AM
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Comments (1)
November 24, 2008
The search results for "playground" at Life magazine's photo archive are dominated by one series of images: nearly 200 photos of surrealist bent steel playground equipment from 1951-2 created by an unidentified female sculptor. The stuff is awesome: creatures...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 AM
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Comments (1)
November 22, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } circus, originally uploaded by Rob Cruickshank. If it weren't in Canada, and thus even colder...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 PM
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Comments (0)
November 19, 2008
FWIW, I toggle back and forth between the just-the-facts headlines and the annoying, jokey ones. Guess which one this is? A couple of very interesting looking ADO toys designed by Ko Verzuu just popped up on eBay Austria: a...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (1)
November 18, 2008
For the fourth Christmas in a row, Muji has expanded its "In A Bag" series, a megalomaniacal mission to distill entire swaths of the known universe into tiny, little wooden toys, and then trap and sell it in little...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
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Comments (3)
You know the old saying: there are no atheists in Muji Xmas Gift Departments. Once again, the minimalist, eco-friendly, no-frills retailer has come up with a giant mountain of stuff I want to buy. First up in the Mujimix: great...
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Posted by greg at
7:30 AM
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Comments (2)
November 15, 2008
Crazy creatures, quirky personalities and backstory, imaginary cartoon world, lumpy plush toys, tight jeans--holy smokes, they actually call themselves "The Kidult Lab." But here's the catch: It's Italian! Wake me up when someone pulls one of those Marvel vs....
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
November 13, 2008
A few months back, I felt like a heretic even asking the question, whether some slightly expanded, thoughtful licensed merchandise from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood might not be a nice alternative to parents facing down the Sesame Street juggernaut. Now...
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Posted by greg at
6:03 PM
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Comments (1)
November 7, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } PLAY!, originally uploaded by pavelm. Will the owner of the velo-tastic tubular rocking horse parked...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 AM
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Comments (4)
November 6, 2008
Designboom reported from Designblok08 in Prague, where students in an industrial design class at the AAAD exhibited their class project: a series of ride-on toys for kids ages 1-4. I can't quite make out how Pesr Polak's super-slick actually...
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Posted by greg at
1:55 PM
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Comments (2)
Jenn from Minor Details spotted this sweet 1960's Creative Playthings plywood wagon/carriage on Craigslist. It's being sold out of Huntington, Long Island by the original owner, who is a big girl now, and can do things like research the...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 PM
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Comments (1)
November 3, 2008
The artist Kinya Hanada, who works as Mumbleboy, was into trippy indie plush before trippy indie plush was cool. Which may or may not mean that papier mache is the next plush; for all its clean, simple, aesthetic pleasure,...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (0)
October 30, 2008
Where's Brooke Shields when German engineering and design need her? First, we were forced to contemplate the reality that the "German engineered" VW Routan minivan is, in fact, a reskinned Chrysler Town & Country. And now, it turns out...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (0)
This awesome vintage toy zoo from Germany fits into eight beautifully designed matchboxes. The pieces are so small, you have to wonder if they might actually not even be a choke hazard; just wash'em down with an extra bottle....
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Posted by greg at
3:57 PM
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Comments (3)
October 29, 2008
Hell yeah, you're a guido, and f-in' proud of it, bitch. An' your kid's gonna grow up just like his old man, summers on the Shore and what not, you gotta problem withat, go back to the f-in' city....
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Posted by greg at
12:28 PM
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Comments (3)
October 28, 2008
In order to issue someone a speed camera ticket in Germany, it's necessary to have an identifiable photo of the driver, not just the car's license plate. Which, because of the sensitive camera calibrations, means all you need to...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (1)
This over-contoured rethinking of the traditional red wagon was created by a design intern over the summer when the economy seemed slightly healthy, and it features a luxe interior with basically no alternative play patterns beyond getting pulled through the...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 PM
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Comments (3)
October 27, 2008
The stock market's a mess. The banking system's in disarray. The real estate market is a disaster. And now even Daddy Types' comments system has tanked. Fortunately, the production of customized titanium performance tricycles continues unperturbed. And not just...
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Posted by greg at
6:17 PM
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Comments (0)
You know, when I started this post last week, it was going to be a self-righteous sermon against the evils of kidultery and how, when nominal adults get all fixated on designing toys for their own amusement and not...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (0)
October 26, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } exterior 1, originally uploaded by j&mgorman. Josh's' son Camden is almost two and getting into...
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Posted by greg at
4:24 PM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2008
Why, yes, yes it is. Hoppop is a Belgian outfit founded by baby footprint art mogul Christophe Verlinden, which came to the Kind+Jugend expo last year with the Hoppop Original, a hardcase diaper bag that converts into a booster...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (3)
October 24, 2008
Well, the wilds of Sweden, anyway. I've seen exactly one of these awesome Stokke Hippo rocking toys before, in a baby store in Reykjavik, Iceland. I'm sure that one's since been chopped up for firewood, but artist/blogger Elisabeth came...
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Posted by greg at
12:27 PM
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Comments (5)
October 23, 2008
Archaeologists announced the discovery in an infant's grave near Stonehenge of a carved stone pig. They belief that the 2.5-inch figurine, which dates back more than 2,000 years, is either a toy or a memorial/funerary object for the baby's...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 PM
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Comments (3)
Awesome. Just. Awesome. These incredible maple blocks, laser-engraved with line drawings from the hilarious world of mad scientists, showed up at Make Magazine's latest Maker Faire in Austin. They're by the laser-cutting artists at Xylocopa, a husband & wife...
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Posted by greg at
3:27 PM
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Comments (1)
October 20, 2008
I've got to clear these damn browser tabs. Anchor Stone Blocks were created in Germany in the late 19th century. They're red, yellow, and blue cast stone, designed to mimic the brick, limestone, and slate, respectively, of traditional European...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 PM
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Comments (0)
As everyone hopefully knows now, the iconic Creative Playthings design, the red ball-equipped Hobby Horse, was not designed by Philip Johnson, and the Philip Johnson who didn't design it was the creative director of Creative Playthings, not the feisty,...
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Posted by greg at
4:47 PM
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Comments (2)
Ceci n'est pas un toy. Ceci n'est pas un dollhouse. Ceci n'est pas a house at all. Because if it were any of that, would it be being auctioned off at Phillips dePury this Saturday? Bien sur que non....
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Posted by greg at
11:59 AM
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Comments (1)
October 18, 2008
For years, Alexander Calder's awesome theatre/performance art/toy/sculpture Circus has been in the lobby of the Whitney Museum, entertaining its way into the psyches of generations of city-dwelling kids. It's made of dozens of little articulated toy figures, which the...
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Posted by greg at
8:42 AM
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Comments (0)
October 15, 2008
There's a story on Consumerist about how awesome Melissa & Doug's response was when a mom called about a broken propeller on her daughter's new wooden plane. Though she only called about replacing the plane--and warning the company about the...
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Posted by greg at
4:32 PM
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Comments (6)
October 13, 2008
Somewhere in the past few years, a farmer in the city my in-laws retired to, St. George, Utah, found a motherlode of super-detailed dinosaur tracks and fossils, and they built an entire museum around them. Just like that. So...
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Posted by greg at
12:13 AM
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Comments (5)
October 9, 2008
The Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart has scattered a bunch of $10 toys in the aisles of its stores this Christmas season--which is apparently in full swing. Some other retail giants are doing the same thing. Wal-Mart doesn't say...
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Posted by greg at
12:16 PM
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Comments (0)
October 4, 2008
I mean, I know the robots are plotting to enslave the world by positioning themselves in close proximity to our human offspring. Where they wait, in silence, until the Robot Emperor gives the signal...then KABLOW! But when they have...
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Posted by greg at
4:20 PM
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Comments (0)
October 1, 2008
OK, new theory: maybe no one in London remembers the Childsply and Childsform group design challenges and exhibitions because the entire London design world consists of an endless stream, year in and year out, of group design challenges?? ["Hello...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 PM
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Comments (3)
September 30, 2008
The company that made the original Big Wheel, Louis Marx, sold out to his competitor in the early 1970's. That company, Empire Plastics, went bankrupt in 2001. Some other company reconstituted Empire and now makes the Original Big Wheel...
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Posted by greg at
11:34 PM
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Comments (2)
September 29, 2008
Ahh, 2007. The good old days, when we thought that a thousand euros was a bit steep for a limited edition Eames molded plywood elephant, but hey, we'll manage. After all, we've been waiting since 1945 for the thing...
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Posted by greg at
8:51 PM
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Comments (1)
Looking at the traditional-to-slightly-boring children's furniture designs on the German wood furniture firm Zwergraum, I would never have imagined they'd come up with something as awesome as the Cubi-Q. With four boxes, two table-like pieces, cutouts, and optional wheels,...
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Posted by greg at
12:54 PM
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Comments (2)
OK, so in the US, we're making foam playmats with alphabets on them. And in Denmark, they're making Bobles, ride-on, climb-on animals made from computer-cut foam. All well and good. Until you find out that in Korea, they're making foam...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 AM
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Comments (1)
September 28, 2008
So the kid and I went to Crafty Bastards after church today. We were overdressed and underinked. Still, we got to meet Spooky Daddy in person, which was awesome. He was working the puppetmaster thing pretty spectacularly, and it...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 PM
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Comments (0)
September 26, 2008
K2 is having a great time sucking on the wooden doorknobs on the kids' Via Toy Box doors. [Remember to glue, not just screw, those bad boys on, btw.] And one of the puzzles she loves [un]doing has these...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 AM
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Comments (4)
September 23, 2008
Alright, Maybe I should be scouring flickr for photos of dads taking their infant children to the Yankees-Orioles game. And maybe I will. But for now, I'm too confounded by the nerdiness of these plush toys to do anything else....
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Posted by greg at
9:36 PM
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Comments (1)
In 1967 Danese debuted Enzo Mari's Il Posto dei Giochi, The Place of Games, otherwise known as "Wall." Kids could use the ten-panel corrugated cardboard play structure printed and perforated with Mari's designs to create various kid-sized spaces. The...
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Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (0)
Abbatt Toys were sort of the Creative Playthings of England. Paul & Marjorie Abbatt founded their toy company in the 1930's with a focus on education and design. Their friend, the British modernist architect Erno Goldfinger, designed their innovative...
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Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (0)
September 22, 2008
You know, I was just wondering to myself the last few weeks, "Where are those Kid O toys I was promised would be hitting the market soon?" And here they are. Wow. Educational clarity and simplicity of design that...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 PM
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Comments (1)
Maya from Covetable doesn't covet this wooden dollhouse, at least not anymore. She just got it from another parent who can't remember where it originally came from. Does anyone recognize it? There's apparently a partially worn off logo "with...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 PM
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Comments (2)
September 19, 2008
I needed a gallon of mixed paint, and we were running low on diapers, so after I dropped the kid off at pre-school, K2 and I did a combined Home Depot/Target run to the Virginia suburbs. Holy smokes, nothing knocks...
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Posted by greg at
3:02 PM
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Comments (15)
September 18, 2008
Huh? CAD monkey/architect Greg Lynn's Recycled Toy Furniture won an award at the Venice Biennale [not the real Biennale, the architecture one, but still], despite the fact that the only "furniture" aspect is the tacked on tabletops; giant plastic...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 AM
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Comments (0)
September 17, 2008
Kinderstoele this, Kinderspiele that. A few days of poking around the kinderweb has turned more stuff I thought I would've known by now, but there you go. For example, I totally missed "Zappel, Philipp! - Die Welt der Kindermöbel," an...
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Posted by greg at
1:31 PM
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Comments (0)
September 16, 2008
Almost 200,000 MacGregor and Mitre toy soccer goals of death have been sold in the US since 2002. But now the CPSC has issued a recall, following news that a 21-month-old boy died while trying to climb one. I should...
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Posted by greg at
2:14 PM
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Comments (8)
September 6, 2008
Neil Fraser had an MRI, then he laminated his various cross-sectional scans onto a stack of 1" wooden blocks. Now he can do nifty tricks like cut away 3D models of the inside of his head. Wooden Brain [neil.fraser.name...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2008
After 150 years of British lorrymaking, Foden ceased production in 2006. Which, coincidentally? is when a truck driving dad in Herefordshire named Paul started making a kid-sized replica of his own Foden rig. Now it's done, and it looks...
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Posted by greg at
10:08 AM
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Comments (0)
September 2, 2008
In 1994, Arizona voters approved Prop. 200, a cigarette tax which would fund anti-tobacco use educational programs. After a couple of years of ramp-up AzTEPP, the Arizona Tobacco Education and Prevention Program hit its fully funded stride in 1998....
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Posted by greg at
8:34 AM
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Comments (1)
August 31, 2008
I don't know what a filur is in Swedish besides a house music band and a military drone plane designed by Saab. But I do know what Skummis are: justsocuteiwannaeatthemup! Whether it's a blobby plush creature or a set...
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Posted by greg at
2:44 PM
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Comments (4)
August 28, 2008
OK, so there's De Parma, a slightly cheeky antiques dealer in London, who's selling this vintage Ferrari Tipo 500 F2 racer pedal car--dated to the 50's and sourced to Italy, but otherwise no manufacturer is mentioned--in very nice original-looking...
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Posted by greg at
3:31 PM
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Comments (4)
August 27, 2008
Instructions: Take one set of roller skate wheels, an old handlebar, a 2x4, some boards. Add a bent sheet of tin to give it that proper Ralph Kramden Drives This Bus snout, then paint it with whatever's left over...
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Posted by greg at
5:08 PM
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Comments (0)
August 24, 2008
You know how The Economist publishes the Big Mac Index, to show how over- or underpriced certain currencies are for the exact same thing? Well, the price estimates the Munich-based auction house Quittenbaum has placed on US vintage auction staples...
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Posted by greg at
2:20 PM
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Comments (0)
August 23, 2008
Not only did Andrew Grigor's Bam Bam Baby Tricycle win the 2008 Launch Pad Source One packer's prize for emerging Australian designers a few weeks ago, the prototype's flatpack, anti-plastic, sustainably harvested bamboo ply, recycled aluminum, and off-the-shelf O-ring...
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Posted by greg at
5:35 PM
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Comments (4)
I don't care how many Diet Coke butlers you send my way. Come September, don't let me find out you got one of the 2,500 ridiculous Karl Lagerfeld bears Steiff is selling at places like Colette and Neiman Marcus....
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (0)
August 21, 2008
Dammit, I wish I would've found this before I got caught up in my Evel Knievel nostalgic posting spree. Because really, nothing takes the gleam off a childhood hero like hearing him make casual homophobic rape jokes about his own...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 PM
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Comments (1)
Holy smokes, I just checked, and the kid has eight toothbrushes, nine if you count the ToothTunes Junior musical toothbrush a publicist recently sent. [1] It turns the kid's skull into a soundbox; she hears "Hakuna Matata" inside her head...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 PM
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Comments (1)
I'll take a flying leap--hehe, yes, pun totally intended--and say, uh, not that many. Maybe a hundred? A dozen? Only two mentions of a 1975 AMF Evel Knievel tricycle seem to have gotten themselves embedded in the auto-compiled text...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (1)
August 20, 2008
Because it's getting out of control. I understand that the social networking and community aspects of virtual worlds based on real world plush toys are quite powerful draws, especially for the youngest, least marketing savvy consumers who are your targets....
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (4)
August 19, 2008
Seems that at least a few of the hundreds of vintage dollhouses sculptor Rachel Whiteread has been hoarding over the last couple of decades had some furniture in them. And when she could no longer resist its miniature charms,...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (0)
I can't find any references to it online beyond the auction sites, but this 1990 sculpture by Martin Kippenberger, titled Kippenberger Greifbar, will be sold at Sotheby's in New York in a few weeks. It's from an edition of...
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Posted by greg at
7:28 AM
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Comments (0)
August 16, 2008
Finally, a leader who refuses to pander to the giant corporations and foreign demons who threaten the greatness of this Nation! On December 19th, at a campaign appearance in Concord, NH, Senator Barack Obama boldly answered a citizen's question--a question...
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Posted by greg at
1:52 PM
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Comments (7)
August 14, 2008
Having successfully branched out beyond diaper bags into the baby-related countertop accessory and playroom floormat markets, Skip*Hop has launched a soft, fuzzy toy collection. There are 14 pieces, optimally sized for the floor, the babyhand, and the stroller bracket....
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Posted by greg at
3:59 PM
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Comments (1)
August 13, 2008
See? Not everyone riffing on Sanjay Patel's awesome little Little India Hindu deities is knocking them off. Plush artist Leeanna Butcher went to art school with Patel, and he recently asked her to create this plush incarnation of Kali,...
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Posted by greg at
5:21 PM
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Comments (2)
August 12, 2008
Besides the remarkable, unrestored condition and the sheer awesomeness of growing up with sirens and flashing lights on top of your family ride--you'd be the star of every school dropoff line and carpool, and the kid'd totally be a...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (2)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } My Little Zombie Pony, originally uploaded by dbx1. This is only the second artist-modded My...
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Posted by greg at
6:24 PM
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Comments (2)
August 8, 2008
The Mall: The kids and I went to Hot Topic yesterday at the mall. [Actually, at the second mall; the first mall we went to on Wednesday didn't even have a Hot Topic. What the point of our country's...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
August 7, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Waiting for The Last Hex, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Alright, I've finally got my photos...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 AM
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Comments (10)
August 6, 2008
If John McCain really wants to protect America's Children, he doesn't need to ban all toys from China, just half of them: the $11 bn/year Yet Another Sorry Robotic Elmo market. I can't tell--and I don't want to know--whether...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (3)
August 5, 2008
Don't know how I missed this, from an April 2008 Bloomberg report of a John McCain townhall meeting in Youngstown, Ohio:"I have to tell you, if I were president of the United States, the next toy that came into this...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (25)
And so it starts. Yo Gabba Gabba! toys have been spotted at Target. Noisy ones, too. Also: Borat-style swimsuits for boys. Or so it would appear. Yo Gabba Gabba Toys at Target [nontoxicreviews]...
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Posted by greg at
10:23 AM
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Comments (7)
August 1, 2008
Mezco Toyz introduced Gangsta Babies, a set of four 10-inch vinyl baby dolls decked out like refugees from a 2004 ad agency trend board. They illustrate perfectly the risks of designing a product that parrots fleeting trends instead of...
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Posted by greg at
5:56 PM
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Comments (1)
July 27, 2008
Just checking in on the vintage goods at the awesome Landscape Products in Tokyo, and what do I find? A little kit for a Herman Miller kite. It seems to date from around 1980. The triangular pieces covered with...
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Posted by greg at
4:53 PM
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Comments (0)
July 25, 2008
Turns out vulcanized rubber cats have less than nine lives. In 1949 Bruno Munari made some special promotional black cats called Gatto Meo for Pirelli using the company's flagship product. It's not known how many survive [the image below...
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (2)
July 24, 2008
So maybe Target was just testing the waters when they steamrolled Like-A-Bike last year with their own $50 made-in-China knockoff. Because not only are they back, they're expecting you to pay ten bucks more for the Elmo version and...
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Posted by greg at
5:57 PM
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Comments (16)
July 22, 2008
No sheep--or polar bears--were harmed in the making of this fascinating, old school Icelandic toybox and toy set. The little bone fragments and such are made of plastic:In Icelandic farmhouses of yesteryear, children had a special hiding place for...
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Posted by greg at
1:53 PM
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Comments (1)
July 20, 2008
When you've been sewing for 50 years like Gramma Ruth, you don't "knock off" anything, least of all the so-far unlicensed, unmonetized characters of some media conglomerate-come-lately like Nickelodeon. No, when you make your own homebrew plush versions of...
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Posted by greg at
8:39 PM
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Comments (1)
July 18, 2008
Nothing adds edgy ambiance to your pleasantly whitebread merchandise mix quite like a child-size skeleton. On the one hand, paper pulp doesn't have the long-term playability of wood, or even plastic. On the other hand, IT'S 30% OFF! monogramming...
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Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (0)
Holy crap, Takara Tomy! Flashing lights, multiple melody buttons, melody balls, sounds, raising towers, spiraling ball tracks--inside and out--ball hiders, ball holders, ball chutes, clocks, butterflies, Mickey, Minnie, Donald...The insane Nobi-Nobi Ball Tower has 16 [!] separate features for...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 AM
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Comments (1)
July 14, 2008
When I first saw this plywood play kitchen at Mary-Branche, a Japanese online kids&moms boutique, I thought it was nice and simple. If a little chunky, what'd they do, double up the plywood? Wow, check out the smooth finish,...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
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Comments (1)
July 3, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } GVWR Payload Testing, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics. Uh-uh. I guess when your dad's the...
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Posted by greg at
6:08 PM
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Comments (4)
June 27, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Olde Country Store, Goldsboro, NC, originally uploaded by daddytypes. Full of Wilber's barbecue and looking...
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Posted by greg at
9:33 AM
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Comments (4)
June 26, 2008
Dayton, Ohio bidders will have the advantage on this awesome, old Community Playthings ride-on tractor. Though it's just under 11 inches high, all that maple lumber and those chunky Firestone tires will cost a bundle to ship. Maybe when...
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Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
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Comments (3)
June 23, 2008
Didn't see that one coming. While getting in touch with my North Carolina roots by poking around the special collections at UNC-Asheville, I stumbled across the archives of the Tryon Toy Makers, a company founded in Tryon, NC during...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (1)
I gottalotta nerve complaining about the Internet's short-term memory when I can't remember if I've written about these giant upholstered, padded foam KidsCars before. It seems like I have, if only because polyurethane is an odd material for a...
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Posted by greg at
1:07 PM
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Comments (0)
June 21, 2008
Last weekend we took K2 for her first visit to Florent. Also her last, because Florent's closing in less than two weeks. I'd planned on many years of boring brunches where I'd explain to the kids how daddy and...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (5)
June 20, 2008
Whoa, these laptop-size Wall-E and Eve robots were at the Tokyo Toy Fair. Do you think Takara Tomy will bring them to the US? Next week? Tokyo Toy Show 2008, or check out the video directly on YouTube [kilian-nakamura...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (1)
June 17, 2008
Demand for this awesome, folding Community Playthings climbing gym must have dropped off some time after the Planet of the Apes trend faded away, because it's no longer in production. Fortunately, this one is available for pickup in Rochester,...
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Posted by greg at
9:14 PM
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Comments (2)
June 16, 2008
Staging the Renegade Craft Fair in the Pool at McCarren Park Pool is a great way to crystallize the cultural divide that is Williamsburg: you walk through thousands of Hispanic families camped out under every tree in the park,...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (0)
June 15, 2008
Just as we planned, the kid adopted one of my mother's flannel blankets with a hand-crocheted edge for her snuggly comforting thing. I say planned, because we kind of pushed it, because they were always right at hand, and...
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Posted by greg at
9:32 PM
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Comments (5)
June 13, 2008
David Mitton, the children's TV producer who brought The Rev. Wilbert Vere Awdry's bedtime stories of Thomas the Tank Engine to lucrative, oddly animated life, has died. But Thomas Schmomas, the guy also did The Thunderbirds! That means Thomas...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
June 12, 2008
So there was a big licensing expo in New York this week, which apparently resulted in a phony trend story in the NY Times about companies redesigning their old licensed character properties to milk a new generation of nostalgic parents:...
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Posted by greg at
9:52 PM
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Comments (8)
June 11, 2008
Though the picture's from Elle Decor, not Interior Design, I think this is Florence Lopez's son's "lacquered Jean Prouvé bed" with "a cork bulletin board that Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand designed for two French universities" over it. I...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (3)
If the Theresa in this photo is the Theresa I think it is, let the record show she did not, in fact, grow up to be a lounge singer like her parents wished; she's a writer who works for a...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 PM
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Comments (1)
Sometimes vintage is truly the best: like with furniture. And sometimes, it ain't: like, uh, with gnarly, black-furred, stuffed dolls from popular 1970's French children's book series. Better to buy your Barbapapa plush dolls and fondue pots new, like...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 PM
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Comments (3)
Awesome. Nicolas Worth and Jami Gigot are designers in London who have just launched The Grateful Thread, a little collection of crafty rock&roll-themed products, which includes some plush/stuffed creations. Chief among the offerings are the stuffed guitars they're life-size...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
June 10, 2008
So you want to talk about wooden walking bikes? Kevin Kelly's got a small but amazing collection of photos of Like-A-Bike-like wooden bikes from all over the world. [If you're a bike entrepreneur looking for a way to out-maneuver...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 PM
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Comments (1)
June 9, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Rockefeller Center, originally uploaded by peterjr1961. What My Dad Gave Me by Chris Burden is...
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Posted by greg at
2:00 PM
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Comments (3)
June 7, 2008
I didn't think much of it at the time, but once the kid came along, I always wondered where that 1960's Jean Prouvé swing set Patrick Seguin showed at Sonnabend in 2003 ended up. The answer is on art...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 AM
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Comments (0)
June 5, 2008
Do we need to lay it out on a timeline for you? Because I haven't seen so many people inventing the exact same unique toy since, since--well, I guess those plush people do it all the time. BUT STILL!...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 PM
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Comments (5)
The Like-a-Bike knockoff scene is suddenly hopping for some reason. To wit: A retailer recently commented on the original DT post about the Skuut--the one that busted them for knocking off the Like-A-Bike in China, and the one which called...
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Posted by greg at
4:49 PM
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Comments (8)
Yeah, for about half a second, I thought it was because the artist and the gallery were German. But then I figured that plush naked Hitlers and cuddly [kuddly?] KKK dolls would be seriously disturbed anywhere. Bimbo dolls by...
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Posted by greg at
7:55 AM
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Comments (5)
From the introduction to Nina Braun's exhibition at Helium Cowboy Gallery in Hamburg:Nina Braun has always cut her own path, irrespective of social guidelines or standards. Through self-teaching, experiences and experiments, she has built the fundament she needs to...
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Posted by greg at
7:05 AM
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Comments (0)
June 3, 2008
I like this cool set of wooden bottles, tinted in the colors of six common wine cooler flavors. They're made by Holgate, one of the earliest US companies to develop educational toys. Unfortunately, one of the bottle stoppers is...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (6)
June 2, 2008
Montgomery Whohouse? I've been following the items eBay seller Creative Magpie has been putting up for sale from the inventory of her mother's 1970's toy store. In the last couple of days, several very fine-looking wooden toys have turned...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 PM
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Comments (0)
May 30, 2008
Wright20 dates this shaggy centaur stuffed toy to 1961, but for some reason, they don't mention Marilyn Neuhart at all, just Herman Miller, thanks to a label on the back that reads, "Licenciatarios de Herman Miller Industria Argentina Coleccio'n...
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Posted by greg at
7:44 AM
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Comments (3)
May 28, 2008
There's been a whole slew of vintage Creative Playthings toys turning up on eBay the last few days, all in beautiful, unused, condition. For collectors or just folks who like their vintage wooden toys unbeat and unchewed-on, it's like...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 AM
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Comments (1)
May 25, 2008
This photo at Consumerist of a funny sign at McDonald's reminded me of the kid's own discovery of the secret of Happy Meals. Personally, I was just going for the pies, but I couldn't very well just eat pies...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 AM
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Comments (14)
May 20, 2008
With all their petrorubles, the Russians are buying up the entire art world! Soon they'll be coming for Rockefeller Center. [Will they do any better than the Japanese did? Stay tuned!] I'm not saying you should fire your Mandarin-speaking...
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Posted by greg at
11:47 AM
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Comments (1)
Not sure if this is a sign that the doll real estate market is softening, but two fully furnished classic modernist dollhouses just went up on eBay. The big Creative Playthings house above is like an analog version of...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 AM
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Comments (1)
May 19, 2008
Entertaining family stories and crazy New York real estate stories go hand in hand. Andrew Gluckman and his family live in a throwback Bowery St apartment: no lease on two crooked floors above a lighting store in a building...
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Posted by greg at
8:43 AM
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Comments (2)
May 15, 2008
So I read on notcot that Areaware, the NYC design studio/distributor is planning to launch a kid's collection called Areaware Jr. [they already distribute Salvor Fauna's silkscreen t-shirts and Onesies, as well as a few toys]. Then I see...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 PM
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Comments (3)
May 13, 2008
Honestly, forget teaching your kid Mandarin; Korea is where the future is at. The future of ride-on toys that look an awful lot like the cart grandma gets at the mall; the future of snappy brand coinage ["RINGBO will be...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (3)
May 12, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } playhouse - full view, originally uploaded by shanecyr. A trip to Lowe's and a weekend...
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Posted by greg at
7:14 AM
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Comments (1)
May 9, 2008
Sure, I thought they were small and cute and pleasantly crafty, and the colors called forth fond memories of the fridges of my childhood. But thanks to the seven [seriously, I counted] mentions of their sustainable eco-friendliness in a...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 AM
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Comments (0)
May 8, 2008
Sure, there's a fine-looking Creative Playthings dollhouse on eBay at the moment, complete with a family of squatter dolls, who at least haven't tossed out the matchy [if not all matching] furniture. But who cares when there's a freakin'...
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Posted by greg at
7:45 PM
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Comments (2)
If you were wondering what features of the Swedish landscape the design team at Little Red Stuga has been turning into kid-sized play furniture lately, now you know: a folding screen house with mirrors on one side; and a...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (0)
May 7, 2008
Kaefer is German for "beetle," and this sleek, alderwood dollhouse by the toymaker Kaefer is German for, "You can't go wrong by taking a cue from Antonio Vitali." If only it was a little bigger than six inches--no, you...
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Posted by greg at
4:47 PM
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Comments (0)
May 2, 2008
So this morning Andy forwards me a link to a very promising blog, Playscape, which will focus on the art and science of playground design. And one of the first posts is the Playgoda, an awesome, slot-together laminated plywood...
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Posted by greg at
6:47 PM
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Comments (1)
I.D. Magazine just published a little Q&A with Kid O founder Lisa Mahar, who talks about the ideas, design, and production of the new Kid O Toys collection. Mahar sounds like they're doing things very right, and not just...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
Hi-larious. From the hippies to the CPSC to women's lib, the times in 1974, they were definitely a-changin'. Here are some items from the 1974-5 Childcraft catalog that I can't imagine seeing at a Toys R Us near you...
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Posted by greg at
7:36 AM
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Comments (6)
April 26, 2008
Daniel Franzen's painted steel dollhouse has serious curb appeal. The shape is inspired by Swedish barns, and relates to a series of cabins Franzen's firm, Bunker Hill, is designing for the reclaimed wood specialty firm Arvesund. It comes with...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (0)
April 22, 2008
"'Bye for now,' says the man of the house as he retreats into think tank. Though it dominates a room, it can be quickly disassembled. At [right] Isaacs contemplates interior collage." Ken Isaacs, is there anything modular and plywood...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (2)
April 19, 2008
Just in case you didn't learn how to say "rocking horse" in French--because frankly, you were only learning French to pick up chicks, not shop for playground implements--now you know: un cheval à bascule. Thus, this jouet à bascule,...
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Posted by greg at
8:11 AM
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Comments (3)
April 18, 2008
The seller has titled this 1960's Creative Playthings boat Noah's Ark, even though there are no animals. Obviously, though, it's from the very rare Creative Playthings Lake Havasu Spring Break Playset. If only Antonio Vitali's hand-carved, bikini-wearing co-eds and...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (0)
April 13, 2008
I've grown a bit skeptical of the origins of most every sudden Japanese trend. With the Oshiri Kajiri Mushi, aka Bottom Biting Bug, cartoon that washed over Japan last summer, it wasn't until the late fall/Christmas season before Japan's...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (1)
April 9, 2008
I'm re-reading Calvin Trillin's 1998 book, Family Man, and it's rather more interesting now that I'm a dad. Jim's right, he's the godfather of all typing daddies, not just those who make a big deal about changing tables in the...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 PM
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Comments (3)
April 8, 2008
If there's wear on this vintage Finnish tug boat & barge set from Creative Playthings, I can't really see it in the photo. And before I start a bidding war at $22 shipped for a used wooden toy, I'd...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 AM
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Comments (2)
April 5, 2008
Do not adjust your screen. You are not dreaming. NAFTA is real, and it is working hard for Canadian children every. single. minute. That IS a photo of an American minivan [the Chevrolet Uplander, made in Doraville, Georgia! Until...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (0)
April 2, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Chromjuwelen Kettler Dreirad, originally uploaded by chromjuwelen. With their Happy AIr, Happy Plus, Happy Plus...
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Posted by greg at
9:53 AM
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Comments (5)
April 1, 2008
So we went poking around Silverlake today, the girls and I. Yolk is nice. But hey-o, Monkeyhouse Toys?? Awesome. The hyper-indie toy store has more than a few kidult-oriented toys, but first and foremost, it's a toy store for...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
March 31, 2008
Well, that didn't take long. BabyGap Home went live on the gap.com site today, and first impressions: not bad, for a total chickfest. It's definitely a small, tightly edited collection of brands and stuff; the BabyGap flagship product seems...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (6)
March 29, 2008
Clear out a few more curio cabinetsful of these new-old-stock Antonio Vitali animals, and I think a certain retired, Connecticut toy store owner will be able to get that condo in Boca. Of course, with the way the Florida...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (0)
March 27, 2008
What's this? Tramp stamps for sale in the Stickers R Us machine at Toys R Us? I smell a comprehensive cross-platform blitzertunity! Apparently, so does Disney. That other options I can make out are Hannah Montana, Clubhouse Disney, and...
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Posted by greg at
12:31 PM
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Comments (12)
March 26, 2008
More sweet loft modules cribbed from magazines. I was really digging the Lego wall, so grabbed this shot of Nina Tolstrup's painted MDF kidshouse from her profile in the latest issue of Dwell. Only when I got home did...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (1)
March 25, 2008
Some headlines and links from the DT browser tabs: One WSJ dad knows he's ruining his 5-yo son's future by not teaching him more about computers. but dammit, we didn't need Webkinz when we were that age; we blew our...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 PM
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Comments (1)
At first I was too blown away by the website's name--My Wholesale Baby--to worry that the authentic ammunition boxes add 15 pounds to West Coast Wagons' custom camo rig. Then I was whipsawed by the sales pitch:From hand painted...
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Posted by greg at
9:00 AM
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Comments (3)
March 22, 2008
Last year, the CEO of Swiss toy company HaPe invited a group of Israeli design students to participate in a Bamboo Design Workshop. For a couple of weeks, the students and their professors lived, ate, and slept [with] bamboo...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (2)
March 19, 2008
With a name like Studio Papas, I think I'd love whatever Koen Crommentuijn and Marjan Verboeket put out. The fact that it's House for Sale, or Speelhuis, a set of twelve, giant cold-foam blocks shaped like classic wooden blocks...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (2)
March 18, 2008
Clearing the ol' browser tabs: The NY Times used a new Central Park playground as a slightly irrelevant hook for discussing a new book from Rutgers University Press, Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children. Apparently,...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 AM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } halloweenesque octopus, originally uploaded by peacay. FYI, "sugoi" means "great!" and is used sort of...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 AM
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Comments (0)
March 17, 2008
Haven't seen one of these turn up on eBay before. It's a Creative Playthings Mail Scooter called the Little Zipper, presumably a reference to the 5-digit Zip Code, which was being promoted for general use in the late 1960's...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
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Comments (1)
March 11, 2008
I would love nothing more than to get a gloating email from someone next week explaining what an incredible deal they got on this thing, and how could I not recognize this ultra-rare, tubular steel rocking horse that Giorgetto...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 PM
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Comments (2)
March 10, 2008
Haven't had a lot of the random eBay finds on here lately, probably because I haven't had as much time for the random eBay surfing as I used to. But I always like to see these giant maple jets...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (3)
March 8, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Mobison 3-1, originally uploaded by 091. Playmo91 is a mad Playmobil customizer in Taiwan who...
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Posted by greg at
5:31 PM
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Comments (0)
March 6, 2008
If their rabidly crafty fans keep up this pace, Yo Gabba Gabba! may never need to bother putting out actual merchandise at all; instead they can be like PBS painting guru Bob Ross, making mad bank by selling raw materials--paints,...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Comments (7)
March 5, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } poltergrab, originally uploaded by serenakuhl. Freaking Awesome. I KNEW I shouldn't have blown off last...
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Posted by greg at
1:20 PM
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Comments (3)
March 4, 2008
I'll lift the blogging blackout about the kid's preschool just enough to say that last weekend was the school's fundraising auction, and we bought her some tennis lessons. Then it dawned on me that a handful of tennis lessons with...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (0)
March 3, 2008
vs. I have to agree with the design gurus at Tokyo's Graphio/Buro-stil on this one: sometimes a copy rises above the level of mere knockoff to attain a remarkable beauty of its own. Like a cover version or a...
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Posted by greg at
11:09 AM
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Comments (0)
February 26, 2008
To those PlayStation 3 people who have been waiting like a year for LittleBigPlanet to be released, you'll be relieved to know the delay is not due to a sudden breakout of knitting circles in the Media Molecule offices;...
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Posted by greg at
8:36 AM
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Comments (0)
February 25, 2008
I imagine collectors of Enzo Mari's rather awesome puzzle, "16 Animali," already know this, but it seems like the kind of reference data that's worth filing away. Now when you find an old 16 Animali in a thrift shop,...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 PM
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Comments (3)
I don't care if they're New In Box. If you buy these two Bozart Kaleidoscope dollhouses for $3200 or more, we need to talk. Well, let me qualify that: we need to talk if you have some unique and...
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Posted by greg at
10:40 AM
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Comments (0)
February 22, 2008
I know it looks like just a cardboard box with a jacked up Homeland Security Threat Level sticker on the side, but the Operation Checkpoint Scan-It toy security X-ray machine is much more. It has some little beeping thing...
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Posted by greg at
11:45 PM
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Comments (3)
When I first saw SWINXS on Engadget the other day, I thought it was just another of those RFID-enabled, programmable gaming platforms that purports to encourage physically active play while secretly conditioning children to the idea of taking orders...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (4)
Gosh, how much I love Kidscreen, the trade magazine of the children's television industry [tagline: "About reaching children through entertainment"]? I'd love it even if my boys from Yo Gabba Gabba! weren't on the cover [:)] of the big, fat...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
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Comments (1)
In his burgeoning collection of dad-and-newborn-related Playmobil pieces, Mr. Stinkhead features this tableau: a new dad videotaping a baby in one of those sweet, plexiglass and steel bassinets from the hospital. It's like Playmobil is jacked into my head,...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (2)
February 21, 2008
Well, there's one thing I regret about not going to the Toy Fair: I missed the public debut of Kid O's new toy collection. Since first catching wind of it last summer, I've been stoked, waiting to see these...
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Posted by greg at
2:38 PM
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Comments (1)
Kidsmodern has a report from the Stockholm Furniture Fair that's worth checking out. It includes some new pieces from the Danish folks at Collect Furniture, but the idea that caught my attention is the Playhouse set by Andres Breitholtz...
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Posted by greg at
12:45 PM
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Comments (2)
Finally, Mr. Stinkhead has figured out what to do with his massive Playmobil collection while his son is still in the Serious Choke Hazard Stage. he set up little dioramas, took some pictures, and made a little book called,...
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Posted by greg at
10:02 AM
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Comments (0)
I didn't make the NY Toy Fair this year, and it's probably just as well; the sheer volume of plastic, beeping, exploitative crap would likely send me into a new baby funk, and then I'd only be posting angry takedowns...
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Posted by greg at
7:00 AM
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Comments (0)
February 20, 2008
I think we can all agree that, in retrospect, a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair would have sold far more Pepsi than a life-size mannequin of Jar Jar Binks, even though Jabba wasn't even in Episode One [d'oh, I've...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (3)
It's Toy Fair Week, and there's a new movie coming out. So I have to assume these are real, and that Hasbro expects preschool-age children actually will play with a Nazi dressed up as a Jewish priest; and an...
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Posted by greg at
12:12 AM
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Comments (2)
February 18, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vanilla Cycles 001, originally uploaded by brianwickman. The North American Handmade Bicycle Show was held...
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Posted by greg at
8:54 AM
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Comments (3)
February 15, 2008
DT reader Kim just linked to this in the Miniboo post below. It's an honest-to-goodness toy version of the Quinny Zapp. To make up for the fact that it doesn't have the same folding mechanism as the full-size Zapp,...
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Posted by greg at
9:46 AM
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Comments (7)
February 14, 2008
Though I've blocked the pain from my mind, longtime readers of DT may be familiar with the trials of the original Mini-boo, the toy-sized Bugaboo I tried to make one Christmas from one of those Riesenthel picnic baskets at...
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Posted by greg at
1:54 PM
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Comments (10)
The NYT's critical shopper column this week takes on the giant Victoria's Secret across from Macy's, "a slick, two-story mega-sexopolis, catering mainly to the boudoir needs of angry tourists." It's pretty damn funny [though I'm crying for America on...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (1)
February 12, 2008
I'm no expert, but I think if you have the Brother NC-7340 printer/scanner/fax/crocheter set up on your network, you just load whatever color of yarn you need--in this case, red-- and cut & paste this crocheting code from Craftster,...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 AM
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Comments (1)
February 11, 2008
Warning: convoluted, punk hipster ramble, combined with 80's and 90's flashbacks, ending with very slightly relevant payoff but realistically, probably none at all ahead: So there was an outlaw outdoor concert on the banks of the LA River last November...
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Posted by greg at
6:54 AM
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Comments (2)
February 6, 2008
Around 1969 and into the 70's Renata Mueller [that Müller, with an umlaut, btw] designed a collection of therapeutic toys with a former instructor, Helene Haeusler, for the venerable German teddy bear manufacturer, H. Josef Leven. Based in the...
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Posted by greg at
9:14 AM
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Comments (1)
February 5, 2008
I've been waiting for this Lucha Catman puzzle ever since I saw the chunky MDF prototype last spring at the Bubbly NY trade show. It's from the always-awesome Our Children's Gorilla [and yes, they were awesome even before they...
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Posted by greg at
2:15 PM
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Comments (0)
January 31, 2008
This is not one of those times. Last fall in Miami, I bought the new kid a Muffin stacking plush toy by Friends With You [$22]. Now I love my Friends With You. I mean, the kid's Friends With You....
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Posted by greg at
4:44 PM
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Comments (8)
What a weird toy. Kudos to Haba for not painting it in bright rainbow colors, like so many of their other things. Is the 10x10x10 grid inside geared to actual units, like centimeters? It doesn't seem like it. Haba...
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Posted by greg at
8:00 AM
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Comments (6)
[via] Seriously, it's freaking me out right now how awesome Spooky Daddy's plush toys and creatures and whatevers are. Actually, thanks to his awesome Flickr photostream, it's been gnawing at me for months now, like a plush Prometheus getting...
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Posted by greg at
12:53 AM
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Comments (3)
January 30, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Crafting 365 Day 010, originally uploaded by jackrabbit.etsy.com. Holy smokes, It's like I'm eight years...
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Posted by greg at
1:28 AM
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Comments (3)
January 24, 2008
The casters are a different color, there doesn't appear to be a box, and it's apparently called 'The Comet,' but otherwise, this 23" long biomorphic spaceship scooterboard looks an awful lot like Creative Playthings' Crawligator. Either it's the same...
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Posted by greg at
10:44 PM
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Comments (2)
January 23, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } floating booga, originally uploaded by lukey dargons. The LA artist collaborative known as Sumi Ink...
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Posted by greg at
2:21 PM
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Comments (5)
January 22, 2008
The kid's been something of a puzzle fanatic for a while now, which gives the grandparents just the in they need to shower her with unbidden gifts. Making the most of it, we've been explaining what states, countries, and...
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Posted by greg at
4:08 PM
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Comments (8)
As if sucking the brains out of mid-American grandmas with Beanie Baby Mania and spending their life savings buying up ultra-luxury real estate weren't scourge enough, now Ty, Inc. is defying the law, refusing to take its lead-tainted toys...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (1)
Real estate crisis? What real estate crisis? The market for seven-year-old plastic doll houses has NEVER BEEN HOTTER! If you don't buy today, prices will absolutely be higher tomorrow! And the next day! 100% financing available! Foreign investors are...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (3)
January 21, 2008
Watching the live auctions today has wrought havoc on the ol' browser. In the time since I started trying to post about it, this sweet, vintage Creative Playthings fire station jumped from 99 cents to $21.50, which is more...
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (0)
January 18, 2008
Gallery1988 is hosting an exhibition of Stan Lee tribute art by some of their indie artist friends. There's lots of mopey goth riffs on Spidey and plenty of Scarlet Witch and Ororo Munroe pin-up fantasies. But there's some sweet,...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (1)
Yeah, I could just email Hillsborough, CA eBay seller Noodledoodle.home to see how they're offering new, high-end toys and kids furniture on eBay for seemingly crazylow, non-MSRP prices. But with the new kid-related caps on my daily typing quota,...
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Posted by greg at
10:57 AM
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Comments (5)
January 16, 2008
Looks like we missed CPSC Chairwoman Nancy Nord's speech last week at the National Press Club, the one where she criticized the media for its "near-hysteria" and "hoopla" over the record-setting number of product recalls in 2007. In fact, Nord...
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Posted by greg at
5:52 PM
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Comments (1)
January 15, 2008
First, the good news: Phthalates are still leaching from your kid's vinyl toys, and Bisphenol-A is still leaching from your polycarbonate bottles and the linings of your formula cans! At first, when it was named Worst Science Story of 2007...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (2)
January 3, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Fine Hardwood Toys by John Michael Linck - 5, originally uploaded by johnthetoymaker. You gotta...
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Posted by greg at
7:31 AM
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Comments (2)
Traveling to Europe for the holidays sans car seat apparently frees up your hands to take sweet photos for random blogs. That's the lesson we learn from DT CARES testing correspondent Darren. Here's an awesome-looking wood-and-plexi box-on-sticks bassinet he...
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Posted by greg at
6:07 AM
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Comments (1)
January 2, 2008
Alright, people, enough with the hyperventilating over Japan's "Omoden" Toy Train [Omoden is short for Omocha Densha, or Toy Train]. Saying there's a Toy Train in Japan is like saying there's a monorail in America, except that at least...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 AM
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Comments (1)
The UK branding agency TAK! created this identity for Poky, a new Linux embedded build platform and environtment optimized for mobile cross-application development. Which is exactly why the client, OpenEmbedded OpenedHand, also wanted a mascot. Because even if Poky...
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Posted by greg at
12:24 AM
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Comments (2)
December 26, 2007
Somehow I missed this in my pre-Christmas inbox: "Dec. 21, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JPMA SUPPORTS PASSAGE OF CPSC REAUTHORIZATION ACT" If the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association is trumpeting their support for a piece of safety regulation-related legislation, something must...
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Posted by greg at
11:47 PM
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Comments (0)
The era of the art blocks may be upon us. Not Neutral has introduced their own graphically sweetened set of ABC blocks that include apple and tree patterns on three faces, and letters and numbers in a groovy Sister...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (1)
December 25, 2007
The Soft City is a Toronto-based artists' collective who have charged themselves with creating and managing a cuddly plush city in miniature. Sort of a Sim City with sewing machines instead of computers:We recognize the mutually defining relationship between the...
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Posted by greg at
6:50 PM
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Comments (2)
December 21, 2007
Some things spotted around the web: Even though they're tacky and kind of insipid--well, the World Wildlife Federation was, the one for bigger kids, from National Geographic, is not that bad--the kid absolutely loves getting her magazines. It's mail! For...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (0)
Holy. Moley. Henk Vos asked fellow Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to make some pedal cars for his grandkids to race. After a year, they came up with the Skelter: three speeds plus reverse, aluminum and leather and rubber...
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Posted by greg at
12:26 AM
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Comments (0)
December 20, 2007
To be Us cars and such are designed by Matteo Ragni and handcarved by Master Giovanni out of a single block of Lebanese cedar. Then they're outfitted with mahogany wheels. The windshield on Il Pick Up, which looks like...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 PM
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Comments (1)
December 19, 2007
Seriously, why did I ever doubt that, when it came to plastic play gardens, no one could beat Playmobil? The suggestions for different Playmobil garden options took over my inbox yesterday like kudzu engulfing a Georgia Tech co-ed's parked car...
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Posted by greg at
4:09 PM
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Comments (3)
Mike Schneider, a self-proclaimed dadblogging media whore [he writes for Variety] and huge Yo Gabba Gabba! fan, reports that the show has been picked up for a second, full season. The 20 new episodes are already in pre-production.For season two,...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (4)
December 18, 2007
I haven't gotten all holiday this and gift list that this year; a lot of blogs are cranking out a lot of shopping lists, and I hope they make a lot of money doing it. The kid, though, is...
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Posted by greg at
3:41 PM
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Comments (6)
December 12, 2007
From a photo tour of a Massachusetts family's loft, which is in a converted elementary school, Apartment Therapy, March 2005:That huge cardboard tube is going to be an access route through which the kids will crawl to reach a...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (2)
December 9, 2007
Tina's mention of her wish for a grown-up sized Like-a-Bike reminded me of this photo I snapped a couple of weeks ago in SoHo. It's a regular bike, modded or skinned with plywood to look like a Like-A-Bike. Camper,...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 PM
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Comments (3)
December 7, 2007
Yoya's having a sample/warehouse/clearance/blowout sale next week, and you and your cash are invited. Not sure what they have planned, whether it's just books, clothes and toys, or whether there are Netto and ducduc nursery setups for immediate delivery,...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (1)
December 5, 2007
Apparently the pinnacle of mod Olympic graphic design was reached in 1972 for the Munich summer games. The logos, signs, marketing, and mascots--everything down to and including the souvenirs--represented a triumph of the will, so to speak, of Otl...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 PM
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Comments (2)
December 4, 2007
Babel Blocks are New Yorkers, each unique in his or her religious and cultural affiliations, but underneath, they're all the same: i.e., made from wooden blocks. Get it? Just like we're all the-- Also, they all have a MySpace,...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (0)
Martin Rosquist's Vippig see-saw, made of molded and shaped birch ply for Ikea is absolutely beautiful to look at. Unless your kid is trying to ride it all by herself, and there are no other kids around the store,...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (3)
One of my earliest memories of visiting my grandparents' house was the veritable army of porcelain figurines that filled the tables and shelves. [The Hummels were behind glass.] There were these French poodles, where the puppies' collars were chained to...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 AM
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Comments (1)
December 3, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } unicef_playmobil_child_soldiers, originally uploaded by daddytypes. It's not clear if these print ads for Unicef Canada...
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Posted by greg at
1:47 PM
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Comments (1)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vintage Eskimo Playset from the 70's, originally uploaded by daddytypes. In the off chance that...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (3)
December 2, 2007
I don't know why Playmobil can still surprise me with the exhaustiveness of their playsets. The Playmobil Nativity Set's not even new; it's been around since at least 2003 [that's the date of the first Amazon review, anyway.] Though...
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Posted by greg at
11:18 PM
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Comments (8)
I've had this 1969 Form Magazine photo of cardboard kid's furniture on my desktop all week, but I just noticed the dollhouse to the right. Ilse-Werke KG, the German company behind the furniture, leaves no trace that I can...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:31 PM
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Comments (0)
November 30, 2007
I was going to offer up a trip to the Muji corner at MoMA's Design Store for the toy-desperate among you [the store has some of those recycled yarn-woven animals and both New York- and Countryside-in-a-Bag, though no Suburbs in...
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Posted by greg at
5:44 PM
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Comments (0)
November 27, 2007
In the 1970's, Luigi Colani took a break from designing the future to create a little elephant-shaped bank for Dresdner Bank to give out to the kids. One has found its way to Lancaster, PA, and from thence to...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 AM
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Comments (3)
November 26, 2007
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you're an Irwin, everything looks like an awareness-building merchandising opportunity, I guess. Eight-year-old Bindi Irwin, who grew up on camera the family's televised zoo/set, mourns her late father...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
4:01 PM
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Comments (0)
November 25, 2007
Just in time for the holidays, eBay seller twobluepups posted a great-looking trio of vintage Creative Playthings wooden toy lots. All the auctions end Dec. 3rd. The two Playtown sets are in good condition and complete with the box,...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 PM
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Comments (0)
November 23, 2007
Last month I bought an old wooden Creative Playthings kaleidoscope on eBay. The transaction went fine, but the toy itself is not that great. Now don't get me wrong: I'm with it enough to dig the potential beauty of...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 PM
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Comments (3)
I got all excited last night when I saw a big jigsaw puzzle from the Expo 67 in Montreal, which was the overall raddest Expo ever. [Even if there were no Buckminster Fuller sphere, Habitat, or Dutch pavilion made...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 AM
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Comments (0)
November 21, 2007
Alright, that's rather brilliant. The new addition this year to Muji's ______-in-a-Bag series of wooden toys is Barcelona. And it includes a little wooden Mies Barcelona Pavilion, along with the Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera apartments by Gaudi. The...
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Posted by greg at
8:53 PM
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Comments (2)
note: these particular drawn designs not included. Unless Muji is run by grinches, some of these fiiiine Xmas collection items will turn up in the new SoHo store very soon. And if not, at least you'll have it to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:36 PM
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Comments (5)
November 20, 2007
Eric Pfeiffer, of the Offi and Modernseed Pfeiffers, and one of the contemporary masters of molded ply, is once again trying to mold his way into our hearts with his new furniture venture, 10 Grain, which had a sneak...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (4)
November 19, 2007
I tell you, you gotta watch out for the robots, they're turning up everywhere. This toy cardboard robot named Danbo was commissioned by Amazon Japan from Azuma Kiyohiko, the creator of the manga character Yotsuba-chan who lives with her...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 AM
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Comments (0)
November 18, 2007
Just as they once ruled the seas, the British once led the world in the development of the cardboard playspace race. The date was 1969, and while the US was fiddling around with some moon landing or another, the...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (1)
November 17, 2007
It's like the Farnsworth House without the floods; the Schindler Kings Rd House without the pegboard; the Case Study House No. 21 without the corrugated metal; the Barcelona Pavilion without the chairs [though I guess they're sold separately now.]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:02 PM
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Comments (4)
November 16, 2007
Clearing the browser tabs before a weekend with the grandparents: Chick-Fil-A manages to bum out yet another family with their freebie toys. I didn't call a company spokesman, but I expect they'd point out that, for us sinners, no meal...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (3)
So I may have been a little too cynical last night in my post about how Pastel Toys are produced. Turns out there actually is a remarkable, harmonious, nurturing village in Israel where community members of all races, religions,...
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Posted by greg at
8:32 AM
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Comments (3)
November 15, 2007
Not only will the classic-styled, wooden toys of Pastel Toys entertain your child with hours of open-ended, imaginative play--most of it about Diehard [L] or the Trojan War [R], probably--they'll bring peace and harmony to the cradle of Western...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (0)
So I didn't know that Lincoln Logs were developed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, John in 1916-1917. I do know that they're currently made in China, though. Roy Toy log cabin building blocks didn't turn up until the 1930's,...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (5)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Because then your kid could put the car through its paces at this test course...
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Posted by greg at
7:11 AM
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Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Bocós, originally uploaded by Gizo. These sweet, screenprinted blocks put fresh characters and graphics into...
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Posted by greg at
11:00 AM
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Comments (0)
November 13, 2007
Nothing's as fun for a kid's imagination as a cardboard box. Only problem is, no one's getting rich and/or famous just selling a cardboard box. [Unless you're The Container Store on a Sunday afternoon; holy crap, people, eight kinds...
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Posted by greg at
8:55 PM
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Comments (1)
I'll probably add a couple of items to this retail scoutabout, since two of them aren't really retail: Befuddled Citydweller Baby Gift Alert Marilyn Singer and Carll Cneut's countdown to naptime book, City Lullaby, got a pretty glowing writeup in...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (1)
November 12, 2007
Fagus is Italian for beech, let's get that out of the way right now. These are two of a whole series by Fagus of sweet-looking toy vehicles made of solid beech and rubber. They're at Natural Pod, a British...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (3)
November 9, 2007
Iroiro is Japanese for various, and you write it using the kanji for color, twice. And though it's not grammatically correct, it makes a nice sound up against the Hiro in Hiromatsu Furniture Company of Ogawa, in Fukuoka. Who,...
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Posted by greg at
7:48 AM
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Comments (0)
November 8, 2007
Now that's nice, a Giant Magnifier from Creative Playthings, new in the box. I got one of these for the kid before she was really able to play with it; after about 2.5-3yo, she fell in love with sticking...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
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Comments (3)
November 7, 2007
Q: Is the obsession with mini-sized modernism that leads someone to pay $790 for a sweet-yet-anonymous, architect-made, Plexi-on-a-lazy-susan, modernist dollhouse on eBay the same kind that leads someone to create a blog devoted exclusively to modernist dollhouses? A: Yep....
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Posted by greg at
5:03 PM
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Comments (6)
Now that Matali Crasset has been identified as the ingenius behind the foam-block-sofa made from cheapass-immigrant-plaid-shopping bags concept, her new Permis de Construire [Construction Permit] sofa for Domeau & Peres fits even more comfortably within her oeuvre. [Though I'm...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 AM
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Comments (3)
Shinichiro Nakahara is the Minoru Mori of gorgeous-grain, house-shaped wood blocks. With their single painted roof side, Gochi's toy-sized House Blocks are the genre's [relatively] flashy Roppongi Hills. Meanwhile, Landscape Products' artisanal paper and printing company, Papier Labo has gotten...
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Posted by greg at
7:41 AM
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Comments (1)
November 6, 2007
And when they enslave us, it'll be through cutesy friendliness, not Decepticon-like terror. That'll come later."We expected that after a few hours, the magic was going to fade," Movellan says. "That's what has been found with earlier robots." But, in...
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Posted by greg at
11:41 PM
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Comments (3)
I saw the real Flavor Flav bustin' around somewhere recently, wearing that damn clock, and just waiting to collect his check. Man deserves to make a living, don't get me wrong, but it just seemed a little sad that...
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Posted by greg at
2:48 PM
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Comments (5)
November 5, 2007
So far, the most chilling words to come out of the kid's mouth are "No, I learned it on [insert TV show name here]," as in:"And Daddy, dogs are hunters by nature." "REALLY. Did you talk about that at school?"...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (3)
That Mr. T mention got me itching to see Nizlopi's JCB Song video again, which still makes me cry, 2.5 years later. It also reminds me that Michael Bay is not worthy to scrub the road grime off of...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (4)
Alright, I notice there is no comprehensive list of all 25 celebrity doll patterns in Carol Meldrum's book, Knitted Icons: 25 Celebrity Doll Patterns. So I've compiled what I can from the various write-ups, which only make me wonder...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:01 AM
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Comments (3)
If one more set of adorable plush organs hits the market, your kid'll be able to open up his own plush CSI or plush haggis factory. The latest come from I Heart Guts, the brainchild of LA artist/designer Wendy...
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Posted by greg at
7:37 AM
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Comments (2)
November 4, 2007
From Design*Sponge we learn that Jennifer Delonge, the paragon of Westside infant chic, is now offering a carefully edited selection of "fresh" vintage furniture, or as we say in the biz, "a few great pieces." Among them: a very...
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Posted by greg at
8:19 PM
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Comments (1)
November 3, 2007
Alright, so all the headlines are from the New York Times. I'm like that guy on NY1 who reads the paper for you in the morning, only I pull out the dad-related stories: Inside The Box: I admit, I fell--hard--for...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 PM
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Comments (0)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } , originally uploaded by asa*. Alright, the punch-out cardboard toy in a box student project...
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Posted by greg at
8:33 AM
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Comments (3)
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } L1090519.JPG, originally uploaded by mcmo's. Alright, the painted metal toys at Dutch Design Week just...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (3)
November 2, 2007
So the big designblogs are rolling out their photocoverage of Dutch Design Week, which ended like a hundred years ago [or a week ago; why does this week feel like it's gone on a hundred years?]. Core77 just posted...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 PM
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Comments (0)
Alright, I've kept quiet long enough, and Andy and his readers over at Stork Bites Man have had their chance. And though I know I'll regret not buying them myself--I kind of think they'd be kind of insanely awesome...
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Posted by greg at
5:25 PM
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Comments (1)
November 1, 2007
The Tori folding rocking horse is by Plan Toys, which means it's made from sustainably harvested plantation rubberwood, and it's kind of modern. I'm still trying to figure out how it doesn't collapse mid-ride when the kid gives it...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 PM
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Comments (3)
October 31, 2007
After finding his hina matsuri puzzle dolls yesterday, I wanted to see more of Oguro Saburo's intricately modern work. Be careful what you wish for, the guy is a puzzle-making machine. If the jigsaws and wood planks ever rise...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 AM
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Comments (1)
October 30, 2007
Some noob with awesome sewing skills posted a picture of this sweet, plush Companion Cube [from the X-Box 360 game Portal] to the papercraft/origami section of rambunctious anime fansite 4chan, where Kotaku picked it up. The result: a foul-mouthed...
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Posted by greg at
11:28 PM
Holy smokes, I just hit a spot in the Gangukan blog archives that's so sweet, I'm gonna have to eat the 5 lb bag of Tootsie Roll products we bought for Trick or Treat just to come down. Hasutani...
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Posted by greg at
6:46 PM
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Comments (1)
Check out all the awesomeness that is captured on the Gangukan's blog. They have papercraft and wood toybuilding workshops for kids, a lot of craft exhibits [eh.] and a whole array of contemporary folk toymaker showcases and posts: Momotaro-palooza: in...
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Posted by greg at
3:04 PM
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Comments (1)
taiguruma by Futabashi Hariko, Shizuoka pref. image via That's 郷土玩具, kyoudo gangu if you're surfing at home. [that Google link will survive the posting process, even if the characters get mangled.] After seeing that beautiful suite of woodblock prints...
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Posted by greg at
8:32 AM
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Comments (1)
October 29, 2007
A heads up to all those dads who don't feel validated until you've been commoditized in plastic, you may now give yourself a big hug. For the first time, Playmobil has introduced #4408, Dad with Stroller. Specifically, it looks...
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Posted by greg at
5:01 PM
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Comments (5)
October 28, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Toy Kitchen 2, originally uploaded by annam42. Very nice. Anna, a craftblogging mom who knows...
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Posted by greg at
8:31 PM
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Comments (5)
There's a reason this eBay auction of a single-room Creative Playthings dollhouse stuffed with original matching Antonio Vitali furniture is already $75: because it's freakin' awesome. Most of it looks to be in excellent condition, even the more played-with...
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Posted by greg at
3:54 PM
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Comments (1)
October 27, 2007
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Japanese toy designs k, originally uploaded by peacay. From the always spectacular BibliOdyssey comes Unaru...
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Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
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Comments (4)
October 26, 2007
From the same eBay seller--who's donating the proceeds back to the church where these old toys came from--comes this sweet, giant Community Playthings car. You could fit the whole Rat Pack in that thing, and still have room in...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 AM
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Comments (0)
My first thought when I saw this vintage Community Playthings maple phone appear on eBay was, "Yow, better watch that phone cord doesn't wrap around the youngster's little neck." But then I realized, it'll take so much to explain...
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Posted by greg at
11:21 AM
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Comments (1)
October 24, 2007
I am like a deer caught in the headlights--the modestly labeled but generously sized, multi-shaded, and extremely tactile-looking headlights--of Japan's plush toy masters. The Funwari Milk-chan collection of plush breast toys includes three sizes: A cup [20cm diam.], B...
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Posted by greg at
6:00 PM
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Comments (5)
The army of designbloggers is making us wait again, this time for photos and reportage from Dutch Design Week. DDW involves all the design schools as well as Dutch firms, so it should be a source of some interesting,...
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Posted by greg at
2:59 PM
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Comments (0)
Holy crap. Muji better have about ten thousand of these chalkboard globes at the SoHo store when it opens November 16th. Otherwise, I will be leading the Great Muji Riot of '07. And they might want to have a...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (7)
October 22, 2007
My Modern Life is an eBay seller in Lincoln Nebraska who first crossed my radar when she posted some vintage toys in insanely great condition by Creative Playthings and Kay Bojesen. As if that wasn't awesome enough, My Modern...
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Posted by greg at
12:02 PM
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Comments (0)
Coming back from Miami, I saw a kid with this crazy green Gumby-looking neck pillow on. It looked like a toy being used as a neck pillow, or some weird hybrid of the two, with that tactile nylon &...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (6)
October 18, 2007
In that Petaluma post this morning, DT reader Cookie [who, AFAIK, is not the pudgy-baby-hating Cookie] suggested that sweet hardwood castle set might come from a German company called Holzkram. It didn't, but just get a load of Holzkram's...
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Posted by greg at
5:55 PM
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Comments (2)
Ashley is a Reggio Emilia atelierista by day, and a felt artist by night. She also has a blog with no links. Obviously, she lives in San Francisco. When she was in Petaluma, peddling her wares, she happened to...
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Posted by greg at
12:06 PM
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Comments (8)
October 17, 2007
Put that in your Dwell prefab and compost it. As early as the 1930's, Milton-Bradley was producing sweet, slot-together wooden doll houses and other play buildings as part of Bumpalow Town. There was also a store, a church, a...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 AM
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Comments (0)
October 16, 2007
When I explained to the kid that I was going to Miami for a couple of days, she drew a blank. Then when I told her it was where the Malfi Playground was, she freaked out. And now I...
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Posted by greg at
9:26 PM
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Comments (4)
True, a teddy bear who's a big boy and wearing big boy underwear [we call the white ones "classics"] might help the kid along with his potty training. OR it could trigger an all-out underwear revolt when he realizes...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 AM
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Comments (0)
October 14, 2007
You turn your back on that Big Blue Box for a minute, and what do they do? They plop down bins full of interesting painted wood pull toys by Canadian-in-Copenhagen designer Francis Cayouette. Cayouette seems to be one of...
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Posted by greg at
11:54 PM
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Comments (2)
Recovergirl sets book traps and game traps for her sons, and they apparently always work:you can use book traps to divert your children to different parts of the house. I needed to clean the boy’s room but I knew...
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Posted by greg at
8:30 PM
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Comments (2)
October 12, 2007
If you've got some Moofia toys you need signed, or if you've been waiting to get near TokiDoki Simone Legno before you buy, now's your chance. Yoyamart is hosting a Tokidoki party tomorrow night, Saturday, 10/13, from 7-10pm. That's...
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Posted by greg at
11:50 PM
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Comments (1)
"You wake up on Sunday morning -- you don't expect to see a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old hooting down the street in a car." Unfortunately, dad was not the one who was awake. On the bright side, they stopped...
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Posted by greg at
1:41 PM
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Comments (1)
October 10, 2007
Wherever there's video of plush bunnies being extracted from a giant plush predator, I am there. Regine posted about a recent performance/sculpture installation in Ljublana, Slovenia which eerily--and kind of hilariously--echoes Lizette Greco's adorable See-Through Predator video just featured on...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (0)
October 8, 2007
These vintage Creative Playthings skis are perfect--if you're one of those East Coast ski weirdos who thinks 12 inches of manmade ice and gravel counts as a ski surface. Killington? Sugar Mountain?? Gimme a break Buy the skis because...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (1)
See-through Predator from robertogreco on Vimeo. Bwahaha, medical ethics and bodily integrity implications aside, this is awesome. See-Through Predator is a wolf whose teeth were removed so he wouldn't bite his prey, and whose stomach was replaced with a...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 AM
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Comments (2)
October 7, 2007
Alright, finally. The 1972 Samsonite Toys catalogue is up and running on flickr, though a couple of pages are out of order. Check out all the plasticky goodness. With The Machine here, Samsonite ends its toy section with a...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 PM
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Comments (2)
Chigo, Gochi, get it? It's a Japanese thing, reversing the syllables. It's also the answer to the question left over from Bubble NY last spring, about which of designer/guru Shinichiro Nakahara's constellation of shops, publishing imprints, and design brands...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 PM
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Comments (1)
October 6, 2007
This past summer, Design21 Social Design Network sponsored a competition called "Child's Play". The brief: Design an affordable object or a series of objects that a child can play with in which the function is more suggestive than prescriptive and...
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Posted by greg at
6:17 PM
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Comments (4)
Some things that caught my eBay eye. For some reason, they all involve $25, which variously does and does not seem right: Creative Playthings Wooden FireChief Toy Car Red Wood, opening bid $10+14 s/h? Good luck, Goodwill! Auction ends Oct...
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Posted by greg at
1:07 PM
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Comments (1)
October 5, 2007
Still working to get the scans of this 1972 Samsonite Toys catalogue finished. There were sure a lot of roller skate-type products in that first, expanded collection. There was also the People Places series, their entry into the preschool...
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Posted by greg at
1:10 PM
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Comments (2)
October 4, 2007
I give up. If you need me, I'll be eating Veggie Booty out of a lead bowl, drinking high fructose corn syrup out of a BPA-laced sippy cup, and watching the Hoobs until I've forgotten every multisyllabic word I...
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Posted by greg at
6:44 PM
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Comments (10)
October 3, 2007
How awesome is this? A ride-on bike for a one-year-old, with superfat tires so it doesn't tip over? Also, it has a badass set of ape hanger chrome handlebars? Naturally, it's from Samsonite. That's right, they were doing more...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (2)
Swiss awesome-maker Momoll has introduced a set of doll house furniture. You could use it with a Momoll slot-together doll house or their plexiglass tower of cool [shown here], or you could just use it to mod up whatever...
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Posted by greg at
7:40 AM
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Comments (0)
October 2, 2007
This just in from the Circle of Life Department: From his research linking Baby Einstein videos [by name] to decreased vocabulary development in toddlers to his earlier findings of a link between toddler TV-watching and ADHD, to his book,...
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Posted by greg at
5:32 PM
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Comments (3)
"Lead researcher Dr. Dimitri Christakis works with study blocks. Photo courtesy of Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute" In a recently published study commissioned by a Canadian block company [above foreground], Dr. Dimitri Christakis [above, left] and his colleagues at Seattle...
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Posted by greg at
2:34 PM
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Comments (4)
October 1, 2007
Seems like we missed the Crafty Bastards Craft Fair down in DC yesterday. For a second, I thought I should be bummed, but then I realized there are about 10,000 edgy craft fairs popping up all over the country...
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Posted by greg at
1:27 PM
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Comments (1)
From the parent report at Gowanus Lounge:We were on our way back from a great afternoon in Prospect park and my son was happily gliding downhill on his "Like-a-bike" type bike that happens to be made by another brand...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 AM
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Comments (15)
Let's face it: 35-year-old play kitchens are going to be played with. It's usually enough to find one at all, much less one in pristine shape. A three-piece Creative Playthings kitchen--sink, oven, and fridge--just hit the eBay. The stove...
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Posted by greg at
9:44 AM
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Comments (3)
The wholly independent human robot modders of RobotsRule.com have loaded a harmless, hilarious Elmo personality into the RoboSapien, then they chopped up an Elmo hand puppet, and created a fleece RoboSapien bodysuit to complete the transformation. It's all good-natured...
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Posted by greg at
7:28 AM
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Comments (0)
I guess the owner of the Mexican restaurant down the street went to a big restaurant expo recently, because the other night, the kid got a little coloring placemat and a pack of triangular crayons called Crayangles. Frankly, we...
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Posted by greg at
12:04 AM
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Comments (5)
September 30, 2007
I was wondering when the next country would turn up on Kiosk, and it has: Finland. A few times each year, the conceptual SoHo retailer scours a country for exceptionally well-designed and iconic stuff from the rare to the...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (1)
September 29, 2007
Andrew Adam Newman reports on the front page of the NY Times Business section today that some parents are so distracted by the threat of lead-contaminated toys, they forget the old-fashioned dangers--like toys with many small pieces that can...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 PM
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Comments (3)
September 28, 2007
So many stories about toxic toys, so little time. Even the NY Times wraps up ten different recall and lead incidents into one story these days. To celebrate the World Vinyl Forum, which was in town this week, a consumer...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (7)
September 27, 2007
A few things I'm seeing on eBay--and not bidding on, so I don't mind telling you about them. This is how [some of] your eBay news is made, people! CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS 60'S WOOD LEARNING TOYS FARM An early set of...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 PM
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Comments (3)
September 26, 2007
I don't know about you, but all this copyrighted image outrage just wears me out! Let's take a funbreak--and look at these sweet archival images of Isamu Noguchi's various playground designs which archiblogger Andrew Raimist uploaded to flickr. They were...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
Coke McDonald's Nike Apple Playboy... uh, Pine Tree Air Freshener At first I thought the theme of this puzzle was Junk You Haven't Brought In From The Car. But then I realized that the white circle in the upper...
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Posted by greg at
7:12 PM
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Comments (1)
September 21, 2007
This summer, the Eames Office and Vitra issued a limited-edition, molded plywood elephant based on an early, experimental design that Ray and Charles Eames made for their own kids, but never put into production. [Two were made; the Eames...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 PM
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Comments (1)
September 20, 2007
Yo Gabba Gabba! definitely wants to be invited to the Christmas party in your wallet. Kid Robot, the vinyl toy subsidiary of YGG! production company WildBrain just announced to retailers that Yo Gabba Gabba vinyl and plush dolls will...
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Posted by greg at
4:54 PM
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Comments (12)
StarWars.com blogger Neil Baker made a Star Wars Alphabet for fellow Star Wars bloggers to put on Star Wars t-shirts to wear to the Celebration IV Star Wars anniversary commemoration a few months back. Then he turned his alphabet...
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Posted by greg at
1:44 PM
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Comments (0)
September 19, 2007
Gearblogger extraordinaire [and onetime DT guestblogger] John Biggs posted some highlights of his son Kasper's inventory at Crunchgear. There's a Quinny Buzz, some select Ikea, a few annoying plastic toys, and my favorites: actual obsolete gadgets and Polish-language toys from...
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Posted by greg at
2:02 PM
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Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
British toy designer Patrick Rylands created the Slow Truck in 1972. It was made for Creative Playthings by the German company Schuco. There was also a Slow Bus, which looks more like a bright red Slow Winnebago. Both toys...
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Posted by greg at
4:17 PM
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Comments (0)
Artist/illustrator Patrick Lau started with a painting of a robot for his kid's nursery, which began, as his wife Maya put it, "to slightly have a theme." He added giant gears to the walls, and there's a shelf full...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (5)
September 16, 2007
Beat Blocks are an extraordinarily simple interface for a midi controller and rhythm sequencer. The grid represents four measures x four percussion outputs. The stripes on each block represent the beats within each measure. You compose instantly and in...
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Posted by greg at
11:12 PM
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Comments (3)
September 14, 2007
I don't know what we'd do with all the leftover product liability lawyers, but if putting kids to work building their own toys is good for disabled kids in developing countries, why not do it here, too? Solve the...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (1)
September 13, 2007
So last week's shock at a toy industry request for the federal government to set new safety testing standards has definitely worn off, even before Consumerist described the proposal as "an over-hyped batch of self-serving hogwash." DT reader Mark quickly...
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Posted by greg at
11:07 AM
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Comments (3)
September 12, 2007
My rather short-notice trip to the Times Square Toys R Us yesterday was not a total cultural disaster [though I'm glad the kid didn't tag along; the suddenly animated animatronic T-Rex would've freaked her action out, let me tell...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (1)
Un. Be. Lievable. What a train wreck. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee which oversees the Consumer Products Safety Commission is holding a hearing on toy safety, toy recalls, and the utter shambles that is the CPSC and the Toy Industrial Complex's...
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Posted by greg at
1:19 PM
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Comments (1)
September 11, 2007
This set of matching cards use rather insanely complex fabric designs from Marimekko. Like Frank Lloyd Wright and his Froebel blocks, these cards are just the kind of thing your kid'll latch onto as the singular inspiration for his...
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Posted by greg at
7:39 AM
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Comments (2)
September 10, 2007
1) Scarface: Widescreen 20th Anniversary Edition DVD, which was issued in 2003, the year he was born. 2) Dead hookers & blow 3) A toy gun with a whistle in the barrel. 4) An appointment for Big Derrick to...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (4)
September 6, 2007
I'm not sure I even now how to type these words in this order, so I'll have to cut-n-paste from the NY Times story just out:Acknowledging a growing crisis of public confidence caused by a series of recent recalls, the...
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Posted by greg at
11:43 PM
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Comments (2)
September 4, 2007
So when I posted two days ago that there were more Mattel recalls coming down the pike, I didn't think I meant today. But there you have it, the AP is reporting Mattel is recalling 675,000 Barbie accessories for lead...
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Posted by greg at
10:02 PM
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Comments (6)
When the Mobile Industrial Complex left him high and dry, new dad Will took matters into his own hands. Now he just watches for the day when his Baby not-Mario can jump up and reach these question cubes; that's...
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Posted by greg at
5:10 PM
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Comments (0)
September 3, 2007
At the big-in-Belgium Bois+Habitat expo last spring, Romy di Donato won the Design Wood Etudiants category for her design for a transformable birch ply riding toy. Snap the two arcs into the top, and it's a sweet, abstracted rolling...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:00 PM
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Comments (1)
September 1, 2007
I'm running out of pretend-surprise. The NY Times has a damning article about the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which has been systematically weakened, rendered ineffective, and nearly destroyed by the Bush Administration's appointees, who promised their former employers--manufacturers, corporate...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 PM
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Comments (4)
August 31, 2007
If you're sick of waiting for months--or even years--for a recall to find out just how much lead is in your kid's Made In China toys, have I got the blogpost for you! Craftzine has rounded up a giant list...
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Posted by greg at
8:32 PM
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Comments (0)
August 29, 2007
The University of Brussels and the ANTY Project are developing a friendly, plush hospital robot for diagnostic and therapeutic use with children. Despite getting burned on the Teddy Ruxpin thing a few years back, Bill Gates is involved in underwriting...
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Posted by greg at
3:11 PM
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Comments (2)
August 28, 2007
I still can't forget how nice these blocks felt, and how beautiful they are. On a visit to my grandmother's this summer, the kid got to play in the same basement toy closet I did [it used to be...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (8)
August 25, 2007
Have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly question the way you've lived your life and all the choices and assumptions you've made, and you just stare in baffled rage at your reflection in the mirror, wondering...
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Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (4)
Hilariously inevitable. A toy TV news van with a detachable microphone and camera on top, that flips over into a giant toy studio camera, complete with a lens. From Creative Playthings, during the late A Division of CBS years,...
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Posted by greg at
7:59 AM
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Comments (2)
August 23, 2007
So while I didn't get on CBS yesterday, I did get a quote in the Washington Post's article about the latest developments in the whole Bisphenol A toxic plastic baby bottle controversy. [I guess that means I'm not TV-hot, only...
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Posted by greg at
3:42 PM
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Comments (2)
August 21, 2007
This Like-a-Bike-like walking scooter practically demands to be covered with mod decals and several rearview mirrors. And if anyone knows where to get a kid-sized army jacket, I know where to get an iron-on target t-shirt. [And speaking of...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (3)
August 20, 2007
[pet-killers: 1, peer-reviewed science: 0!] In the classic 1958 nature documentary White Wilderness, filmmakers for the Walt Disney Company faked a lemming migration and over-the-cliff suicide plunge using pet lemmings they bought from Inuit children. As a result, and...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (1)
DT reader, advertiser, and mailing list drawing prize donor Mark from Sparkability took a break from his sweet kids design guru-ing to email his list of the Top Ten Most Needed Kids Products:Cribs under $400 Doll/Play furniture (crib/cradle/highchair) Cookie Jar...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (6)
August 17, 2007
One of the kid's favorite toys is Magna-Tiles. She plays with them every day. They're awesome. They spread like an irresistible marketing virus from playdate to playdate, from cousin to cousin. Not counting the dozen or so folks each...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 AM
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Comments (5)
August 14, 2007
Mattel took out full-page ads in several national newspapers today so that CEO Robert Eckert could tell "fellow parents" that he's "a father of four." And then this morning, Mattel and the CPSC held a press conference to announce the...
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Posted by greg at
4:16 PM
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Comments (2)
August 13, 2007
So a freelance reporter staged a story about Beijing pork buns being stuffed with soggy cardboard, not pork, and he gets sentenced to a year in prison for, as the Associated Press quotes it, "infringing on the reputation of a...
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Posted by greg at
8:18 AM
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Comments (1)
August 12, 2007
I've been to some remote places in Illinois in my day [Pontoosuc in the house!], but the closest I've got to Peru was that one crazy weekend I drove out from Chicago to the opening gala for the new...
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Posted by greg at
7:43 AM
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Comments (2)
August 11, 2007
Ever the eBay shark, Andy found this sweet, modernist plywood-and-plexi dollhouse for sale on eBay and posted it to Stork Bites Man. The description says it was designed and built by an architect; the plexiglass walls can slide out...
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Posted by greg at
8:12 AM
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Comments (5)
August 10, 2007
Colabos are nothing new for the indie and art toy world, but products for actual kids are. The plush & vinyl toy boom is a bit weird in that it ignores the traditional toy customers--children--in favor of still-a-kid-on-the-inside twentysomethings...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 PM
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Comments (5)
Flickr user Hive carried a baby bakfiets home in a bakfiets. Then the baby put the baby holding the baby in the baby bakfiets. [note: it makes plenty of sense in Dutch.] Bakfiets op Bakfiets; Kinderbakfiets [hive's flickr stream,...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (3)
August 7, 2007
The thing is, Octopie would probably be the cutest polar fleece plush octopus boy around even if his spots weren't "hand-felted with Merino wool." And yet, they are. Fifty bucks, get it while it's there. But if you miss...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (0)
Since Marc Jacobs has come so clean about overcoming all his addictions lately, I will, too: I'm a recovering Colette-oholic. I wrestled with my problem for years, even though to be honest, I usually found their highly edited [i.e.,...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (3)
August 5, 2007
Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, I think I feel a Mind-Bending Plush Week coming on. Or, you know, just a handful of Japanese-market dolls for sale in the eBay Store of anime plush/collectibles specialist Saltypear. I feel like we're just scratching...
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Posted by greg at
11:25 PM
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Comments (0)
August 1, 2007
Maybe it would be easier if all the companies left who don't sell hyper-popular licensed character toys contaminated with lead paint could please raise your hand? Anyone? Fisher-Price, whose Made in America toys we all gnawed on as children, has...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 PM
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Comments (9)
July 31, 2007
Jalopnik's already got the perfect headline for this sweet collection of vintage images of Soviet-era pedal cars, so I'll just add, "You had'em on the run, Comrades!" From this angle, the Moskovich looks a bit like The People's MB...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (1)
July 30, 2007
There's a pile of sweet old gear on eBay at the moment, both of the Creative Playthings and Creative Way To Break Your Neck, Young Man! Playthings varieties: CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS ESKIMOS PLAYSET vintage FP little Looks complete, in nice...
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Posted by greg at
9:25 PM
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Comments (2)
Holy smokes, it's like Take-G, only with plush instead of wood, and your car and its engine instead of fantastical anime robots. Rocket Craft is an outfit in Sapporo who will create a plush replica of your car, precise...
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Posted by greg at
2:43 PM
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Comments (0)
Purple Flavor makes a fine-looking plush roast chicken. From the size of the plastic box it comes in, I expect it's life-sized. Or corner deli rotisserie-sized, anyway. The felt herbs and seasoning look a little choke-hazard-y, so you might...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (0)
July 29, 2007
Here are a couple of interesting-looking SDCC finds from Kidrobot's photostream: Up top is a DIY version of Mike Burnett's awesome Neighborwood toy figure. When it comes to the preferred mediums of the indie toy scene, wood is a...
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Posted by greg at
5:12 PM
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Comments (2)
July 28, 2007
Wow, I was definitely taken in by The Dark Side of The Force on this one. I was about to blast George Lucas like a Tatooine womp rat when I saw this picture of a kid hugging a pink...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 PM
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Comments (7)
July 23, 2007
Oops, I mean Anthropologie. My bad. I saw these in the store window on the way to pick up my laptop with the [finally!] fixed hard drive, and I figured they were just display props, but no. There's a...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 PM
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Comments (0)
July 19, 2007
The visionaries at Pandiscio have graciously provided a color version of Bela Borsodi's portrait of Cuddle Me Condos, and I think we can all agree that One Kenmare has never looked moodier, Urban Glass House has never looked whippier, 40...
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Posted by greg at
12:54 PM
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Comments (8)
Innocent Drinks, the Nantucket Naked Jambodwalla Juice of England, sure loves themselves some knitting. DT reader Eim tells me the kid's grandma-knitted iPhone made it into the newletter this week [screenshots, anyone?]. Also, they featured some fair-trade knitted fruit...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
If only there hadn't been an earthquake and hundreds of injuries and several deaths and a fire in a nuclear power plant and a release of some sort of radiation cloud, my 15-second, on-the-phone interview about discovering the wooden...
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Posted by greg at
4:02 PM
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Comments (1)
July 17, 2007
So DT reader Tim writes about how their 1-yo son loves playing with their older friend's Tupperware Noah's Ark when they go to visit. And I'm like, "Tupperware Toys? Are you kidding me? I had no idea!" And sure...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 PM
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Comments (7)
Sheesh, PingMag is clearing up all sorts on Asian inscrutability. First, mystery octopus playground equipment, and now magically transforming plastic balls. When we went to visit the in-laws in Hong Kong last winter, they gave the kid one of...
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Posted by greg at
5:28 PM
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Comments (3)
July 16, 2007
In the 1960's in Japan, when the Maeda Outdoor Art Company unveiled a serpentine mound of polished concrete called "Play Sculpture: Stone Mountain," someone trying to be helpful told the artist, "If you'd just put a head on it,...
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Posted by greg at
11:27 PM
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Comments (3)
Whoa, these are awesome. This is the molded ply block equivalent of a box full of nothing but Crunch Berries. Normally you'd have to buy twenty Creative Playthings Airfield Sets to get this many air hangar-shaped blocks, and even...
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Posted by greg at
11:28 AM
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Comments (1)
Yeah, so, when I suggested Creative Playthings Hollow Blocks were long overdue for knock-offery, I guess I assumed the hollow block sets filling up our nation's Montessori schools and daycare centers were all 30+ years old. Actually, I don't...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 AM
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Comments (2)
The description says this is a trolley/street car, but anyone this side of Fallujah knows better. It's a maquette from a top secret, Cold War-era envisioning project for the Rand Corporation, in which Creative Playthings, Disney and others were...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 AM
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Comments (1)
July 14, 2007
Etsy artist Le Petit Bijou will donate $3 of each purchase of this hand-crocheted amigurumi HIV to Blood:Water Mission, an NGO which provides clean water to health care facilities in Africa. BWM was founded by the members of the...
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Posted by greg at
9:32 AM
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Comments (1)
July 12, 2007
Lead painted Thomas engines, poisonous Veggie Booty powder, rubber duckies with a 5,000-year landfill half-life, the environmental insanity of shipping Fiji Water around the world. DT reader Shawna emailed with a question I've been wondering myself. Are there any "conscientious...
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Posted by greg at
1:12 PM
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Comments (17)
A mother of three bought a boxed Fisher-Price Stand 'n Ride Duo Stroller off the showroom floor of the local Toys R Us. Street value: $150. When they got home and opened the box, eight boxes of Legos Bionicles...
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Posted by greg at
12:03 PM
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Comments (6)
July 11, 2007
image: Space Shuttle tray from Pecoware via superlocal's flickr stream Some news, sales and rumours from the retail wing of the Baby Industrial Complex: First, the bad news: DT reader Ndele reports that when he and his wife tried...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (0)
Don't worry, the 500-pound bomb was lined with rubber as part of the conversion to a toddler plaything. If there's any sense in the world, this thing should be turning up at a Honolulu garage sale someday. Popular Mechanics,...
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Posted by greg at
12:55 AM
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Comments (0)
July 10, 2007
When First Lady Laura Bush went on her whirlwind Africa tour a couple of weeks ago, First Twin [Second First Daughter?] Jenna accompanied her. At the end of a visit at an elementary school in Bamako, Mali which had...
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (1)
What exactly is the Playskool Poundin' Bedbugs supposed to teach? Apparently, you take that long, hard, red thing into the bed, where you pound and pound and pound on the little nubby things until you're completely worn out. They,...
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Posted by greg at
1:21 PM
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Comments (3)
I can't beat - Dutch artist Dennis Douven's own description of Cloud X.1:‘Cloud X.1’ is an environmentally conscious 10″ handmade plush, patterned after the Toxic industrial cloud creatures which I first created as a street art sticker, named: ‘Little...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 AM
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Comments (1)
July 6, 2007
A couple of otherwise promising toys on eBay seem to be missing a piece or two: 1975 Creative Playthings AMERICAN INDIAN Little People, ends July 10th, starting bid: $10+$7.55s/h result: sold for $11.50+s/h This is the coolest of the CP...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 AM
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Comments (1)
July 4, 2007
My mom was insanely cool even before she knitted an iPhone. Last week, as the hype was peaking, I braced for reports of kids across the country grabbing for their parents' new iPhones; it was a drool-soaked disaster waiting...
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Posted by greg at
1:26 PM
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Comments (50)
July 3, 2007
The simple, clean appearance of Ben Forman's Detacho doll house system belies a very sophisticated, flexible pedagogical program. It's designed to acommodate a variety of different family scenarios: separated, single, or divorcing parents; "casual" and "office" parents; new step-parents;...
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Posted by greg at
6:28 PM
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Comments (1)
Wow, it's amazing how the same basic idea--make the kid a modernist dollhouse out of recycled building materials--can have such different executions. Dutch's Miesian townhouse is spare and unfinished to an extreme, letting the kid play God by filling...
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (2)
David from Hemming's sent me this link to Sniff Patrol's latest spy shots of the BMW 1-Series, which got me thinking about sweet, small coupes. Totally unrelated to that sight gag, I remember seeing a momblogger who'd repainted her kid's...
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Posted by greg at
11:42 AM
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Comments (9)
July 2, 2007
With the animated TV show and Marvel comic, and the character names and backstory created around a bunch of generic Japanese robot toys, The Transformers were multimedia cross-promotion from the moment Hasbro launched them in 1984. But Anthony Lane is...
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Posted by greg at
12:25 PM
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Comments (0)
I never go to Hoopty Rides looking for kid-related enlightenment, but when I find it there, it's always superlative. Of a Missouri amusement ride company's recent liquidation auction, Mister Hoopty wrote:One assumes that intellectual property [being sold] includes the...
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Posted by greg at
12:27 AM
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Comments (0)
That's Dutch as in JD, Juniper's dad, of course, not the country. Though the Netherlands is known for the quality of their kid's design, I'm afraid the whole Bugaboo-pushing lot of them takes a backseat to our Dutch, who...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 AM
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Comments (2)
June 29, 2007
Congratulations to Ugly Dolls creators David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim on the delivery, safe and sound, of little UMA. Horvath writes on his blog that UMA only became a reality for them when they saw that first sonogram, a feeling...
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Posted by greg at
10:48 PM
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Comments (4)
Unbelievable. DWR is having their summer sale. Among the deals on offer: three--yes, three--Eero Aarnio Puppies, originally $99 each, for just $98. WITH FREE SHIPPING. Ridiculously cheap, and yet $22 MORE than the Netto crib & changing table. I...
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Posted by greg at
6:49 PM
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Comments (3)
That soft travel puzzle map of the United States set me to poking around, especially after AJ mentioned the lameness of another soft travel book, a puzzle-looking solar system where the planets are sewed in place, by the same...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
3:38 PM
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Comments (3)
train ends july 1, currently 120SEK [$US18], 4 bids Getting a little weary of posts about vintage Creative Playthings toys on eBay? How about something completely different: vintage Brio toys on Swedish eBay! You might think of Brio as...
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Posted by greg at
10:26 AM
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Comments (0)
June 28, 2007
In their interview with MocoLoco, members of the Swiss design firm Big-Game explain that each object in their new Plus Is More collection is created using a simple strategy: "We never use shapes as a starting point, always ideas."...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (0)
When I was little, I learned the states from the hand-painted map on the neighbor's camping trailer, which they filled in every summer: "All Lower 48!" it said. Also, I had a beat jigsaw puzzle, where Rhode Island was...
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Posted by greg at
2:46 PM
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Comments (5)
June 27, 2007
What becomes a legendary building in an overheated Manhattan real estate market most? Lesser breeds of developers have been known to hire fashion designers to decorate the lobby. To commission Jade Jagger to put her name on the galley kitchen....
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Posted by greg at
2:57 PM
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Comments (1)
June 26, 2007
It's such an obvious question, it's like it's been staring us in the face. Right under our noses. Or our feet. In fact, I'm looking at one right now. It's the perpetually in-your-face reminder of the Baby Industrial Complex's...
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Posted by greg at
9:02 PM
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Comments (6)
So you have a teaching aid for helping the kid understand why Joseph Beuys whispered to a dead rabbit's ear. If only there was some cuddly way of explaining Mike Kelley's equally iconic 1989 sculpture, Estral Star [above], which...
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Posted by greg at
11:57 AM
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Comments (1)
While shopping for a doll family recently, AJ of Thingamababy discovered that sets are only available in single shades, such as "Modern", "Ethnic", and "Asian". Matching the skin tones of a multiracial family means buying each doll separately, a...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 AM
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Comments (0)
Not a lot of lead hazard-related updates in the acccount of NY Times business reporter David Barboza's recent visit to the Thomas & Friends factory in China. Just the usual stuff about how it's run by a gang of...
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Posted by greg at
1:33 AM
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Comments (1)
June 25, 2007
I've got so many tabs open in my browser it's dragging my whole [ancient backup] computer down. But I'm glad I waited a couple of days to post these sweet, Venetian crafty plush bunnies from Imegadito. Their stuff is...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:39 PM
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Comments (0)
June 24, 2007
Here are a few interesting-looking kid-related finds on eBay at the moment: Charles Eames Childs Arm Shell Herman Miller CHAIR, ends Jun 29, currently $10+18 s/h When we last saw our mysterious child-sized, Eames-looking fiberglass shell chairs, their mod-savvy eBay...
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Posted by greg at
4:14 PM
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Comments (0)
June 21, 2007
Except for the whole propagandistic profiteering by making dangerously inaccurate War On Terror Finger Puppets for an Administration-friendly design demagogue thing, Il Golfini della Nonna can do no wrong in my eyes. They're wonderful people--artists, all--who support entire communities...
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Posted by greg at
3:51 PM
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Comments (0)
June 20, 2007
All's I'm saying is, someone besides Sean Preston better damn well have gotten a free car out of this shameless product placement stunt. Your Turn To Judge: Whose kid is driving a Cadillac Escalade? [x17/jezebel via metrodad] Previously: Metrodad...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 PM
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Comments (0)
This was so cool. I saw this at Kid-o yesterday, and it was immediately obvious that this Play Cooker from Haba is the perfect toy kitchen for city living or for cultivating brilliant, possibly misunderstood, writers. No bigger than...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
5:39 PM
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Comments (1)
June 18, 2007
These are awesome. Bubbles without the bottle. Three packs and a wand are $9 in SoHo at Kiosk, the incredible concept store by the same folks who brought us Salvor Fauna. Kiosk scours a particular country for beautiful, unusual,...
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Posted by greg at
12:45 PM
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Comments (4)
June 16, 2007
Turns out the inky black Rufty Tufty was just the tip of the golliwog iceberg [Oh wait.] Golliwoggs, as they were originally spelled, became a wildly popular staple of British kid life for most of the 20th century. In...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 AM
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Comments (6)
June 15, 2007
Spectacular. Morrinho ['little hill' in Portuguese] began in 1997 as the plaything of a 14-year-old boy in Pereirão, a hillside favela of Rio de Janiero. It's a toy model of the favela itself, constructed on an abandoned hill out...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (0)
I was going to ask for some suggestions on how the kid and I should pimp out the Mini Munny Mobile that Kidrobot sent us to try out, but then I saw that they launched a Munny Mobile Custom...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
9:02 AM
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Comments (0)
June 14, 2007
This Creative Playthings wooden Noah's Ark looks fantastic--unless you're a small, chewing-prone child or a rabbit. The pieces are all in great shape, but they're smaller than modern safety standards require [as the description says, "...WAY to many 'choking...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:26 PM
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Comments (2)
Feast your eyes on all the Thomas & Friends™ Wooden Railway Toys models that were recalled because their paint contains levels of toxic lead, aka the element voted Most Likely To Keep Your Kid Out of Harvard. The recall...
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Posted by greg at
5:11 PM
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Comments (3)
Like everyone else, I wanted sea monkeys and x-ray goggles. Unlike one guy, though, I was never able to convince my parents to pony up for the crap advertised in comic books. Now it turns out, the $6.98 Polaris...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:29 PM
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Comments (0)
Brand recall: Holy smokes, 1.5 million Thomas The Tank Engine toys are being recalled for lead paint. Wooden railway stuff sold over the last two years. See the CPSC for details [cpsc.gov, via dt reader john] And the Salary.com...
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Posted by greg at
10:12 AM
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Comments (0)
June 13, 2007
When I see the glitzy, glamorously-produced kids' design features in the latest edition of House & Garden--and on the H&G website--I feel like a flea market shlub who has a bougainvillea-filled urban entertainment center open across the street. DT's...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (1)
June 11, 2007
Yeah, the purist in me cries a little to see fragments from so many broken up Creative Playthings Playtown sets: there's the boat from a Marina; there's the helicopters from the Air Field. The luggage haulers, too [hey, weren't...
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Posted by greg at
6:08 PM
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Comments (0)
Egg Press has released Let's Stitch Frank!, a hand-screened canvas dog kit that's the first in a promised series of sew-it-yourself toys. [Well, the first if you don't count Hoot and Scoot, the other DIY stuffed animals Egg does.]...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
1:03 PM
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Comments (1)
June 9, 2007
image: haring.com I generally like my Keith Haring on a wall, preferably loadbearing. [Did you know the Boy's Club of NY building which had that Keith Haring mural, the one in that Sesame Street segment, was just torn down?...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 AM
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Comments (0)
June 8, 2007
In 2004, the London ad agency Mother created "Abba to Zappa", a campaign for the Observer Music Magazine that featured a glorious, flashcard-style collection of pop star portraits. The images were made by the pixel-happy artist and illustrator Craig...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
7:18 PM
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Comments (0)
June 7, 2007
On Sunday, RM Auctions is selling the car collection of longtime Detroit Pontiac dealer John McMullen. There are over 80 vintage cars, most of which hold little appeal to me; or I guess I just need to learn to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
11:12 PM
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Comments (3)
As everyone now knows, modernist playgrounds are the new hotness. And as everyone who knows modernist playgrounds knows, during the Robert Moses era, the New York Parks Department suffocated many a sweet modern playground proposal in its crib. Creative...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:49 PM
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Comments (1)
It's always interesting how things can look different from the opposite side of the world. For example, if I had designed a rocking horse with hinged hindquarters that could actually move forward as you rock it, I might look...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:13 PM
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Comments (0)
June 5, 2007
If you've been looking for just the right Flying Wasp for your kid to christen, hie thee ho, on down to this vintage Playtown Marina from Creative Playthings. Sure, it's a marina, not a yacht club, so there's not...
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Posted by greg at
5:31 PM
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Comments (0)
These spectacular figures are Fujin and Raijin, Wind Guy and Rain Guy. They're by Nakagawa Takeji, a 32-year-old toymaker in Nagano, Japan. Nakagawa's Take-g Toys [though it's a spin on his first name, it's pronounced like English] specializes in...
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Posted by greg at
2:17 PM
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Comments (4)
June 3, 2007
I can't believe no one's bought a set of these sweet-looking graffiti alphabet blocks yet, even though they've been on etsy for a couple of months now. It says right there, they're "not just for the hipster baby mind...
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Posted by greg at
11:13 PM
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Comments (4)
Except that his creation hasn't come back to slaughter him--yet--Hobey Ford is Dr. Hannibal Chew to Oobi's Roy. The North Carolina puppeteer was issued a design patent in 1996 for Finger Puppets, the bulging eyes-on-ring device that turns a...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 PM
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Comments (3)
June 2, 2007
What month was it that I said the kid watches Japanese TV shows so that we can break the TV character - licensed merchandise - store aisle feedback loop? Way back in February? Yeah, well. I just ordered a...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 AM
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Comments (1)
June 1, 2007
Sarah With An H thrifted out this sweet rocking dinosaur last fall for just five bucks. While I was trying to identify it {note: which I never did. Anyone recognize it?], I found plans to make a different rocking...
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Posted by greg at
3:55 PM
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Comments (3)
So the kid's Miniboo is sitting in the corner of her room for a year-plus with one of the wheels broken off, meanwhile, a Mr. Wu of Somewhere Outside Beijing has made not one, but two robot-powered rickshaws, a...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (0)
May 31, 2007
With just over five hours to go before the auction ends, this Chef Robuchon Beanie Baby bear is clocking in at $1,625. According to Jennifer the Snackologist who posted about them last year, Ty made just 200 of these...
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Posted by greg at
5:46 PM
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Comments (1)
May 30, 2007
Hey-o, a fantastically mod doll house--with a floating fireplace, no less--that you make yourself with tinted and transparent acrylic, balsa wood, an ice cream carton lid, and some blocks? Damn right it's better. You know what'd be even better,...
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (1)
What's that, you didn't get the memo that it's Onkar Singh Kular Week here at Daddy Types? Don't sweat it, neither did I. image via wmmna Truth be told, it was the adorable little eyes of Hari & Parker peeking...
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Posted by greg at
2:52 PM
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Comments (0)
Last summer, Royal College of Art research fellow Onkar Singh Kular exhibited two proposals for PSP video games and tie-in merchandise at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London. For The End Of The Road, a driving game where "players...
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Posted by greg at
10:22 AM
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Comments (0)
If your summer travel plans take you to Amsterdam, you may want to schedule a trip to WonderWood, a veritable temple to plywood and wooden modernist design. The incredible, little, 1950's children's bucket chair made of molded ply with...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (1)
May 28, 2007
One of the "you had to be there" events during New York Design Week last week was the opening party for The Wrong Store, a closed up, curated display window/concept store which was inspired by Maurizio Cattelan & co's...
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Posted by greg at
11:28 PM
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Comments (1)
May 24, 2007
Christmas: chief in a box Hanukkah: chief in a box Kwanzaa: a chief in a box Birthday party in the Fifties that someone ended up skipping, and so the present went undelivered and was stored in a cool, dry place...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (1)
Wait, you mean the Stephan Gip? The guy who designed the original trapezoidal high chair that has been knocked off and sold to every sitdown restaurant in the Western Hemisphere, that Stephan Gip? Yep....
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Posted by greg at
12:01 AM
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Comments (0)
May 22, 2007
Unglaublicht. If you haven't clicked through to the pictures in that 1964 Form Magazine article about toy design yet, get going. We'll wait. ... ... OK, So now you've seen that there is no more over-the-top wooden toy in the...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 PM
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Comments (0)
So David Horvath and Sun-Min are having a kid, and the folks running the Ugly Doll business figure they oughta get them something nice. Or maybe make something. Like, say, an Ugly Doll quilt??? Holy smokes, that is awesome....
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Posted by greg at
3:15 PM
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Comments (2)
In 1964, Lieselotte Pee, the noted play and pedagogy expert and member of the Arbeitsausschusses Gutes Spielzeug [Good Toys Working Commitee], wrote an extensive article for Form Magazine about the state of toys and design. I have no idea what...
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Posted by greg at
1:53 PM
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Comments (1)
Anal retentive parents of 1975 who made your kids keep track of all their toys and store them in the original boxes, we salute you. Three Creative Playthings People 'N Places playsets hit the eBay the other day; in...
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Posted by greg at
8:16 AM
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Comments (1)
May 20, 2007
This has been on a few blogs, and I just got an email about it, too, from DT reader/ICFF scout Ed [who, for the record, is not the same "ed." who comments on the comments]. Povl Kjær's Rockingsheep is...
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Posted by greg at
8:40 PM
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Comments (0)
The online galleries are starting to fill up with design eye candy from the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC this weekend. There are a few baby- and kid-related snaps in NotCot's first upload: At first I was distracted by...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (2)
May 19, 2007
I gotta say, I'd like this Nintendo Controller baby rattle more if it was on etsy, not craftser. Until I can buy one in ten seconds, it's just sewing machine people rubbing it in my face, and that gets...
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Posted by greg at
4:12 PM
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Comments (0)
May 18, 2007
Another one of them Crawligator baby skateboards from Creative Playthings just turned up on eBay, box and all. If it goes for as much as the last one did, I think we all need to get into the Crawligator racket....
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Posted by greg at
11:22 AM
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Comments (2)
May 17, 2007
One of DT's contributors, Andy Beach, has been going crazy with his own new blog the last few weeks, Reference Library; it's so sweet, I don't mind a bit that he's diverting most of his vintage toy and eBay...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 PM
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Comments (1)
May 16, 2007
In 1971, after he had finished founding New York magazine and before he created the "I [Heart] N Y" logo, Milton Glaser designed Puzzle Cube, a set of 64 op arty, acrylic blocks, as a "Museum of Modern Art...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 AM
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Comments (0)
May 15, 2007
I would imagine if you're running a handcrafted wooden toy company in a fully developed, expensive country like Germany, you constantly feel pressure from low-cost factories in China or Vietnam or Romania or wherever. What's the logical strategic response?...
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Posted by greg at
7:29 AM
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Comments (7)
May 14, 2007
This is what I was planning to post about when I got sidetracked with the Grand Pronouncement. One other thing that's appealing about rooting around in the so-not-musty online archives of design magazines is the sense of control and...
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Posted by greg at
11:02 AM
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Comments (2)
A couple of folks have emailed wondering about my "obsession" lately with posting random vintage stuff. I guess I'd be making more Amazon Nickels if I just posted about New! Exciting! Must-Have! baby gear all day. Obviously, we're living in...
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Posted by greg at
9:24 AM
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Comments (2)
May 10, 2007
Ausgezeichnet! Ten minutes surfing through the 50 year-archive that Form, the Swiss-German design magazine, just put online, and already I feel like Homer Simpson at the candy convention. My raincoat's stuffed full, and instead of one, there are like...
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Posted by greg at
5:49 PM
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Comments (4)
May 8, 2007
If you had gone to the Vinyl Toys Network Event in Pasadena last weekend, you could have gotten one of these "special release," made-by-hand jobs from Long Beach plush artist Shane Geil. Apparently, it was a happy ending for...
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Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (2)
I've had this open on my desktop for days now, not posting it, but I guess I'd better put it up here, just in case you're the knucklehead who's going to buy it. "It" is a 1989 Aston Martin...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (3)
May 7, 2007
OK, I am officially in awe. DT reader AJ just sent photos of the freakin' geodesic dome he just built for his 2-year-old daughter. Here are his simple tips for cranking out your very own dome in no time:...
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Posted by greg at
2:51 PM
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Comments (9)
May 2, 2007
Rediscovering the forgotten kid-related awesomeness of the past is a favorite pasttime here on Daddy Types. But waxing nostalgic about a long-lost toy collection from 1999 makes me uneasy, like we're veering too close to VH1 territory. And yet, there's...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (0)
Very interesting. Gloria Caranica may beg to differ, but I'm not really minding the vintage mod on this Creative Playthings "Rocking Beauty" hobby horse. True, it doesn't have the elegance of the original natural wood and bright red ball...
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Posted by greg at
1:16 PM
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Comments (1)
May 1, 2007
OK, last things first: Ugly Dolls is now being moved to the Parent Company category with the news that David Horvath and Sun Min Kim are expecting a baby girl, apparently just in time to muck up their schedule for...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (1)
April 30, 2007
Though she's not the one who gutted the praying plush Christian sheep [nice segue, right?], Parsons grad student Alexis Lloyd was in the school's awesome electronic toy hacking class last fall. But today it's her final project, titled "The...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 PM
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Comments (1)
I confess, Joyful Joe has led me into temptation. My spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak. If Joyful Joe, the plush hippo named after one of the fruits of the Spirit [Galatians 5:22] had been hardwired to recite...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (0)
If the kid's old enough to handle the name of the flower in the last post [bleeding heart, thanks dt reader christine -ed.], she's old enough to play with a plush toy that allows you to rip out its...
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Posted by greg at
1:43 PM
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Comments (1)
So you love everything about a cool, vintage Finnish-designed toy like the classic Creative Playthings Shape Sorting Box except the idea of your kid gnawing on something that's coated with 35 years of slobber and/or basement dust. Well you're...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 AM
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Comments (0)
Why, viva my Revolucion, it's Playmobil Che! Look on the wall of Richard Unglik's photograph of a typical 1969 living room from his book, La grande aventure de l'Histoire avec Playmobil. Acros from the Playmobil Warhol, next to the...
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Posted by greg at
10:33 AM
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Comments (0)
You know, I was wondering: What if you, me, this whole planet, the solar system, were just like dust under the fingernail of a giant? Or what if, you know, all of human civilization is not our own, but...
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Posted by greg at
7:32 AM
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Comments (2)
April 27, 2007
Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, 1991-9, via LA-based artist Mike Kelley has been selling plush toys for a long time. The only problem, at least from a kidsplay standpoint, is that he uses them as elements in his sculptures...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 AM
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Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
You wanna know the difference between our hippies and the hippies in the 70's? They both lived in lofts on the Lower East Side; they both went on about the environment, and they both built geodesic domes out of...
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Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (2)
Last week was Honey, Take The Kid To Your Office Day, and when they went to visit a colleague's lab at NASA, he made the kid a couple of latex glove balloons. You'd have thought he said the earth moves...
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Posted by greg at
12:33 AM
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Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Sure, they're awesome, you say, but what exactly are the colors of these plush Ultraman dolls trying to tell us? The official story from Japanese toy manufacturer MegaHouse is that the Pattern Doll Series are made this way to...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 PM
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Comments (0)
Is that a joystick in your hand, or are you just happy to see these awesome 8-bit monster-lookin' plush toys? Artists Amy & Jude Buffum made each of the eight creatures in their Bitz Pixelated Palz Seriez [ok, I...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 PM
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Comments (0)
Italian kid furniture manufacturer Nume hit it big with their US distribution deal with DWR. But DWR seemed to wildly overestimate the popularity of Nume's most affordable design, a blank white cardboard playhouse which was ready and waiting for...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 AM
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Comments (2)
April 23, 2007
Holy smokes. Grace at Design*Sponge persuaded Dutch and Wood and Juniper to take pictures of their Detroit townhouse, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe. Though the photos say otherwise, Dutch claims, "We are not designers or artists....
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (3)
This is awesome. Tau is a line of children's toys which you--and your kid--assemble by popping the pieces out of a single sheet of CNC-routed, laminated birch plywood. Like the new, knock-together, Momoll doll house/fire house/kitchen toys, putting them...
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Posted by greg at
1:51 PM
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Comments (4)
This week in Elephants In The Kid Design News: German furniture manufacturer Elmar Flototto [seriously] released Fluffizoo, a series of giant animal toy/furniture made out of safety-coated foam. [Mocoloco says it's been toddler bite-tested.] There's aslo a mouse, a...
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Posted by greg at
1:32 PM
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Comments (0)
April 20, 2007
From now on, I pity the fool who tries to tell me pop craftiness is a 21st century trend. In 1984, "Miss Martha Originals, through a license with Big T Enterprises, (Mr. T’s licensing company) created a pattern book,...
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Posted by greg at
11:39 AM
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Comments (1)
April 17, 2007
Yeah, so about how contrived that whole grup thing about people persisting in some state of suspended adolesence? Where they wear the same clothes as their kids? And uptalk all the time? Turns out I neglected to check with...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 PM
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Comments (0)
Mr. McGroovy is dad and an art teacher-turned-entrepreneur, the success of who's main product, Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets, is almost entirely dependent on getting more parents to make more play-related structures for their kids out of large cardboard boxes. On...
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Posted by greg at
2:06 PM
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Comments (4)
April 16, 2007
Everything that I just wrote about the Eames Bearbrick? Frying pan, fire. Iceberg, tip. Uma, Oprah. According to Core77, UNKL is creating a UniPo doll version of the band Wilco, which whill drop at Comic-Con in July. If anyone...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (1)
You don't read much about Be@rbrick on the Daddy Types. Or Munny, either, for that matter. Whatever charges of ex-post-facto gruppiness might be laid against me, I still think the site is for dads first, parents second, and perpetual...
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Posted by greg at
12:51 PM
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Comments (1)
bObles is Danish children's gear company founded by two sisters with an interest in spurring children's motor skills development and, judging by the picture below, at least, in teasing US product liability lawyers with their model's demonstrations of actual...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (0)
April 15, 2007
In his exhibition at MoMA titled, I believe, "My New Plywood Molding Technique Is Unstoppable!" Charles Eames included what was to become the world's most collectible leg brace, the first of what came to be called the Potato Chip...
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Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (1)
April 12, 2007
One of the first of [way too] many [I'm sure] warnings I started giving the kid, even before her vision focused more than 3 feet away, was, "Plastic bags, not a toy." Which is funny, because in the late...
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Posted by greg at
9:51 AM
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Comments (0)
April 11, 2007
Good thing all the crazy DIY dad projects came to an end in 1962. Nowadays, folks do completely safe and wise things like using bungee cords to strap a DeWalt-powered saw motor onto their kid's Radio Flyer Tiny Trike....
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Posted by greg at
5:00 PM
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Comments (0)
Great minds, etc., etc., The Mobile Home, that sweet, corrugated cardboard, totally totable dollhouse by the Dutch firm Kidsonroof that we wrote about a few months back is now for sale at DT advertiser Sparkability. 35 clams. They also...
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Posted by greg at
10:08 AM
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Comments (1)
April 9, 2007
Cool Hunting just posted a video visit to the studio of Salvor designer Ross Menuez. Turns out the company's named after his daughter and muse [well, her middle name, anyway. It's Icelandic.] When it came out a couple of...
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Posted by greg at
5:06 PM
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Comments (1)
April 7, 2007
This hilarious mashup of Do The Right Thing using Sesame Street Little People from Fisher-Price is by filmmaker-bartender-madman-Canadian Brent Pike-Nurse [damn, I'm gonna run out of hyphens on the first line] and his comedic crew. In case you can't...
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Posted by greg at
4:18 PM
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Comments (1)
April 6, 2007
Even though I was never a diehard fan of Bozart's Kaleidoscope House, it always felt like the one that got away. I knew one of the investors behind Bozart from Philadelphia. A bunch of art world people I knew...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (13)
April 5, 2007
In 2005, Philippe Starck created a 1,000-piece limited-edition teddy bear for Moulin Roty, the French soft toy manufaturer. Called "Teddy Bear Band," the bear had a forest creatures' heads where 3/4 of its limbs should be. Creepy? No, it...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 PM
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Comments (2)
April 2, 2007
Why, yes, yes they do. I'd forgotten how much I liked the class blog for Parsons' The Art And Craft Of Toy Design until I stumbled across this post where a secular humanist student brings Eternal Condemnation down on her...
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Posted by greg at
5:04 PM
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Comments (2)
DC artist Oliver Munday made this sweet-looking alphabet from plastic toy soldiers. I'd go into details about how he did it, but everyone who isn't suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder is under a gag order at Walter Reed. Fire...
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Posted by greg at
3:07 PM
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Comments (0)
March 28, 2007
In their heyday, Creative Playthings had a lot of wonderful toys of their own design, but they also distributed products from around the world. Those classic wood trucks were from some dude in Finland, for example. And this awesome,...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (1)
March 27, 2007
What is Ryan's Room, and why would I want my kid playing cocktails in the hot tub with dolls that have removable swim suits? Considering that they also have something as random as a dollhouse weight set--free weights only,...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (0)
I just stumbled across this photo from around Christmas, when we went into Aix-en-Provence for the market. We got separated in the antiques section, and so the kid and I chose the most obvious rallying point--the Hermes store--and started...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 PM
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Comments (2)
I didn't know what American Girl Place is before the kid was born, and she has no idea what it is now. It's a freaky, doll-centered, corporate-driven cult, a Club Libby Lu for Stepford Children, whose parents' only claim to...
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Posted by greg at
1:36 PM
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Comments (10)
March 23, 2007
Sure, I'd like to wean my kid from Dora with some cool indie plush, you say, but what's the diff? The backstories of American indie toys are usually about as deep and complex as a Chinese zodiac placemat. ["Wage...
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Posted by greg at
8:36 AM
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Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
Apparently, cubwearing doesn't cause this foot-tall, crocheted daddy bear doll any bearboob trouble at all. As for taking a whizz, I imagine he does that in the woods, too. But I can't find any reference to the credited designer,...
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Posted by greg at
3:54 PM
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Comments (3)
As we learned with giant Ugly Dolls, the line between plush toy and plush furniture is somewhere around six feet. And as this giant squid shows us, the line between plush furniture and total plush domination is about 15...
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Posted by greg at
12:15 PM
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Comments (0)
March 21, 2007
Beck loves the artists to do his album covers. He collaborated with a friend, Jeremy Blake, on a previous album, and on his latest release, The Information, he and twenty graphic/street/sticker artists from around the world put together various...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
Brooklyn artist [redundant, I know] Kent Rogowski flayed some helpless teddy bears, turned them inside out, and then restuffed them, sending his creations back out into the world as hideous, mutilated mutants. But not before photographing them and binding...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (2)
I've been meaning to write about Magna-Tiles sooner, but frankly, we've been too busy playing with Magna-Tiles. She's playing with them right now. The kid had a playdate a few weeks back, and the other kid had a 32-piece...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 AM
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Comments (7)
March 16, 2007
The whole point of Gloomy Bear is that he grows up to maul and eat humans. The fact that he's cute as a baby is just a way of getting your kid to let his guard down, then one...
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Posted by greg at
7:14 PM
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Comments (4)
March 15, 2007
So literally, as I'm reading about how a congressman from Pittsburgh cited the artistic value of mashups, DJ Drama's mixtapes, and Girl Talk's sampling, it turns out the kid has wound up both her Muji music boxes at once,...
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Posted by greg at
11:45 AM
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Comments (1)
It was great in the Sixties, man, all flowers and rainbows. Running naked in the grass, little babies cooing and playing with their feet. And then The Man came along in 1973 and started laying a lot of white...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (1)
March 14, 2007
The kid's been freaking us out lately with her vise-like memory. On the way to Bubble with me Sunday morning, she asked if the lady with the white balloons was going to be there, because she wanted another white...
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Posted by greg at
8:30 AM
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Comments (1)
March 13, 2007
For his thesis project at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Richard The created Playful Parasites, a set of Bluetooth-enabled sensors that transform traditional playground equipment--slides, swings, climbing toys, bouncy ride-ons--into an data-transmitting interface:The system is designed to...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
10:46 PM
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Comments (2)
It's taking me a while to get my photos of my phone, but as soon as I do, I'll post them here. These freaky cute, little wooden elephants were part of the display in NonChalant Mom's booth at Bubble...
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Posted by greg at
8:57 PM
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Comments (1)
Between Play Mountain, Landscape Products, and Chigo, Shinichiro Nakahara has created something of a refined, humanistic modernist design archipelago of ventures across Tokyo. The company has done exhibits of mid-century modern designers; their stores mix original and exclusive furniture...
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Posted by greg at
5:57 PM
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Comments (0)
March 12, 2007
Instead of dumping their busted, old entertainment center, a fine Craftserwoman and her hubby [...] transformed it into a play kitchen for about $40, not counting the cottage cheese:...We measured just below the rim of the bowl, cut a...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 PM
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Comments (3)
Knockoffs of the Like-A-Bike are nothing new. Remember, Kokua, the German manufacturer who invented it, got the idea of a pedal-free cruiser from the Draisienne, a nearly-200-year-old ancestor of the modern bicycle. And at a made-in-Germany premium price of...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
12:04 PM
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Comments (22)
March 11, 2007
The kid and I spotted the Crayon Car by Alex Toys in the MoMA shop the other day. We were killing 20 minutes until the museum itself opened. It looked cute, she was stoked about it, and at four...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 AM
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Comments (1)
March 9, 2007
MoMA and the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires have a joint promotion going on right now that features contemporary designs and products from BA. We saw a bucket of these Plush Robots by Sopa de Principe...
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Posted by greg at
4:56 PM
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Comments (0)
March 2, 2007
I don't need anything! All I need is this modded Scion. And this art blimp parade. This Scion, and this art blimip parade. And this Bugaboo. This Scion, this art blimp parade, this Bugaboo, And a week at the...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:27 AM
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Comments (1)
March 1, 2007
Forget the design implications for a moment; one of the things that blows me away about the designer toy phenomenon is the blanks business model, where instead of just putting out a character doll, you put out a blank,...
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Posted by greg at
7:02 PM
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Comments (1)
February 28, 2007
Come To Daddy, indeed. The DT jury may be out on the Disney plush toy sofas, but this sweet, little remixing of Mickey as a trance-happy space alien from the planet Murakami is AWESOME. Not clear what the impetus...
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Posted by greg at
6:40 PM
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Comments (1)
February 27, 2007
Here are a few finds that have piled up in my to-link folder: First, two from The Nursery at Apartment Therapy, a blog that's very advanced for its age: You can get Muji's awesome Suburbia In A Bag in the...
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Posted by greg at
9:49 PM
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Comments (0)
Before he started making organically shaped, abstract dolls for Creative Playthings in the late 50's, Antonio Vitali was making hardwood dollhouses for abstract dolls, which were sold in the Swiss National Crafts Store. Too bad the dolls and the...
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Posted by greg at
1:40 PM
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Comments (0)
February 26, 2007
When it rains, it pours. And pours frogs to boot. One of the kid's first toys was a set of Hindu deity finger puppets, which we threw into the diaper bag to keep her quiet at church. [Nothing like...
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Posted by greg at
2:53 PM
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Comments (0)
February 25, 2007
Great minds thought alike back then, I guess. Both Naef and Creative Playthings made square puzzles cut into strips. Turn them over, and there's a different animal on each of the four faces of--you know, why is it so...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 PM
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Comments (2)
Who cares if it's only February, if the awesome crochet artisti at Il Golfini della Nonna had just called these Axis Of Evil Finger Puppets, I would have annointed them the Daddy Types Toy Of The Year. Or maybe...
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Posted by greg at
1:56 PM
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Comments (3)
February 23, 2007
Me, I don't think about them too much. I'm not a huge fan of Karim Rashid, mostly because of the hype-y celebrity design thing. ["Karimanifesto"? I rest my case.] We have and love us some O-Chairs, don't get me...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 PM
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Comments (0)
I know there are some pull toys out there, but I'm still surprised that Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara's malevolent-looking little kids or sleepy-eyed puppies haven't made it onto actual kid-sized t-shirts or Onesies yet. Still, when I was trying...
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Posted by greg at
2:52 PM
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Comments (4)
February 22, 2007
So the week after Wallpaper*-founder Tyler Brule's new magazine, Monocle runs a 17-page cover story about the Japan Self-Defense Force, the International Herald Tribune has a story about the JSDF's deployment of Prince Pickle, their anime character mascot, to...
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Posted by greg at
10:01 AM
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Comments (0)
More Toys From The Glorious Future. This time, it's Felt Rocks:In their raw form, they are lumps of felt formed as a by-product in the industrial process of making felt polishing wheels for optical lenses...In the felting process, with...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 AM
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Comments (6)
February 21, 2007
As far as the iPod player and light show goes, I think this iPulse Bear from Sharper Image is a bit overkill. Obviously not as ridiculous as the toilet paper dispenser/iPod speaker combmo, but it's in the same quartile....
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Posted by greg at
10:45 PM
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Comments (2)
February 19, 2007
I've seen these in convention booths and even at store, but I just assumed they were display/fixtures, kind of like the 8' Stokke Tripp Trapp we saw in Iceland. But no, you can buy six-foot tall Ugly Dolls of...
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Posted by greg at
9:55 AM
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Comments (3)
This just in from the Show You Can't See and Stuff You Can't Buy Department: In a long interview with Crown Dozen in 2005 about the explosion of the Ugly Dolls phenomenon [which is only continuing, of course. There were...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 AM
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Comments (3)
You know, a wooden train company with a monorail is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No-one knows why they made it and danged if he knows where to get it! Actually, they made it in...
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Posted by greg at
8:00 AM
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Comments (1)
February 16, 2007
This sweet Creative Playthings doll house has a bit of play wear on the edges--and, uh, it's missing the bottom floor--but the only thing bad I can say about all the furniture is that the doll family appears to...
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Posted by greg at
9:35 AM
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Comments (2)
February 14, 2007
The kid doesn't know what a Lego is, but, thanks to Kellogg's™ Lego® Fruit Flavored Snacks, she can learn a valuable lesson: Legos are for putting in your mouth! Also, they're an important source of vitamin C, almost as...
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Posted by greg at
12:12 PM
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Comments (9)
First off, that Play+Soft series of Reggio Emilia-inspired playroom furniture posted here a couple of weeks ago? Tip of the iceberg. Their catalogue is full of incredible, fun-looking, and well-thought-out designs. [It's for sale here for $22.] Play+Soft was...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 AM
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Comments (3)
February 13, 2007
This might just be cool enough to make up for the high chair. Swedish architect Stephan Gip is credited with the 1962 design for the all-wood, no-tray, trapezoidal stacking high chair that we wipe off a little every day...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 AM
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Comments (0)
February 12, 2007
MoMA's Design Store recently launched a special, limited-time collection of objects from up-and-coming designers in Argentina. The collection, dubbed Destination: Buenos Aires, includes at least one of the sweet-looking wooden toy designs by Gonzalo Arbutti's company, Laboratori. With inspirations...
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Posted by greg at
12:48 AM
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Comments (0)
February 10, 2007
There used to be a macrobiotic clown who'd panhandle on the 1/9 train. He was tall, with a cursory bit of make-up and a weathered clown suit on; normal shoes, though. And he had a weird, kind of weary, high-pitched,...
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Posted by greg at
11:23 PM
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Comments (2)
February 9, 2007
Reading through the timeline of sculptor Isamu Noguchi's projects is like a smack on the back of the head; there are so many playgrounds that never made it out of the maquette stage. They range back over fifty years...
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Posted by greg at
5:54 PM
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Comments (1)
February 8, 2007
Apartment Therapy, the site for people with neurotic apartments whose apartments just have a few issues just like what they like, you gotta problem with that? The door's right over there, the chartreuse one--I know, but we thought it might...
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Posted by greg at
8:04 AM
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Comments (1)
February 7, 2007
So you've just stuffed your money into one of the kid's plush toys for safekeeping. If you'd now kindly stuff all the animals into one of these Boon Animal Bags, the burglar won't have to slice open all the...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 AM
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Comments (0)
Esther Schuivens was one of the actual designers tapped by Habitat for their first VIP For Kids collection last winter. Her company Esthex made a crafty little Eskimo [1] doll, since replaced by Harry Potter's couch or something. This...
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Posted by greg at
7:57 AM
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Comments (1)
February 6, 2007
So I see these flower-eyed bunnies staring up off the sidebar of design*sponge, and I'm like, "Damn, what? Do I know you? Have I seen you bunnies before? You're from freakin' Portugal!" And it's kind of scaring me, and...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 AM
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Comments (2)
The kid's got a rocking chicken from Playsam, so if anyone's ever gonna mouth off about a rocking springbuck, it won't be me. Joom is a new South African design firm whose first product was a life-sized, cow-shaped bookcase....
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Posted by greg at
8:23 AM
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Comments (0)
I've been to Utrecht. Struck me as kind of a sleepy, lace-curtains-in-the-window kind of town. But it does have an edgy design streak in it somewhere, I guess. Studio Ditte is a design agency in Utrecht that created a...
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Posted by greg at
6:58 AM
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Comments (0)
February 5, 2007
It's been literally several minutes since we've seen some hipsterish plush toys around here, sorry for dropping the ball. Troglodytes are created by artist Jill Penney out of fleece; they have hand painted horns and sculpey eyes. Perfect for the...
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Posted by greg at
1:36 PM
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Comments (1)
February 4, 2007
The first car I ever bought was a Citroen 2CV. It's sitting with a restorer in Holland right now [I think... note to self: check on car], waiting for the opportune moment to ship it over to the US....
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Posted by greg at
2:45 PM
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Comments (4)
Landscape Products is a sweet modern design shop in Tokyo; it's affiliated with one of the most incredible-looking kid stores there, too, a place near Ebisu & Hiro-o called Chigo. [The Tokyo ex-pat grandparents got the kid a gorgeous...
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Posted by greg at
8:02 AM
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Comments (1)
February 2, 2007
The kid and the wife built MoMA this morning out of blocks. As she gave us the tour, she pointed out that it has a tower, an atrium, some sculptures, and a garden--with trees and a bridge. And some...
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Posted by greg at
6:06 PM
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Comments (0)
Well this is five kinds of cool right here. Designer Richard Hutten gave Dutch TV station KRO a tour of his house in Rotterdam, where he lives with his two sons. The creator of such kid-friendly classics as the...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (0)
January 31, 2007
Looks like we need a WTF??? category around here. Gellibaff is a packet of crystals that turns your kid's bathwater into brightly colored, gelatinous goo. To get rid of it, you just dump in the second packet of crystals,...
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Posted by greg at
10:45 PM
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Comments (5)
From the Park Slope Parents listserv, The case of the missing toy strollers:When she lost his other toy stroller, we didn't charge her for it, but this one is just really all the more aggravating because of the prior history...
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Posted by greg at
3:00 PM
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Comments (0)
Wow. I've never felt too bad for not giving the kid her own 2,000 square feet to run and play in. Until now. StudioUK has launched Play+Soft [you pronounce the '+'], a 200+piece series of early childhood learning objects...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (0)
January 29, 2007
A couple of folks have sent in sightings over the last couple of weeks, but it's not online, and I never go to these kinds of stores myself...unless it's to check out ruthless, fire-at-will Targetting. After all, it was...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 PM
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Comments (27)
This Creative Playthings Peg Sandwich is about 3-in high, meaning those pegs would probably pass through a paper towel tube, no problem. [That's the rule of thumb that stuck with me about choking hazards during the child safety prenatal...
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Posted by greg at
8:15 AM
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Comments (0)
Good morning, sweet, vintage, wooden, toy soldiers from Creative Playthings circa 1969. CREATIVE PLAYTHINGS THE KINGS GUARD WOOD SOLDIERS 1969, ends Feb. 4 [ebay]...
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Posted by greg at
8:06 AM
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Comments (0)
January 28, 2007
Look, I just came back from the International Gift Fair at the Javits Center, so I think I know a thing or two about utterly useless crap for sale. Right now, the idea behind Cuusoo Seikatsu ["Imagination Life"] sounds pretty...
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Posted by greg at
4:15 PM
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Comments (1)
January 25, 2007
An eBay seller named mix-mod has listed a collection of colorful, vintage modern toys—four lots of work vehicles, including a fuel tanker, dump truck, cement mixer and a matched pair of [oil-barrel hauling?] tractors. In the spirit of Ladislav...
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Posted by dt-andy at
3:32 PM
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Comments (1)
January 23, 2007
Before you say it, I will: Yes, I am slightly jealous of the Miura, but no more so than any other Miura before it. But ever since the Paramount opened with his silly, useless blobject lounge chair in the...
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Posted by greg at
9:11 AM
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Comments (0)
There was a lull right after Christmas, but an eBay seller named imspes just posted a little collection of vintage Creative Playthings toys in really nice, boxed, apparently unplayed condition. There's a nice townhouse/dollhouse [in chipboard, not, alas, the...
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Posted by greg at
8:33 AM
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Comments (0)
January 22, 2007
Our little Grasshopper has been learning about the transient nature of existence and the importance of non-attachment to material things from balloons. They're fun. We love getting them. We love playing with them. If it's from the haircut place, the...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 PM
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Comments (0)
January 21, 2007
I know it was a big deal when it was leaked/announced a couple of weeks ago, but the NYT's article about a proposal for the Burling Slip Playground near the South Street Seaport kind of slipped off my radar....
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Posted by greg at
9:51 PM
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Comments (1)
January 19, 2007
You know what I said about rethinking my dewy-eyed fixation with mid-century vintage toys and design? Yeah well, forget it. If only I'd been a little faster, my kid could've been riding into the glorious future on one of these...
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Posted by greg at
3:57 PM
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Comments (1)
I haven't decided if I'm going to bid on it yet, but with a starting bid of $45, I guess there's no use worrying if it'll end up being expensive. This is the first copy of the 1957 catalogue...
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Posted by greg at
1:01 PM
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Comments (7)
January 17, 2007
Marcel Wanders, Paco Rabanne, Kate Winslet, Buzz Aldrin, Miss Piggy, Loïck Peyron... I would have loved to be in the room when Habitat finalized the list of celebrity designers who would be invited to create their new VIP For Kids...
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Posted by greg at
6:33 PM
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Comments (3)
January 15, 2007
Still not quite sure what it was about, but with a giant rubber duck looming on the cover, there's no way I wasn't reading "Moby Duck: On the Synthetic Wilderness of Childhood," Donovan Hohn's 150,000-word [+/-] article in the...
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Posted by greg at
11:59 AM
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Comments (2)
January 11, 2007
I guess I could be pissed that half the toys--and basically all the multi-piece toys--in our Muji "Outer Space in a Bag" bag broke, several within minutes of taking them out of the bag. But when you look at...
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Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (2)
January 10, 2007
Funny, I don't remember 1994 looking like the zany cruft on an Exersaucer. And I don't recall Post-Modernism retaining even half that credibility as long as it does in Steven Heller and Steven Guarnaccia's book, Designing For Children [first mentioned...
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Posted by greg at
3:06 PM
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Comments (0)
Literally, the first phrase I wanted imprinted in my kid's brain from birth was "plastic bags not a toy." I don't think this is a result of my own traumatic childhood memories, since my parents did not--to my knowledge--install Creative...
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Posted by greg at
9:37 AM
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Comments (0)
January 9, 2007
Yeah, I should really give the first part of that exchange between Nico Schweizer and Alfredo Haeberli:N.S. Your works have high production values, but at a price. Kids' Stuff, a 10-piece place setting for children, sells in the States for...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (0)
Translated variably as The Fragile Tank or The Soft Tank, Yawaraka Sensha is a Japanese Flash animated series on Livedoor, a big Japanese site run by a guy who thinks he's Mark Cuban. A bunch of cute little tanks...
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Posted by greg at
7:27 AM
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Comments (0)
January 8, 2007
Every once in a while, I worry about getting totally busted by nerds, who'll realize I'm actually cool, and all along, I've just been pretending, walking around with a fake nerd ID in my wallet. This usually happens when...
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Posted by greg at
5:41 PM
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Comments (1)
The pattern on these sweet Ant Blocks reminds me of the first collection of vinyl wall decals by Domestic, which were launched in late 2005 at Colette. Colette of Paris. Well, the fact that they're only $27 should be...
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Posted by greg at
8:28 AM
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Comments (0)
January 7, 2007
Critics of the extravagant toys always say a kid can have as much fun with a cardboard box. Now you can split the difference with this, the MobileHome, by the new Danish Dutch [1] firm Kidsonroof. This incredible-looking toy...
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Posted by greg at
10:53 PM
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Comments (3)
January 6, 2007
Andy emailed this a few days ago, and it is absolutely the most insanely awesome toy/furniture I have seen all year. Momoll is the creation of Nico Schweizer, a dad who was previously design director for I.D. [not i.D.]...
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Posted by greg at
1:39 PM
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Comments (2)
January 5, 2007
Check out the awesome brain trust running this Toys R Us/Babies R Us promotion, which offered a $25,000 savings bond to the first American baby born in 2007. Contest administrators chose new New Yorker Yuki Lin in a random...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 PM
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Comments (2)
January 4, 2007
While researching Richard McGuire's The Solar Toy, I stumbled across The Solar Do-Nothing Machine by Ray and Charles Eames. They created it in the late 1950's for Alcoa, who was just launching a Forecast Collection, a series of artist-...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 AM
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Comments (0)
January 2, 2007
Over 40 artists, designers and artisans from around the world have donated their works to an auction to benefit the James Kim Memorial Fund. Bidding begins tomorrow [Jan. 3rd] on eBay, and will continue through Jan. 7th. 100% of...
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Posted by greg at
10:05 PM
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Comments (4)
Whoa, it's only Jan. 2, and already, I've uncovered the coverup of the year. Lane Smith, the guy who illustrated the classic with John Scieszka, The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales. The kid's had The Stinky Cheese...
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Posted by greg at
4:20 PM
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Comments (0)
The kid's had hot air balloons on the brain lately. Penguins are birds, but they don't fly? "Well they can fly in a hot air balloon." Tomorrow we're going to Hong Kong. "On a hot air balloon." &c., &c....
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Posted by greg at
1:38 PM
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Comments (2)
January 1, 2007
No, MGA Entertainment, having it say "F--- You" does NOT make the toddler versions [!??] of your oversexualized, trampslutBratz dolls suddenly edgy and/or cool. They're still lame as hell, and they're never coming near my daughter. That said, there's...
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Posted by greg at
9:01 PM
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Comments (1)
December 31, 2006
Too bad for Peggy Orenstein that her looong lament about third-wave feminism's powerlessness and lack of viable response in the face of the Princess Hegemony came out the same day American girls were opening their $3 billion worth of pink...
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Posted by greg at
1:49 PM
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Comments (2)
December 29, 2006
The kid only had one request of Santa this Christmas, but it was highly specific. And challenging: "A digger, and rocks, and sand." The digger would be easy enough, I thought. Even though I got priced out of that...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (3)
How does awesome work from less than ten years ago disappear from the parenting culture? Granted, ten years is like five toddler generations ago, and I'll be the first to admit my baby trend radar was completely non-existent until just...
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Posted by greg at
8:24 AM
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Comments (4)
There may be some justice left in the world. First, DWR knocked off a widely published design classic from the 1950's long attributed to Phillip Johnson, by trying to pass it off as an anonymous piece of modern folk...
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Posted by greg at
5:55 AM
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Comments (0)
December 20, 2006
They make TV with the comedians they have, not the comedians we want. Of the few I've seen all the way through, Mad TV's gags seem about 10% funny [i.e., they go on 10x too long]. Tickle Me Emo...
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Posted by greg at
2:56 PM
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Comments (2)
December 18, 2006
At the Bubble New York trade show last summer, the amazing crocheted creations of Golfini della Nonna filled a happy booth, but by the time we got around to that side, the kid was ready for a nap, and...
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Posted by greg at
9:30 PM
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Comments (2)
The Children's Factory is a grandparent-run company in Missouri that's been making brightly colored vinyl-covered foam furniture for the kids institutional market [i.e. daycare centers, schools, libraries] since 1982, back when gas was like 75 cents/gallon. Putting one of...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 AM
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Comments (1)
December 17, 2006
This was one of the coolest toys we had growing up, and I can't find out a single thing about it. It was called a Playall [Play All? Play-All? PlayAll?], which, in this CD and MP3 era, turns out...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (6)
December 14, 2006
Things really are different over there. For example, we saw these claw plush toy machines in the covered shopping arcade area of Kyoto. The prize door is so freakin' big, you could fit a whole Chuck E. Cheeseful of...
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Posted by greg at
3:41 PM
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Comments (0)
These wooden toys by Norwegian designer Olav Øen have a happy Scandinavian vibe: a little Bojesen in that bear, a little PlaySam in that car, a little IKEA in those stacky things, a little superbright color to compensate for...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 AM
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Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
While our parents were ducking and covering in the US, singing the praises of Howdy freakin' Doody to ward off the evils of communism, in East Germany at least, those same commie bastards were cranking out some mighty fine-looking...
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Posted by greg at
10:37 AM
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Comments (1)
December 11, 2006
This vintage Creative Playthings toy a tummy skateboard for babies, makes tummy time mobile. Not clear what the CPSC has to say about this thing in our newly enlightened era, but this particular Crawligator is certainly in exquisite condition....
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Posted by greg at
3:11 PM
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Comments (3)
December 10, 2006
Swiss eBayer a.r. has just listed this very early and beautiful set of hand-carved wooden figures, dollhouse and furniture by Antonio Vitali. According to a.r., these were sold at the Swiss National Crafts Store (!) in the 1940s and...
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Posted by dt-andy at
1:09 PM
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Comments (0)
December 9, 2006
Though we obviously bought them for us--because they're the kind of slick, beautiful toy you don't mind lying around the house--the kid loves her PlaySam Streamliner cars. She races them around against each other. Once she was old enough, we...
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Posted by greg at
6:49 PM
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Comments (2)
December 8, 2006
Surreal, inventive, kind of handmade, unacquainted with the details of corporate intellectual property licensing or liability insurance, these playgrounds represent the best aspects of the Russian children's spirit. And even though the scale model of the Kremlin has more...
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Posted by greg at
6:18 PM
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Comments (0)
December 7, 2006
Yeah, let me think about that Bornelund stuff again. When you drop a marble down the gradated color disc-leaves on this eye-popping wooden tree by Swiss toymaker Mario Bulloni [whose company just went out of business, as far as I...
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Posted by greg at
6:56 AM
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Comments (2)
If you can find your way to a Bornelund toy store in Japan, you'd better be prepared for some of the highest concentration of top-in-class toys from all over the world. [Or at least from Japan and Europe. In....
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Posted by greg at
6:35 AM
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Comments (2)
December 6, 2006
Two weeks ago this sweet, little stroller designed by Kay Bojesen sold on eBay for $355 plus shipping. Forty-two years ago, you could get one in mint condition directly from Creative Playthings for $3.25. A 1964-65 catalog lists 11...
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Posted by dt-andy at
12:29 PM
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Comments (1)
December 5, 2006
BorneLund, the way-serious-about-fun toy store in Japan has been discussed here before, primarily as a rally point of the world's high-end wooden toy designs. But they've also commissioned some incredible toys of their own, like that 8-layer apple puzzle...
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Posted by greg at
4:51 AM
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Comments (0)
It's exactly the kind of serendipitous experience you hope for on a trip: you stumble across an utterly unique, mindblowing store that's obviously the product of passionate, discerning and very entertaining people. The kid and I were on our...
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Posted by greg at
1:16 AM
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Comments (3)
December 4, 2006
Nancy Carlsson-Paige and her fellow early childhood development professor Diane Levin say parents should avoid electronic toys, especially for very young children, because they deny kids important lessons in human communication. Levin has even co-founded an elaborately acronymed organization, Teachers...
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Posted by greg at
6:31 PM
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Comments (0)
November 30, 2006
There haven't been a lot of breakout modernist dollhouses since the Miesian Villa Sibi came out a couple of years ago from awesome wood toy maker Sirch. [Damn, that thing photographed well!] But now, just in time for the holidays,...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (1)
November 29, 2006
Known to design-y parents as the father of that teak monkey, and to the rest of the world as a modernist master Danish silversmith, Kay Bojesen also made a gorgeous, pared down rocking horse in 1951. Rosendahl reissued it...
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Posted by greg at
1:35 PM
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Comments (3)
The answer: far less than 2.5 years. The question: how long before your soul is crushed and your kid's soul is stolen by the whole pink-blue steamroller? Don't get me wrong, I still think it's worth resisting, and truth...
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Posted by greg at
1:35 AM
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Comments (8)
November 28, 2006
This Outer-Space-in-a-Bag toy set is small (i.e., palm-sized), but awesome. As soon as I spotted these on Muji's Christmas site, I knew they were going straight into the kid's stocking. [They're made of sustainably harvested hardwoods.] And just now,...
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Posted by greg at
12:01 PM
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Comments (1)
November 25, 2006
I know it's barely scratched the surface, so the last post of this ad hoc, Molded Plywood Week at DT will be a link-filled roundup of all the molded ply goods and gear that have already been on the...
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (1)
November 24, 2006
The things you run across in the middle of the night. The ever-cool font and design shop House Industries has partnered with the Alexander Girard estate to create an incredible set of alphabet blocks. The 28-block set features the...
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Posted by greg at
10:25 PM
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Comments (1)
Whoa. If you're a fan of the Creative Playthings, but you don't dig your kid playing with pre-chewed toys, I suggest you introduce yourself to Clem 60637 in Chicago. He's an eBay seller who just put up five vintage CP...
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Posted by greg at
11:30 AM
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Comments (0)
Sometime in late 1966, Creative Playthings must've gotten itself a marketing guy, or maybe a lawyer guy, because all the toys that're called things like Thin Arch in the '66 catalogue are called things like Arc-Curves TM in the...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (0)
November 23, 2006
I'm happy to outsource today's installment of Molded Plywood Week to the NY Times, since their slideshow of kid's gifts conveniently includes designs on my list as well. Eric Pfeiffer's been on a molded ply streak this year, and...
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Posted by greg at
9:15 AM
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Comments (0)
November 22, 2006
By the next year, 1967, Creative Playthings had changed the copy on their molded plywood crib and stroller to be more gender neutral. But a cradle this awesomely minimalist would rock [umm] for either a boy or a girl,...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (0)
November 21, 2006
The Lord works in mysterious ways, it's true. But religious toy manufacturers seeking a publicity angle at Christmastime? Not so mysterious. The Marine Reserve's originally turned down the Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company's offer to render 4,000 free talking Jesus...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (1)
November 20, 2006
The Hobby Horse is in a museum and gets knocked off nationwide, but this beautiful Creative Playthings plywood carriage disappears into oblivion, with barely two Google mentions to rub together? How is that? Wolfgang Sirch's bentwood doll stroller, I...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
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Comments (5)
November 19, 2006
I'll get to this awesome Muji molded plywood ride-on car in a minute, which has to be the kick-off of Molded Ply Week at Daddy Types. Beyond Muji and some recent emails, I just got my hands on some...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 PM
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Comments (2)
November 18, 2006
Ah, the holidays. It's been a while since we've agonized over the essentially unobtainable awesomeness of Muji products and toys, but with the release of their 2006 Christmas Catalogue, we can start anew. The toy selection includes some simple...
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Posted by greg at
9:19 AM
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Comments (3)
November 15, 2006
Last month the Belgian foam furniture maker [?] Feek threw some of its coming-soon Animools into the kids' holding room at Interieur06, a big design trade show. They're abstract animal shapes made out of laminated foam that's suitable and...
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Posted by greg at
9:21 AM
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Comments (0)
November 14, 2006
This Creative Playthings Townhouse is in amazing, apparently unplayed-with condition, and it comes complete with seven molded plastic rooms of furniture. [Huh? Great way to get around the "124-piece set of choking hazards," but how creative can your play...
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Posted by greg at
9:04 AM
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Comments (0)
November 13, 2006
Last winter, the kid got a pink cashmere acorn cap that my mom knitted for her. It's really plain, awesome, in fact, but the kid didn't quite take to it until very recently. The last few months, she's been...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 PM
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Comments (1)
November 7, 2006
I drew a line around the kid's preschool, blogcontent-wise, but I don't see any reason to keep their play dough recipe a secret. It was our turn to make the dough for class this week, and my wife cranked this...
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Posted by greg at
3:05 PM
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Comments (2)
Unlike with some of their more unusual toys or exceptional designs, you can find pretty sweet modern equivalents to the vintage, tabletop-scale, wood blocks from Creative Playthings. Still, if you're a purist, there are two fine-looking sets of these...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 AM
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Comments (0)
Ah, back in the good old days [until Spring], Amazon used to run these sweet promotions on diapers, where a $50-70 order would score you a $20-30 gift certificate a few weeks down the road. Well, the diaper promos seem...
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Posted by greg at
12:03 AM
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Comments (0)
November 6, 2006
Just when I think I'd gotten a handle on the whole Creative Playthings vintage toy thing, I get an email about this: The Creative Playthings Inquarium, The In-Crib Aquarium. Here's what the box says:The newest crib toy--a true departure...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 AM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2006
This GPS teddy bear waves its paws to tell you the direction to your destination. And when you miss a turn, it mocks you. And when it mocks someone with a handgun, he shoots it in the forehead. [Wait,...
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Posted by greg at
12:43 PM
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Comments (0)
First, the puppet bad news: When I linked to that Creative Playthings Puppet Theater yesterday, I thought, wouldn't it be nice if there were some puppets, too? Unfortunately, the only famous, creepy, CP vinyl puppets at the moment were...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (1)
October 24, 2006
How long does it take to complete a character licensing deal, you wonder? Let's see, Buffy The Vampire Slayer went off the air in 2003, and 2006 is almost over... Entertainment Earth is promising to bring out a limited...
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Posted by greg at
9:16 PM
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Comments (1)
Was it something in the air? Which came first? Because this psychedelic little Creative Playthings puppet theater, with walls full of little puppet openings, is dated 1968, the same year that Laugh-in, with its joke wall full of little...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (1)
October 23, 2006
As the creator of the greatest crass animation since Beavis & Butthead, John Kricfalusi knows a thing or two about precipitating the decline of civilization. Since by his count, it happened sometime in the late Sixties or early Seventies,...
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Posted by greg at
5:53 PM
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Comments (2)
October 21, 2006
So for three+ years, GamerDad.com has been a leading independent, pioneering resource to help parents get involved with their kids' video gameplaying. Started by a tech journalist and at-home dad and edited by parents and gaming enthusiasts, it's a...
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Posted by greg at
11:46 PM
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Comments (1)
October 19, 2006
It's apparently Fall Sale Madness on Daddy Types today. The MoMA Design Store usually offers museum members a 10% discount on all their purchases. But when the holidays draw near [even a little near], they have Member Shopping Days, both...
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Posted by greg at
4:21 PM
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Comments (0)
October 18, 2006
No one in the Boardbook Industrial Complex needs less publicity than Eric Carle [1]. Even an army of Miffy, Elmo, Blues Clues, Disney Princess, Thomas, Spongebob, plain old Bob, Dora, and The Wiggles is powerless to keep Carle's distinctive...
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Posted by greg at
2:24 PM
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Comments (0)
October 15, 2006
Neal "Alternadad" Pollack's got a funny story in this week's NY Times Magazine. Oh, and his book is finally coming out in January:In the few days since we’d purchased Hungry Hungry Hippos for Elijah, he’d made up his own...
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Posted by greg at
3:36 PM
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Comments (1)
October 13, 2006
Playsam and the Fitzsu Society in Pasadena have teamed up for the Fitzsu Grand Prix, a design auction Oct. 19th to benefit the World Childhood Foundation [no doubt the World Kitten & Puppy Foundations were on the beneficiary shortlist....
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Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
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Comments (0)
October 12, 2006
Please please please will someone put me out of my misery and start producing these things? Everything I just wrote about Ladislav Sutnar's book goes 10x for his toys, most of which were made in the 1920's and early 1930's...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 PM
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Comments (0)
October 11, 2006
Ladislav Sutnar was a Czech product/graphic/information designer who fled to the US at the outset of World War II. He spent the first years in the US trying to find a manufacturer for some of the toys he had...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (2)
October 8, 2006
Let's face it: the American Academy of Pediatrics frowns on giving any candy to infants. Why, I even got grief for letting my 3-week-old daughter barely touch a Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie with her protruding tongue. [I swear,...
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Posted by greg at
2:49 PM
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Comments (2)
October 5, 2006
Last week I received a press release about a new study on parental skanktoy fatigue:...an overwhelming majority of mothers believe that many dolls available for young girls today are too provocative. The research says these mothers would like to see...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (1)
October 1, 2006
LOT 191: AUGMENT EMBRYO INCUBATOR MODULE, [est. $300-350] If you didn't already know Paramount was throwing a massive, EVERYTHING MUST GO! auction of Star Trek props, costumes and memorabilia at Christie's this week [Oct. 5, 6 &7], you probably...
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Posted by greg at
10:03 AM
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Comments (2)
Waldorf dolls--if you don't know, and I didn't--are handmade from natural materials [cotton knit over wool]. The name comes from their association with the Waldorf "whole child" educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. [Waldorf also gave name to the Eurythmics...
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Posted by greg at
9:14 AM
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Comments (1)
September 26, 2006
Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, provides a sweet lid to the weak through the valley of hairlessness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the savior of bald children. And I...
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Posted by greg at
9:50 PM
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Comments (4)
Remember, kids, "RELEASE OF ANY TEDDY BEARS into fish hatchery water IS NOT PERMITTED." [emphasis in the original] Teddy Bear Massacres Fish [boingboing]...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (0)
I naively went to ABC Kids Expo execting to stumble across row after row of baby gear innovations. But when I got there, all anyone could talk about was The Zaky. These plush toys that attach to your kid's...
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Posted by greg at
1:57 PM
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Comments (2)
September 24, 2006
Indulge me a bit of MBA geekdom, but ever since that high chair turned up, I was kind of intrigued why Brio, which has been known for over 100 years primarily as a wooden toy company--and especially as a...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (1)
September 22, 2006
The latest issue of Make Magazine features some great warning labels that you probably won't be seeing on any animatronic or injection-molded plastic toys anytime soon. Danger: Early Brand Exposure The maker of this toy is trying to create a...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (0)
September 21, 2006
Though we were tantalizingly close last summer, we never did make it over to Sanrio Puroland, the giant indoor Hello Kitty theme park which sits [past the Babies R Us, past the Costco...] on the western outskirts of Tokyo. It...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 PM
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Comments (4)
Your name is Kal-El. You have great powers, only some of which you have as yet discovered. You need some educational aids. All the math, memory, logic and spelling games of your home planet Krypton, all 30 of them,...
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Posted by greg at
12:45 AM
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Comments (1)
September 19, 2006
Ten years, and this is all they can come up with? A doll that still only does one thing: waves his arm and falls on the ground? Except for the addition of an off switch, I can't see how this...
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Posted by greg at
12:51 PM
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Comments (4)
Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara is well known for his paintings of slightly malevolent-looking children. Possibly evil, usually cute, definitely expensive. One of his other recurring themes, though, is puppies. Non-evil puppies. It's not a stretch at all, then, to...
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Posted by greg at
11:06 AM
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Comments (1)
September 17, 2006
The first TMX Elmo is being autographed and sold on eBay. It is signed accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by muppeteer Kevin Clash and Mattel CEO Neil Friedman, and it is being auctioned off in co-operation with "The...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 PM
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Comments (7)
After How Proust Can Change Your Life, philosopher Alain de Botton's books got a little too precious for me [out of the frying pan, into the fire, I suppose]. But I'll still check in to see what he's up to....
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Posted by greg at
1:35 PM
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Comments (0)
September 15, 2006
Are you ready for your child to form a deep, emotional attachment to a plush doll that's currently known only to the President of Mattel Brands and its subsidiary, Fisher-Price? X-cellent. Because that's just what is being planned by said...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 AM
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Comments (6)
September 14, 2006
As I've come clean before, sometimes I like to post great kid-related stuff for sale on eBay--and sometimes, I like to post some great kid-related stuff after I've scooped it up for myself. For a couple of days now,...
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Posted by greg at
8:21 PM
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Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
Bacon is good, but bacon you didn't have to cook is even better. The fine folks of Evenflo hosted a breakfast at ABC Kids to introduce the media to just such a pile of bacon--and to get a little...
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Posted by greg at
2:07 PM
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Comments (5)
Big news for the 2006 Holiday licensing season:In the new Holly Hobbie & Friends series, Holly herself is the great-granddaughter of the "original" Holly Hobbie and feels a deep sense of connection to her personality, creativity and warmth. Holly...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (4)
September 12, 2006
While he's mostly known for his cantilevered Bauhaus chair, Dutch designer Mart Stam sometimes scores another mention--at least in design auction catalogues. At least one product resulting from a "toy design seminar" he held in Dresden--the Schaukelwagen by Hans...
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Posted by greg at
11:51 PM
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Comments (1)
I'm starting to upload photos to flickr from the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas, including this picture of what does not, unfortunately, stay in Las Vegas: a giant wall of Spanish-laced Barney merchandise for the Hispanic market. Daddytypes-tagged...
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Posted by greg at
5:56 PM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2006
Fredun Shapur's [1] sweet graphics are reason enough to get these vintage Creative Playthings Cloth Cubes. The fact that they're in good, playable condition and come with the original box, too, is just gravy. Of course, before you let...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (0)
September 1, 2006
A distraught mom wrote in to the Washington Post because their 3.5-yo son is obsessed with Disney Princesses: wants to play dress up rather than go outside, even insists on a Disney Princess birthday party. "So far, my husband and...
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Posted by greg at
2:30 PM
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Comments (3)
August 31, 2006
Wow, now I know who's been bidding against me for the vintage Creative Playthings stuff on eBay. Pottery Barn Kids has launched Learning Toys, a collection of really simple, classic-looking wooden toys designed and color-coded for age-appropriate play. There's a...
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Posted by greg at
3:30 PM
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Comments (3)
In case you can't tell, I'm really digging on parents who are making stuff for their kids. There's been a spate of flashcards recently, but it goes way back, like to that awesome Hindu gods primer, too, by the...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (2)
Huh, for some reason, the "Unofficial Snakes On A Fisher-Price Plane Little People Action Airport & Fun-Jet Set," which comes almost complete with vintage little people for all the movie characters, plus a few rubber snakes, didn't reach its...
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Posted by greg at
10:00 AM
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Comments (4)
August 24, 2006
Seriously, can you imagine the psychological imprint this puppet would leave on a kid if you went about your childcaring, diaper-changing, feeding/burping day with it on? And then reading The Grumpy Ladybug to him? Yikes. Folkmanis Ladybug hand puppet,...
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Posted by greg at
1:08 PM
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Comments (4)
August 23, 2006
This Playtown fire station from Creative Playthings is so clean, in fact, there's nothing but a bed and one firedude. If you're pretty sure that's the way it came, then you may score yourself a bargain when this auction...
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Posted by greg at
3:18 PM
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Comments (0)
August 22, 2006
Yeah, what if it wasn't to defeat the Ruskies and their Godless, evil science? What if the whole post-war Creative Playthings educational toy thing was actually part of a diabolical plan to fatten up babies' brains--in order to feed...
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Posted by greg at
7:50 AM
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Comments (1)
August 21, 2006
Gregg Chinn made these sweet modernist alphabet cards for his daughter, who's three. Now that he's proved their effectiveness at instilling alphabetical and modernistical knowledge ["B is for Bauhaus," "J is for Jet Age," "M is for (duh) Modern,"...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (3)
My kid thinks she's four, but if she really were four, I guess I'd be making her one of these here DIY circuit boards, so she could learn what electricity is without putting a battery on her tongue. And no...
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Posted by greg at
3:48 PM
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Comments (3)
When we went to visit the grandparents a few weeks back, the city playground in Ivins, Utah had this awesome kid-sized backhoe digger, with dual hand controls which raise, lower and dump the bucket just like [in my best non-union...
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Posted by greg at
11:04 AM
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Comments (9)
I wonked out a bit this weekend, surfing around through some academic work on toys and children's books, starting with Bard professor Amy F. Ogata's paper from Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 39 [2005] titled, appropriately/confusingly enough, "Creative Playthings." A reader first...
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Posted by greg at
10:42 AM
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Comments (0)
August 17, 2006
I remember reading somewhere that Bjork said Iceland's so small, you always stay on speaking terms with your ex'es, because you keep running into each other all the time. [That, or you leave the country, I guess?] Maybe it's...
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Posted by greg at
3:27 PM
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Comments (0)
For their slick, modernist updates on some of their classic toys, Swedish toymaker Brio seems to have dipped its paintbrush into rival Swedish toymaker PlaySam's pot. Check out these sweet new building blocks and this shape sorting box, for example:...
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Posted by greg at
3:12 PM
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Comments (0)
August 15, 2006
Live by the Us Weekly, Die by the Us Weekly: For all the people patterning their family life after Chris Robinson and Kate Hudson: sorry, but you'll need to separate now and fob the kid off on a series...
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Posted by greg at
2:48 PM
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Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
My mom just sent the kid a brick of homemade Playdoh [or should I say non-trademarked Playdoh-like clay] and a recipe for more. Here it is:Playdough 2 cups, water [with a few drops of food coloring] 2 cups, flour 1...
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Posted by greg at
5:30 PM
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Comments (1)
Marilyn Neuhart and her husband John worked with the Eames Office, Alexander Girard, and Herman Miller during the Golden Age of mid-century modernist design. When Girard opened his Textiles & Objects shop [T&O, as they apparently called it] to...
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Posted by greg at
4:27 PM
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Comments (1)
August 13, 2006
Extremely prescient designer Alexander Girard once said, "Toys represent a microcosm of man’s world and dreams; they exhibit fantasy, imagination, humour and love. They are an invaluable record and expression of man’s ingenious unsophisticated imagination. [They also decorate my...
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Posted by greg at
6:24 AM
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Comments (1)
August 12, 2006
As soon as we walked into the Bubble New York show this week, the kid made a beeline for the Boys & Toys booth, which was an unconventional standout, even among the non-mainstream exhibitors. The black-lined booth had a nylon...
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Posted by greg at
10:38 AM
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Comments (2)
August 11, 2006
The Bubble New York show popped a couple of days ago, but I still have some spotlights left to shine on some of the standout exhibitors. One definitely goes on Zid Zid, a two-year-old or so label based in the...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (0)
Very interesting. Seems the folks in Munich are as susceptible as the rest of the country to popularity of Like-A-Bike-like walking bikes for little kids. But the new Kids' BMW Bike adds a twist--or a crank: you can attach...
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Posted by greg at
9:31 AM
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Comments (1)
August 10, 2006
While YOUR emails are always rational and compelling, I do get messages from my fair share of cranks. And while I try to read each one with an open mind, I like to think I can spot a Customer From...
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Posted by greg at
3:48 PM
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Comments (12)
August 9, 2006
The supercute cast of stuffed vinyl animal characters from the House of Ingri have big, expressive South Park eyes. Even the sad/weary/skeptical-looking ones are huggably cute. Unfortunately, their small parts and non-chew-resistant naugahyde means these toys must carry the...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 AM
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Comments (3)
August 8, 2006
My only comment: I guess it's appropriate that the Japanese department store behind the Paris Hilton edition of Hello Kitty is named after everyone's first STD. Headline: "Mono Comme Ca Kitty Is Paris Hilton (Devil? sp)" [via tmz]...
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Posted by greg at
6:30 PM
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Comments (1)
August 7, 2006
I'd seen the slot-together chair by Swedish indie designers Our Children's Gorilla a few months back at Yoya but it didn't have any labels on it, and when I went back, it was gone. And Googling around for "Swedish Gorilla"...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (2)
August 4, 2006
Alma Siedhoff-Buscher was the first Bauhaus practitioner to take children's design seriously. Siedhoff-Buscher saw children's design--including toys, furniture, and utensils--as a way out of the textile department, where she'd been confined with all the other women by Walter Gropius....
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Posted by greg at
10:49 AM
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Comments (2)
August 3, 2006
The kid's got a thing at the moment for Lois Lenski's book, Policeman Small, and so I toggle between admiration of her clean, simple artwork and annoyance at the guy's apparently non-union job [a 12hour shift with only 30...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
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Comments (1)
August 1, 2006
Congratulations to Marlene McNeill, who won second place in the Orange County Fair, for her collection of Star Trek Bears. According to the display card in the fair's Hall of Collections, most of the bears came from the Star...
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Posted by greg at
2:28 PM
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Comments (0)
July 28, 2006
Hi. I'm Blackwater USA. You may know me from such previous private security and military contractor operations as the invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq War, guarding the Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim presidents of Iraq and Afghanistan, the attack...
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Posted by greg at
2:37 PM
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Comments (4)
July 26, 2006
May that phrase never cross your child's lips. Because the 85th Gucci limited edition pony, in "chocolate Guccissima [1] leather with chocolate leather trim," signature web and gucci 85th anniversary plaque is not available, at least on the website....
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Posted by greg at
10:29 PM
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Comments (1)
July 23, 2006
Turns out Yves Behar, known to everyone but readers of the New York Times as the designer of the new Calla high chair for Fleurville, has a thing for Enzo Mari's zoo puzzle. The Wood Menagerie [nyt] Buy Enzo...
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Posted by greg at
12:28 AM
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Comments (1)
July 21, 2006
Another eBay find I can come clean on--only after I won it. This time it's from modernist eBay shark Andy, who tipped me off to these vintage blocks made from cork. They're Japanese, and they're from Jiyugakuen, a pioneering...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 AM
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Comments (3)
July 20, 2006
Whether you think they're separatist terrorists or indigenous freedom fighters, you have to agree: it's fun to say "Zapatista." Zapatista Zapatista Zapatista. And if you ever get bored with that, you can start composing M.C. Escher-like lactivist posters by...
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Posted by greg at
9:38 AM
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Comments (1)
July 19, 2006
Mothering Magazine's website is offline at the moment, so I'll be outraged for them: Every little girl wants to be just like Mom and now she can! Girls will love playing Mommy with the Minnie BOP mini-nursing pillow, sized...
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Posted by greg at
10:55 PM
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Comments (14)
July 18, 2006
By the time my sister was born, Family Affair was off the air, so I have no personal frame of reference for Mrs. Beasley. Frankly, she seems awful Chucky-like to me, ["You may call me Mrs. Beasley, would you...
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Posted by greg at
5:37 PM
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Comments (3)
Did you get this Paloma sterling silver rattle from Tiffany's this past March? Because the Government strongly recommends you take it away from the baby immediately. Just-published research shows that exposing newborns to overly luxurious products and toys can...
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Posted by greg at
9:12 AM
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Comments (2)
Maybe it's just my imagination, but there's a bit of competitive craftiness in our family which I think fairly typical among Mormons. It's what happens when nobody drinks, I guess. Or maybe it's just my guilt kicking in when I...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (1)
July 17, 2006
And just like the local news, I follow up a dire warning about babies getting crushed by falling televisions with a story about teddy bears made from vacuum cleaner bags. Weather and sports-- after these messages. Hoover Bear Bags...
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Posted by greg at
2:09 PM
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Comments (0)
July 16, 2006
For all my paranoia about being subjugated to the tyrannical rule of Disney Princesses, and my ongoing efforts to keep Elmo and Barney and Spongebob and Dora and Thomas and Pooh and Hello Kitty from brainwashing our kid, I...
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Posted by greg at
4:21 PM
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Comments (0)
To commemorate the first birthday of Tai Shan, the baby panda the National Zoo leases from China [and you thought it was a gift...], the Zoo has issued a rare, special edition Tai Shan plush toy. By "rare," I mean...
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Posted by greg at
3:34 PM
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Comments (0)
July 13, 2006
Do you have some awesome Community Playthings gear or furniture that's been going strong for over 30 years? Does your kid's day care center or pre-school? How about your parents or grandparents? Maybe it's something like this 70's-era Variplay...
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Posted by greg at
8:07 PM
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Comments (0)
July 12, 2006
All this time, I thought these were wooden beads for stringing on the long cord [included]. But the kid corrected me this morning. They're actually drinks. And coasters. Apparently, there is a large party afoot. Not shown: a Persian...
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Posted by greg at
10:59 AM
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Comments (0)
OK, This might be it for the elaborate wooden toys for a while. I don't know how I can surpass the Naef Gloggomobil. It's a totally programmable barrel organ, a giant, wooden version of that little metal cylinder that...
[read the full post...]
Posted by greg at
8:13 AM
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Comments (4)
July 11, 2006
There's a lot of passion in Japan for the wood toys. Naef, the Swiss toymaker I just posted about, is HUGE in Japan, for example. One of the bigger chain of specialty toy shops is BorneLund. [I found them...
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Posted by greg at
4:08 PM
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Comments (3)
Designer Heiko Hillig's first toy for Naef was Rainbow, a remarkable freestanding xylophone made of arced strips of ply colored with non-toxic dyes. If the all the different compositions on Nova68's site are any indication, though, the Rainbow is...
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Posted by greg at
3:30 PM
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Comments (0)
July 10, 2006
Toys R Who? Looks like Amazon's new toy store is gettin' along just fine, thank you very much, now that they're free of that ol' ball-and-chain Toys R Us. They are ready to PARTY! You know what I'm saying? They...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (0)
July 2, 2006
When the kid goes to Grammy's house, she heads straight for the toy room under the stairs like all the older cousins--and plays non-stop with the old Fisher-Price Little People. You know, the little choking hazard ones. They're not like...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 PM
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Comments (16)
Amazon sent a notice today--the 2nd--saying that as of July 1st--um, yesterday--Amazon and Babies R Us/Toys R Us would no longer be in partnership together, and that "as a result of the improvements we'll be making to the site, some...
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Posted by greg at
3:10 PM
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Comments (13)
June 30, 2006
Just when you think this generation's somehow actually different...while researching our new magnifying glass stool, I came across this Time magazine article from 1964 about ambitious parents and the boom of "so-called educational toys":Advanced placement begins in the nursery, say...
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Posted by greg at
6:32 PM
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Comments (0)
I hope no one thinks that I'm just linkin' to stuff on eBay because it makes mad money [it doesn't, although if someone would've bought that AMG E55 wagon...]. No, I like to link stuff that a) is cool and...
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Posted by greg at
5:36 PM
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Comments (7)
June 28, 2006
This Creative Playthings wooden puzzle box just went up on eBay; it's $6 (+$8 shipping) right now, but it's the kind of thing that can go quite a bit higher, I'm afraid. On the other hand, the auction ends...
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Posted by greg at
8:08 AM
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Comments (1)
June 27, 2006
You thought those books were crazy, these toy prices are INSANE!!! MoMA's online store is having a toy sale, and this steel and plastic [eh] concept kitchen from Groupe Berchet is gender neutral, has a bunch of battery operated...
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Posted by greg at
2:45 PM
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Comments (3)
The Daddle is a saddle for giving horsie rides. It's made of stuffed cotton in a beautiful paisley print to match your tie. Or your shawl. The kneepads [aka, "horseshoes for dad"] are sold separately. All I can say...
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Posted by greg at
7:53 AM
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Comments (2)
June 26, 2006
ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner's investment company just announced it has acquired Team Baby Entertainment, which makes college sports-themed educational [sic] DVD's for infants and toddlers. Among the officially licensed videos in the series so far:Baby Irish (Notre Dame), Baby...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (7)
June 25, 2006
At Ikea last night [doesn't that sound about right for a Saturday night now? What a freakshow], my wife picked up this little train set--20 pieces, really basic, wood but with little plastic attachment nubs, but just $12.99. That's...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 PM
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Comments (9)
Whether vintage, hard-to-find, or just a good deal, interesting eBay auctions show up here at daddytypes from time to time. And when they don't, I try to find them myself for your shoppertainment: First off, the Creative Playthings hobby...
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Posted by greg at
1:37 PM
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Comments (2)
June 24, 2006
Yumiko Tanaka is a graduate student at the Royal College of Art in London. There, as part of a project to explore the way adults and children play and interact together, she developed the Plable. It's a concept for...
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (1)
Like her toilet paper roll dolls before them, plush artist Heidi Kenney's used tissue dolls are made from 100% polyester fleece and 100% wool felt. And like her other art toys, these tissues aren't intended for children under 3....
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Posted by greg at
4:19 PM
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Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
So while I get all uptight about the complaints of retail workers and the idiocies of oblivious parents whose kids tear up stores without the slightest sense of responsibility, it occurs to me that I took the kid to Yoyamart...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 PM
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Comments (1)
So there's a secret underground economy in Europe where cool-looking rocking toys are traded out of sight of prying American eyes? What is up with that? I hope Jan from Kidsrepublic doesn't get his Euro design guru card revoked for...
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Posted by greg at
10:50 AM
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Comments (0)
Sheesh, remind me never to play Jeopardy with Dutch. While I was posting my surprised little ramble about Alexander Calder toys, he was finishing up his own awesome, info-packed ode to Calder and his circus on Sweet Juniper. [Not enough...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 AM
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Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
While looking around eBay for some expensive wooden toys from Naef, I found some expensive wooden toys from Alexander Calder instead. Now I knew Calder made at least a circus-ful of toys in his early Parisian days, because they're at...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (2)
Wow. I finally started following up on some of the companies I'd seen mentioned in the latest issue of Baby Mammoth, the dad-friendly but advertiser-challenged baby magazine from Japan. One company they featured about ten times: toys by Naef,...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (3)
June 18, 2006
Besides being the land of sun-filled nights and $25 Whopper meals [seriously], Iceland was the land of Stokke surprises. First (and second) were the Super-sized and Happy Meal-sized Tripp Trapp high chairs. But then at the same Fifa baby store...
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Posted by greg at
10:54 PM
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Comments (0)
June 17, 2006
Dutch works his blogging magic, writing in fascinating depth on the innovative, modernist playground designs by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi proposed many playgrounds all over the world, but few were ever built. In his hometown of New York, especially, Noguchi's...
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Posted by greg at
6:48 PM
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Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
The kid's been a sticker fiend for a while now. I know it seems like a kiddie cliche, but hey, it's a surefire way to keep her quiet and busy for a solid thirty minutes or more, so it's perfect...
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Posted by greg at
12:50 AM
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Comments (3)
June 14, 2006
So you really like the nursery gear, kids' furniture and toys at DWR Jax, but you only want to pay about 50-60% of retail? Do the math, folks, that's why they're pulling the plug on the whole venture. But your...
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Posted by greg at
11:51 PM
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Comments (3)
June 13, 2006
I mean, two fitty each. That's right, these awesome looking Inntrax crayons are made in Poland from forest salvage, underbrush and branches of birch, willow, and ash, which are then cut to crayon shape, dried, and loaded at each...
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Posted by greg at
9:50 PM
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Comments (1)
The maneki neko is a traditional Japanese good luck symbol. It looks like it's waving, but it's actually doing the Japanese beckoning gesture. Supposedly, beckoning with the left paw means, "come here, potential customers!" and is often seen at store...
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Posted by greg at
3:20 PM
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Comments (2)
Breastfeeding battles wearing you down? Worried that parenting is basically 18 years of barely being able to control your rage until the brat gets out of the house? How about something magical to cheer up your spirits? Like a...
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Posted by greg at
2:59 PM
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Comments (1)
June 11, 2006
I've been doing a bit more eBay perusing than usual lately, and I thought I'd pass along a few interesting-looking auctions [that I'm not bidding on, otherwise I wouldn't be blabbing about it until after I won]. If you see...
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Posted by greg at
11:48 PM
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Comments (0)
One of the few things we did to "decorate" the kid's nursery--besides painting a couple of the walls a slightly dark royal blue below the thick, eye-level, wooden mouldings--was to stick glow-in-the-dark constellations all over the upper portions of...
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Posted by greg at
3:25 PM
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Comments (6)
When the day comes that she sees it, I want the kid to be well prepared, so she can fully appreciate the greatest golf movie ever made. She's mastered the art of puking in a German car, and she has...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (3)
June 10, 2006
Yoda is just the beginning. There are so many copyright-infringing balloon sculptures at this Russian Balloon Art Faire, that the studios have called Jack Valenti out of retirement to lead a SWAT team of pinheaded lawyers in an all-out...
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Posted by greg at
1:44 PM
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Comments (0)
June 8, 2006
I got this vintage "training diaper for expectant fathers" on ebay a few weeks ago. And it's got a surprising level of raunch and scatological humor that I usually associated with MAD magazine, not the Ward Cleaver era. This...
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Posted by greg at
9:27 PM
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Comments (0)
June 7, 2006
It's this weird guy thing, I guess, where I get busy, busier, and then I cut back on surfing and checking in on all the blogs for a week, then two, then... then it's just embarassment at being out of...
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Posted by greg at
10:16 PM
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Comments (1)
June 3, 2006
Some younger sibling of mine got this--and then passed it along to the others, and I vaguely remember drawing it at some point. But I never remembered that it was by Creative Playthings. Of course, I'm finding that what...
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Posted by greg at
5:14 PM
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Comments (3)
June 2, 2006
Last weekend before getting laid out by the flu, the kid and I stopped by my grandmother's house in smalltown, Utah. It was the first time the kid had actually spent more than a few minutes there [we were...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 AM
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Comments (5)
June 1, 2006
A piece of advice: if you're thinking of having a nerd come to your kid's birthday party to make balloon molecules, you'd better have some other entertainment lined up, too. This buckminsterfullerene molecule takes "only" 60-80 minutes, and the diamond...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 PM
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Comments (0)
If you're keeping score at home, it's Dads & Daughters: 1, Pussycat Dolls: 0. A week or so ago, the non-profit groups Dads & Daughters and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood organizes a Letterwriting Campaign For A Trampy Doll-Free Childhood,...
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Posted by greg at
9:56 PM
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Comments (0)
May 25, 2006
Thanks to a regular diet of television administered since birth, the kid already knows her alphabet [and not only has she NOT turned into a hypnotized slug, she's always asking if she can ride a skateboard over to her...
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Posted by greg at
6:21 PM
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Comments (2)
Sometimes it appears by royal decree of the Crown Prince of Norway, and sometimes it just creeps up on you. Blocks Week is the latter. Arcadia is a set 24 of asymmetrical irregularly cut, curved, arched and cutout blocks made...
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Posted by greg at
3:53 PM
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Comments (0)
May 24, 2006
Photojojo has a sweet video tutorial for making photo blocks. It involves gluing a 4x6 photo onto four 2x3 linoleum blocks, then sealing it with painter's gel. Super easy, and while I'm not too sure about the edibility of painter's...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 PM
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Comments (1)
May 23, 2006
Then you'll be having some audio-induced flashbacks when you watch these toy commercials from the 70's. Can't say I've ever played--or even heard of--The Masterpiece Game before--that's the one where you buy the world's great art at auction for $100,000....
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Posted by greg at
1:30 PM
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Comments (2)
May 20, 2006
Surfing through Mahar Dry Goods' totally awesome selection of contemporary and vintage-inspired artistan created products, I kept wondering how I missed posting about the site when owner Robert Mahar first emailed about it two-plus months ago. But then reading his...
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Posted by greg at
8:08 PM
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Comments (4)
May 12, 2006
The Creative Playthings Hobby Horse was produced in the early-to-mid 1950's by the Princeton, NJ-based toy manufacturer, and it has long been recognized* as a classic of modern design. [Interesting bit of trivia I didn't know until very recently: the...
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Posted by greg at
11:08 AM
May 2, 2006
How'd I miss this? The sweet Streamliner car from PlaySam was released in a special edition called the iCar, a white/silver combination that's meant as "an homage to..." to Apple, of course. Given the presence of the now-discontinued iPod...
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Posted by greg at
12:19 AM
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Comments (2)
May 1, 2006
Here's an excerpt from this week's "Ask A Clerk" column in NY Magazine, which was an interview with one of the folks from the sweet West Village kids store YoyaMart. The parts I think were inexplicably edited out are in...
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Posted by greg at
11:56 PM
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Comments (0)
April 29, 2006
Actually, it's probably Eames' The Little Toy, or The The Little Toy. But it's rare enough that it probably doesn't come up that much in conversation anyway. That said, there's one on ebay right now, complete and in a...
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Posted by greg at
10:37 AM
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Comments (0)
Your idea to revolutionise the world of distribution is undoubtedly to be admired. It is an idea shared by a wide section of the public sensitive to the question and not only those who, like me, fight for existence along...
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Posted by greg at
12:42 AM
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Comments (2)
April 28, 2006
jackhammer Originally uploaded by Extreme Craft. Call me an old-fashioned peace-nik, but I don't think I want my kid playing with guns, even a swell, knitted machine gun by Extreme Crafter Theresa Honeywell. If the kid did express interest...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (5)
April 23, 2006
I expect the Christian lobbyist/talking headed wingnuts of Concerned Women of America will find little comfort in the fact that, when it comes to decrying the decadence of the West, they're reading off the same script as the Taliban. Because...
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Posted by greg at
12:50 PM
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Comments (4)
April 19, 2006
optimus_prime_kunming Originally uploaded by daddytypes. DT reader Debbie Yamauchi was freaked out by giant Elmo, but not as freaked out as when she and her brother saw Optimus Prime in China:In Kunming, China there stands a 40 ft. statue...
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Posted by greg at
12:23 AM
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Comments (1)
April 18, 2006
Despite my feeble efforts at concealment, the kid just caught me and asked if she could have some "bright Cheerios," too. A box-sized squishy Lucky Charms pillow is $14.99, but frankly, kind of weird. What's even weirder: I don't see...
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Posted by greg at
8:43 AM
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Comments (4)
April 14, 2006
While poking around through etsy, I checked in on Tsukiyono, the Indiana artist who makes Japanese anime-inspired gifts and toys, and who made the awesome Bunny Foo Foo plush I bought for the kid for Christmas. [Dutch had pointed Tsukiyono's...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 AM
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Comments (1)
April 13, 2006
You know why babies are so cute? It's their giant heads on their little bodies. IT'S JUST SO CUTE. And you know how you're always saying to yourself, "Aww, I bet if you made a doll of the Gimp from...
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Posted by greg at
11:32 PM
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Comments (1)
Babies R Us Japan is pleased to announce the opening of their member rewards program, which enables customers to collect points, which they can redeem for valuable merchandise and offers and blah blah blah. It's called "the mama & baby...
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Posted by greg at
10:24 PM
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Comments (1)
April 10, 2006
I'm gonna go out on a limb and declare that around here, Peeps are and will remain a once-a-year, irresistible culinary temptation that you'll gorge yourself on and inevitably regret later. AND NO MORE. So to whoever the Procter &...
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Posted by greg at
2:01 PM
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Comments (2)
April 6, 2006
Jewish conspiracy? The only Jewish conspiracy I know is the one that kept me from finding out before now about this 10 Plagues of Egypt Plush Toy Set. It includes, and I quote:A spooky eyed drop of blood A Frog...
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Posted by greg at
5:26 PM
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Comments (4)
Why is this time of year different from any other time of year? Because it's when the Matzoh novelty items comes out, that's why. This year, it's the Genuine Matzah Inflatable Beach Ball, a fine promotional item from Shulsinger Judaica...
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Posted by greg at
2:10 PM
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Comments (6)
April 2, 2006
Taking me out . Originally uploaded by My Ultraman Daddy. When we were in Japan last summer, I tried to find some books from Tatsuya Miyanishi's Otousan wa Ultraman/ Daddy is Ultraman series, but only ended up with Daddy's...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (1)
March 24, 2006
This limited-edition 9" vinyl doll comes as shown, and is accompanied by "a Ghostface Killah Doll mixtape dy a world-famous DJ tba" [DJ tba totally tore it up at Miami last year.] If it weren't for the GFK-trademark, f-bomb-laden...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 AM
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Comments (0)
March 18, 2006
If you ever wondered what the impact of the US's liability insurance regime might be on innovation and kids' furniture design, look no further than the German design studio who made an aftermarket slide attachment for the Stokke Kinderzeat...
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Posted by greg at
8:21 AM
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Comments (0)
March 7, 2006
Probably because of the explosion of competition in the "pedal-less walk-along bike-like contraption for toddlers" market segment, Likeabike has added an all-aluminum model, the Likeabike Jumper, that comes with big 12" inflated tires and weighs just 8 lbs. It's available...
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Posted by greg at
11:38 AM
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Comments (5)
March 3, 2006
They had a deal, see, and so when Amazon started seeing other [toyselling] people, Toys R Us got all jealous and mad, especially about that $200 million they'd paid for what it thought was category exclusivity. So TRU sued. And...
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Posted by greg at
2:27 PM
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Comments (0)
Ray and Charles Eames sure made some kid-friendly classics--the House of Cards, that Hang-it-All, the RAR Rocker, of course--and watching their movie, Powers of Ten a few times would give a rush of enlightenment to anyone ages 10^0 -...
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Posted by greg at
8:11 AM
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Comments (5)
March 1, 2006
When the wife couldn't make it to the Muji store on this last trip to Tokyo, she couldn't get the kid the replacements for the shoes she loves but had outgrown. So naturally, with only the airport gift shop's...
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Posted by greg at
12:49 PM
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Comments (9)
February 27, 2006
MB Furniture Discount Store was in business for over 50 years in Brooklyn, until it went bankrupt. Now, all the contents of their retail location AND their warehouse are being sold at auction TOMORROW, Tuesday 2/28 at 11:00 AM....
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Posted by greg at
6:12 PM
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Comments (0)
As new parents if sometimes feels like you're in it all along, inventing and discovering all these wonderful, confounding, vexing, rewarding mysteries as you go. The truth, of course, is more complicated, and more simple. Some experiences are totally unique....
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Posted by greg at
9:03 AM
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Comments (1)
February 24, 2006
You know, it started with those damn Ugly Dolls, and it's spiralled out of control from there. While our actual oddball indie plushtoy purchases are very few--the kid did get that Bunny Foo Foo for Christmas--I've become a fan of...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 AM
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Comments (1)
February 23, 2006
I was putting a quick shopping list together while surfing around Muji's net store, and I was kind of blown away by the large crop of cool unpainted wood toys they have now, including all kinds of little fruits...
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Posted by greg at
4:03 PM
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Comments (2)
A small boy, 3, lives with his artsy parents, three vintage Eames rockers [with refurbished Modernica bases], and an unidentified modernist Ikea rocking horse in a corrugated steel house of his father's design in Lubbock, TX. The father's book, seven...
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Posted by greg at
8:59 AM
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Comments (1)
February 22, 2006
The wife had just left for a work-related, um, con in Japan, and I was on kid duty, so when it turned out that one of the biggest anime, video games, Japan-pop, and cosplay conferences on the east coast was...
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Posted by greg at
9:10 PM
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Comments (1)
... the kid should love a Tofu Bear, right? It's made from SOYSILK��, a registered trademark name for some kind of soybean byproduct that somehow gets spun into plush fabric. The bear is plain white, with absolutely no distinguishing...
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Posted by greg at
12:33 AM
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Comments (1)
February 18, 2006
Uh, wow. Dateline Los Angeles. An unidentified old man was seen driving a yellow and blue Bugaboo Cameleon along the boardwalk. In another incident, the same old man was spotted on La Brea or someplace with a Graco SnugRide...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 PM
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Comments (1)
February 12, 2006
The Marlboro Reds Transformer; the spiral slide with razor blades embedded in it; Poledancing Barbie; Mister Pot Head; My First Ouija Boardbook. You'll understand why of all the entries in Worth1000.com's Photoshop contest asking for toys that are just...
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Posted by greg at
12:59 PM
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Comments (2)
February 11, 2006
The kid's aunt got her the Bilibo, which is a cute, little plastic dome which uses static electricity to pick up hair from the carpet. It works great, but there's no handle, so after a few hours bent over, dragging...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
I'd been stuck on a comment I read last fall by MoMA Architecture & Design curator Paola Antonelli before her exhibition, "Safe," opened about children's product design, and so I decided to get her take on the Baby Industrial Complex....
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Posted by greg at
3:36 PM
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Comments (2)
January 30, 2006
The tagline of the Artgames exhibition at Aachen, Germany's Ludwig Forum should be, "come for the Ministeck children's portaits, stay for the mohair-covered playground implements." Actually, in German, they probably already have one superlong word for that. Here are...
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Posted by greg at
12:44 PM
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Comments (0)
January 28, 2006
This bear from Build-a-Bear [Did you know about this? My jury's still out, but the potential for abuse makes me really skeptical.] was dressed up as Link from Zelda. He plays Zelda music when you squeeze his paw. Link...
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Posted by greg at
10:10 AM
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Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
Thank heaven we live in a country with a vigorously free media. According to an investigation by KNDO [NBC23 to the fine folks in Yakima, Washington], the manufacturer of that Elmo potty training book that asked kids, "Who wants to...
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Posted by greg at
1:43 AM
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Comments (0)
January 25, 2006
Victoria writes at de stijl about their experiments getting the Leapfrog Alphabet Pal to swear. Which, of course, was a highlight of "Baby Einstein," an essay in David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim about his brother becoming...
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Posted by greg at
11:36 PM
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Comments (10)
January 21, 2006
Well, nobody does media-fuelled obsession with betterment than Japan, as the pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo about the supposed developmental benefits of making hikaru doro-dango [shiny mudballs] shows. There was a TV show about them on NHK a few years back, and...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (0)
January 12, 2006
from mathowie's photostream [flickr, where dad of other celebrity baby, who ALSO got the Radio Flyer, mentioned that an earlier production of the Radio Flyer Classic Walker was recalled to fix "tips on the clickers," whatever that means.] The...
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Posted by greg at
9:03 AM
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Comments (2)
January 7, 2006
So there's Suicide Pact/Potty Training Elmo, and now Beat Up Elmo Elmo? And a Chinese-led Anti-Christian conspiracy at Wal-Mart to brainwash our children using subliminal messages planted in their toys and why don't we have more security in this country...
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Posted by greg at
12:38 PM
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Comments (2)
December 31, 2005
At our third Christmas session last night, the kid got this very cute set of Melissa & Doug plush baby dinosaurs from Grandma. [Melissa & Doug have clearly been able to break their brand out of their original Cute Wooden...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 PM
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Comments (1)
Sega recently released Where Do Babies Come From?, a sequel to its Nintendo DS wooing game, Feel The Magic. Both games are set in a stylized world populated by silhouettes [who all apparently have the same day job, modeling...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (1)
Ross Miller originally created the Transformer-like velour Snapazoo in the early 1980's, and it sold well in the US [Miller is from Massachusetts] and Europe for a while before it went out of production. In 2005, the Japanese indie toy...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (3)
December 30, 2005
So the last couple of nights, and some portions of the last couple of days have been occupied with the final construction of the kid's Mini-boo. Our nomadic lifestyle helped "Santa brings your presents to three places because he doesn't...
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Posted by greg at
11:35 PM
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Comments (6)
December 24, 2005
And to all a good night. Unless you the type who's not into Christmas, in which case, enjoy your Chinese food....
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Posted by greg at
10:53 PM
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Comments (2)
December 23, 2005
One of the odd pleasures of going to St. George, Utah is the D.I., Deseret Industries. It's a giant, Salvation Army-style thrift shop that's the denominationally correct repository of choice for all the stuff Mormons get rid of, and...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 PM
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Comments (3)
December 21, 2005
... Yes, all you suburbanites with your basement workshops and garages and such can chuckle silently to yourselves. Hell, laugh at the top of your lungs; no one'll hear you. It turns out the banshee-like whine of a Dremel cutting...
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Posted by greg at
6:01 PM
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Comments (5)
December 16, 2005
Here's what's I got so far with the Mini-boo, the Bugaboo-esque toy stroller I'm making out of a Riesenthel Carrybag. So we've figured out how to do the fabric; we're going to stitch the bag together in a couple of...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 PM
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Comments (8)
This Muji stuffed giraffe is made from the leftover cotton yarn that would have been thrown away at the end of a production run, so it's not technically "re-used," which'd be slightly gross, but "reclaimed" or "re-scued" which is...
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Posted by greg at
9:22 AM
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Comments (0)
Muji has cute little bags of wooden blocks in the shapes of the icons of the world's great cities--London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. [The NYC one, for example, includes the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty, MoMA's original building--and...
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Posted by greg at
8:39 AM
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Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
The title says it all, really, and if I could pour syrup on it for you, I would. Toast plush by Funfun may be available in LA, SF, and NYC at Giant Robot, Kidrobot, and at Super7. More cute...
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Posted by greg at
5:50 PM
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Comments (1)
December 9, 2005
Blobby Farm is in Indiana--apparently, it's The Crossroads (Of Craftiness) State. The folks there make all sorts of unique plush characters by hand, characters which are all imbued with little profiles of telling personality quirks. Loaf 5 Jr., for example,...
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Posted by greg at
3:40 PM
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Comments (3)
December 6, 2005
Fuzzy dice are usually the province of wannabe-tacky pimps. But if you get your kid some fuzzy Dungeons & Dragons polyhedral dice now, while he's young, you can be pretty sure you'll save him from a life of frontin' and...
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Posted by greg at
4:33 PM
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Comments (3)
Not only a Kid-o bib, of course, will do, but I'm just saying. That all-too-familiar frustration with the horrible design of most baby gear probably intensifies when you open an awesome baby store, because Kid-o has introduced quite a...
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Posted by greg at
8:34 AM
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Comments (4)
December 5, 2005
OK, this was going to be a surprise, and then I thought, what the hell? If it's a surprise for the kid, fine, but why am I keeping it a secret from you? Because she's still obsessed with them, I'm...
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Posted by greg at
1:06 PM
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Comments (16)
December 1, 2005
A Rubik's Cube-like "twisty thing" that's red on every side. A puzzle with one circular piece ["ages 5 and up."] A "Special Edition" of Goodnight Moon where every page is blank ["Your child's self-esteem will soar as they pretend to...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (1)
November 28, 2005
A couple of eBay finds, if you're doing some off-the-wall holiday shopping, near Denver, or both: There is a pretty decent-looking six-piece collection of vintage Community Playthings kitchen toys [well, five, plus one awesome phonebooth] in Aurora, near Denver....
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Posted by greg at
9:24 PM
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Comments (1)
November 22, 2005
DT reader Andy gave a heads up on a batch of sweet, sweet mid-century childrens' design and toy items he just put up for sale on ebay. The lots include two sets of kid-size Bertoia chairs and a vintage...
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Posted by greg at
11:14 PM
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Comments (1)
Brazilian conceptual artist Raul Mourao has opened an exhibition called Luladepelucia, or PlushLula, at a Rio de Janeiro gallery called Lurixs. Along with some other works, the show features 100 limited edition plush versions of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio...
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Posted by greg at
2:32 PM
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Comments (0)
October 31, 2005
First, I need to apologize to J-Mo. I kind of flew off the toy vacuum handle in the comments when she posted about the cool red/silver Pottery Barn Kids toy vacuum. All I saw online was the pink/pink/pink vacuum, though....
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (28)
October 30, 2005
Do you think letting your kid playing with a toy replica of a needlessly expensive, high-tech vacuum cleaner teaches the wrong, elitist/consumerist lessons? Well, what about this toy housekeeper's set, a wooden pushcart that comes complete with a broom &...
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Posted by greg at
12:21 PM
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Comments (5)
October 26, 2005
I know it's supposed to be the paradigm-breaking Vacuum Cleaner For Guys and all, the Bugaboo of vacuum cleaners, but until they make one that isn't Barney-colored, I don't think I'll be seeing a Dyson vacuum cleaner sucking up...
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Posted by greg at
11:05 PM
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Comments (15)
You want evolution to make your kid's brain smarter? Forget the pack of British Velcro blocks; get someone to knit him a DNA molecule to play with. Kimberly Chapman has the complete how-to [complete except for, "how do I buy...
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Posted by greg at
10:21 PM
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Comments (0)
October 25, 2005
Grandma just got the kid this little Noah's ark set from a company called Pockets of Learning. It's not flooding the world with excruciating hand-made craftsmanship--most of the designs are printed onto the polyester fabric pieces, which are then machine...
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Posted by greg at
3:43 PM
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Comments (1)
CreAtiles are big, soft, yet rigid panels and pieces that fasten together in a variety of ways to make a house, a boat, whatever. More importantly, and despite what their name might imply, they make your kid a WINNER in...
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Posted by greg at
8:57 AM
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Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
You remember how I found that one random ebay link to a Marx Imagination doll house from the 1960's that was still sealed in its original box? Well, that bad boy went for $380. Yay, Marxism! If that seems a...
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Posted by greg at
11:12 PM
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Comments (1)
October 23, 2005
To be honest, I never pegged those cookie-baking elves as straight, but an outfit in Santa Barbara is selling "Wooden Tree Houses Straight from Nature, Made by Elves." They're made from wood gathered from orchards and managed forests using sustainable...
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Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
A Parsons class for electronic toy designers has a weblog. Whether you want to source odd, cheap motors or you entertain fantasies of tearing that chattering Furby limb from electronic limb, it's definitely worth a look:Boohbah is the second...
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Posted by greg at
2:29 PM
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Comments (1)
October 13, 2005
I think I read somewhere that all the snowboarding kids are crocheting these days, making their own hats and stuff. Now unless crocheting and knitting don't mix--like how racquetball messes up your tennis game--all you crocheters can probably just look...
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Posted by greg at
11:53 PM
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Comments (0)
First things first: Playmobil is not intended for children under 3; you know how full of terrorists those nursing lounges and subway strollers are, and you it'd be downright un-American to help them plan out their little security-evading scenarios....
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Posted by greg at
1:21 PM
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Comments (5)
October 11, 2005
The kid doesn't have crayons; because they make me nervous. The table, the walls, the art, I see the kid having a blast playing with crayons, and I don't think "Awwww, maybe she'll be an artist someday. Let's put these...
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Posted by greg at
9:47 AM
October 6, 2005
Showing why he earns the big blogging bucks, Jay points to Uncle Goose's basic wood letter blocks, American-made, but also available in ten non-English languages. Except for the occasional umlaut or accent aigue, a lot of the letters look suspiciously...
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Posted by greg at
6:16 PM
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Comments (3)
If somebody'd told me on Monday that this week was mod dollhouse week, I'da been all, "dollhouses? No way, dude, too many parts." Oh well. Sparkability Mark just added a link to The Green Dollhouse Project, a design competition/exhibition at...
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Posted by greg at
2:16 PM
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Comments (4)
While DT reader Andy's waiting for the kid (six days overdue, no pressure!), he's also rounding up info on cleanly designed, wonderfully constructed, vintage Creative Playthings toys, like this two-story dollhouse, which was originally available with either finished or natural...
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Posted by greg at
12:56 PM
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Comments (5)
October 5, 2005
Form follows function for DT reader Elizabeth's vintage modernist dollhouse, which her daughter Dorothy's now playing with: I have a really cool dollhouse that my grandfather got me over thirty years ago. I looked around online, but couldn�t find anything...
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Posted by greg at
9:34 PM
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Comments (5)
With a single twist, this sweet Radio Flyer Twist Trike converts from a low-slung Big Wheel-like chopper to an honest-to-goodness tricycle. You may have to stare at it for a minute to figure out where to twist. #440 Twist...
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Posted by greg at
3:15 PM
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Comments (3)
Last weekend, I checked in at Yoyamart, the sweet, sweet kid-centric store in EMePa (East of Meatpacking District). The highlights, some of which are available on Yoyamart's online store, too, are below: - the smurftastic Bugaboo By limited edition stroller...
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Posted by greg at
11:54 AM
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Comments (1)
October 4, 2005
I'd forgotten that the kid's Lamaze Multi-sensory Clutch Cube--a favorite toy--smelled like green apples. Maybe it doesn't matter; the kid loved it, and so did we. But what'd we know? We loved it because the kid loved it, and it...
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Posted by greg at
3:29 PM
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Comments (10)
September 24, 2005
The producers of the UK's highly respected Good Toy Guide and researchers across Europe insist that so-called 'educational toys' have no actual, identifiable educational value. Furthermore, the toy industry's educational claims mislead parents, and exploitp their guilt over working too...
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Posted by greg at
11:36 PM
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Comments (1)
September 21, 2005
Boezels are these abstracted stuffed animal/creatures for--I kid you not-- children with mental or psychological disabilities, Alzheimer's patients...and hipsters [and not just any hipsters; hipsters who go commando, if the website's any indication]. Created by Dutch designer Twan Verdonck,...
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Posted by greg at
3:08 PM
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Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
So at the playground in Central Park today, we had a little problem. First, I guess I was out of town and didn't get the memo, but every single kid there had his or her own toy stroller. Every one....
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Posted by greg at
12:13 AM
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Comments (8)
September 8, 2005
I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of the Svan chair. A lot of people like it's swoopy, um, Swan-like curves, but it just looks kind of overdesigned to me. All those platforms and angles. [And not just...
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Posted by greg at
12:23 PM
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Comments (3)
August 30, 2005
Not a huge fan of the character-laden gear, but I was buying all sorts of amusing lunch stuff for the kid--like perforated seaweed sheets to make the kid's rice ball into a soccer ball, teeny little soy sauce containers for...
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Posted by greg at
6:29 PM
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Comments (6)
August 29, 2005
A while back someone [who missed some good stores on his trip to NYC, I believer[ had the suggestion to get people to put together a list of favorite stores in their home towns. So let's see what we can...
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Posted by greg at
12:37 PM
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Comments (48)
August 28, 2005
This versatile, award-winning wooden toy was designed by Dunja Bauer, a German student who's described in one Google translation as "the nut/mother of two children." I wouldn't have thought anything of it, except that the translation also points out that...
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Posted by greg at
10:19 PM
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Comments (5)
August 23, 2005
In fair Brooklyn where we lay our scene, From mid-nineties grudge break to new mutiny. and so on and so forth, you know the rest. Bloods and Crips. Sharks and Jets. Hell's Angels and, um, another equally big, scary biker...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (5)
August 8, 2005
Dress your kid up like an iPod, fine. There's nothing cuter. But we have to draw the line somewhere. And if it's not at the iDuck--a silly silver rubber duck with a water-activated LED in its stomach that was...
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Posted by greg at
12:09 PM
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Comments (0)
August 7, 2005
Just going by the age of most of its customers, the 6-story character goods store in Harajuku should not be called Kiddyland. Even in this country that takes its Hello Kitty very seriously, though, she only has half a floor....
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Posted by greg at
8:03 PM
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Comments (3)
July 29, 2005
AJ at Thingamababy found The Arm Toy while doing what he calls "some errant web research." [I think that means he's trying to make his own Borg costume, but hey, we're the winners here, so it's cool with me.] The...
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Posted by greg at
3:16 AM
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Comments (4)
July 24, 2005
When I used to make the kid's handle-mouthed bear rattle from Muji "eat" her hapless plush animal finger puppets, I worried a little that maybe it was too scary. Maybe I should be protecting her from the harsh realities of...
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Posted by greg at
10:13 PM
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Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
The kid did pretty well on the flight to Japan. [Not as well as last year this time, when she was five months old, and slept 11 of the 14 hour flight in her chair, but still, she was nowhere...
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Posted by greg at
7:29 AM
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Comments (7)
July 13, 2005
Damn, it's 11:45, and I've got a ton of stuff to do, but I can't NOT post about these awesome-looking minimalist alphabet blocks I just found at Stich, a Chicago contemporary design store. They're designed by Jon Stevenson, and they...
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Posted by greg at
11:40 PM
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Comments (4)
Although they're rumoured to have mystical powers, these ninjas are not bred for their skills in magic. They're handsewn in limited editions by a Chicago artist named Shawn Smith. His project, Shawnimals, makes collectible art plush and vinyl toys intended...
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Posted by greg at
11:03 PM
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Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
I guess if I were Heath Ledger or Michelle Williams, I probably wouldn't use an alias to create my baby registry, either. But I probably would check with my publicist to see if Bugaboo just happened to drop off a...
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Posted by greg at
12:13 PM
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Comments (11)
June 10, 2005
I am a couple of days late in posting about this, sorry. Kid O, the west village shop which is one of the rare non-Montessori schools to offer the system's pedagogically gorgeous educational toys, is hosting Montessori seminars Saturday 6/11...
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Posted by greg at
7:02 AM
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Comments (1)
May 9, 2005
From the company that brought you home-karaoke and the electronic dog bark translator comes Cubee, a pyramid scheme of six block-shaped animals that moo, quack, or tweet out three different songs apiece. But when you stack them, the top dog...
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Posted by greg at
1:25 PM
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Comments (3)
April 15, 2005
[Mark from Sparkability just mentioned this in the Rocking Chicken comments:] Playsam designer Ulf Hanses, who created the company's Rocking Chicken and Horse--as well as their signature Streamliner Classic car, for that matter--also created this incredible Rocking Car in 2001....
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (4)
Granddad got the kid this Rocking Chicken from Playsam, the Swedish maker of sleek wooden toys. She loves it, and as she was rocking frantically on it this morning, my wife asked me for a rocking song. Stumped, I just...
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Posted by greg at
9:36 AM
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Comments (12)
April 7, 2005
It's Rad! It's Extreme! It's ready for some serious Off-Road Adventure! Your friends' baby dolls won't know what hit'em when you roll up on them with the AWESOME Max Box toy stroller for boys-- Yes, or should I say, Oui....
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Posted by greg at
10:52 AM
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Comments (2)
March 20, 2005
You may know RFID as the tiny radio signal-emitting chips that will someday rob every aspect of your privacy once Wal-Mart makes sure they're embedded in everything you own. But as the Japanese toy company Bandai shows, there's another, more...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Although they can sometimes reach more than $100 on ebay, a high price of around $50-60 is more typical for customized My Little Ponies. Sorry, this Boy From Oz Little Pony autographed by Hugh Jackman is not for sale. The...
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Posted by greg at
5:02 PM
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Comments (1)
March 17, 2005
Apparently, when they're x-rayed in the box, the configuration of belly battery pack and arms-and-legs sensors makes Tickle Me Elmo look just like a bomb. At least that's the story from a friend of the x-ray guy in the mailroom...
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Posted by greg at
10:48 PM
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Comments (2)
February 19, 2005
If, 25 years from now, I see the kid in an Agnes Varda documentary about an inordinate fixation on teddy bears--or in an MTV documentary about people dressing up as Care Bears--I'll know when it started. This week. From early...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (2)
February 5, 2005
Because nothing goes together better than small children and caffeine, Discovery Toys offers Pour Some More (or is that Pour Some More!!), a realistic toy coffee maker for children aged "from 4 years � Primary School." At least I think...
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Posted by greg at
2:12 PM
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Comments (2)
February 1, 2005
When I came back from Home Depot, this message from The Squirrelly's Dad was affixed to my front door with a large serrated-edge hunting knife:Hi. This is Matthew Baldwin of defective yeti, come to clear the air about a...
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Posted by greg at
3:26 PM
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Comments (4)
January 23, 2005
DT reader Cameron mentioned this in the comments for the loud Learning Home toy:We have a Chenille ABC (I have no idea what it's called in English) by Leapfrog. Lucas loves it. Adores it. The first one broke and we...
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Posted by greg at
10:15 AM
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Comments (6)
January 22, 2005
Although his nursery/playroom wing in the Defective Yeti cave must be full of gigantic and entertaining toys, online celebrity baby The Squirrelly has a special favorite. Frankly, it sounds so annoying I'm glad we can't even hope to fit it...
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Posted by greg at
4:06 PM
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Comments (7)
January 19, 2005
You've already reserved your Darth Tater. Your plush Jawa is still new in box, with tags. What's the one thing no serious Star Wars collection can do without, yet is made all the more difficult to obtain precisely because...
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Posted by greg at
9:40 AM
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Comments (3)
January 5, 2005
Hey, when chewing on my cell phone is the only thing that quiets the kid down, 9 times out of 10--ok, maybe 7 times out of 10--I'll let her have it. In the most desperate moments, goo-soaked keypad and potentially...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 PM
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Comments (1)
December 27, 2004
Rifling through other people's kid's piles of Christmas presents, I found The Babbler under Modern Day Dad's tree. When a kid activates it, The Babbler makes those hard-to-pronounce-unless-you're-a-native-speaker sounds in French, Spanish, and Japanese so that he becomes familiar with...
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Posted by greg at
4:48 PM
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Comments (1)
December 14, 2004
We just bought the kid this car for Christmas. It's from a Swedish company called Playsam, which makes all kinds of sleek wooden toys for kids, adults and executives. (Are those three categories mutually exclusive?) This two-person model is...
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Posted by greg at
12:46 PM
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Comments (1)
OK, when I was a little kid, I had a fascination with nativity sets, so one Christmas, like every great aunt in the world sent me a nativity set. Well, Grammy just sent the kid her first set, from Fisher...
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Posted by greg at
10:52 AM
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Comments (4)
December 11, 2004
...until you have to pay retail again at babystyle.com. I don't know why I've never mentioned it before, but we received a couple of babystyle toys as gifts when the kid was born, and she is still loving them, even...
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Posted by greg at
8:10 AM
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Comments (0)
December 1, 2004
Started as a loving tribute to a lost companion, VIP Fibers creates custom spun yarn from the fibers of your Very Important Pet or, if your pet is not very important, from the high-quality fibers of some other dog, cat...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 PM
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Comments (0)
November 25, 2004
I spotted this putty grey rubber duck at Kid-O, the cool NYC kid's store. When I researched it online, I turned up dozens of "Deluxe Rubber Ducks," including a silvery Disco Duck, a camo GI Duck, and a UK-inspired Jack...
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Posted by greg at
8:49 PM
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Comments (0)
October 31, 2004
We got this pacifier early on as a gift. It's sold at the MoMA Design Store, but it's designed for Vice Versa by Elisa Gargan and Terry Pecora. The pacifier is certainly distinctive-looking and comes in a molded hard plastic...
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Posted by greg at
9:20 AM
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Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
And all this time, I thought it was Neo. I was looking down in the shower and wondering...Where did all these yellow ducks come from? [The duck-shaped anti-slip stickers we just put in the tub are from Grometville (at least...
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Posted by greg at
3:59 PM
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Comments (0)
October 16, 2004
Maybe it's a tribal thing. American Indians made dolls out of corn husks, and Disney fans make pancakes that look like Mickey Mouse [??]. So why am I so confused by a doll patterned after a loaf of Challah bread?...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (0)
October 7, 2004
Think of Stupid Creatures as the result of Ugly Dolls hooking up under a Stitch'T quilt. Stupid Creatures are actually the creation of John Murphy, no doubt the hippest ceramicist/illustrator in North Carolina [sic]. He makes them from old socks...
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Posted by greg at
11:16 AM
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Comments (0)
October 5, 2004
We were walking around Hudson St. Sunday afternoon when we popped into Yoya and Yoyamart, a clothes shop and toy/gizmo/furniture shop, respectively. First, Yoya has an uncommonly cool selection of kids clothes, none of it particularly cheap. Yoyamart, meanwhile, is...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 PM
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Comments (1)
September 30, 2004
Tyvek, the stuff of Fedex envelopes and This Old House product placements, seems to be a happily indestructible alternative to paper, which the kid loves to chew on (and turn to mash, and incite a panic when we realize 15%...
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Posted by greg at
7:52 AM
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Comments (1)
September 23, 2004
Did you go to Brown? Were you at the City Museum party last night? Is your kid very advanced for his age? If so, be sure to mention it when you go to Sydney's Playground, the 6,000-sf playground-in-a-loft in Tribeca,...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 AM
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Comments (0)
September 9, 2004
The NY Times calls this a wood toy cart; the Target website description is "wood and wood composite," so I'm sure it's safe to gnaw on. And it won't outgas any kind of bonding chemicals, at least not any more...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (0)
September 6, 2004
I can't believe I haven't posted this before. Fetopia is not only the home of the original Cletus the Fetus, but of a small, small world of feti, all handmade from sculpey clay and ready for...well, I bought about twenty...
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Posted by greg at
2:58 PM
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Comments (0)
August 26, 2004
Sirch is a woodworking family from Germany with a 400-year history. The current Sirch, Wolfgang, has teamed with Christof Bitzer to design an excellent range of childrens' toys and furniture (more of that later). Their latest creation is the Villa...
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Posted by greg at
6:58 PM
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Comments (2)
August 25, 2004
While Italians are poppin' out futuristic stroller/trikes instead of babies, designers in Europe's other rapidly aging country, Germany, are waxing mod-nostalgic. One result: LikeABike, a sleek, pared down reinterpretation of one of the earliest bicycles, the 1817 Draisienne (named after...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (2)
They sure are burning through the kids product R&D money in Europe these days, even in countries with no kids. The OKO Trike is from Italy, the product of extensive research into "child ergonomics." That explains the easy on/off access,...
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Posted by greg at
10:51 AM
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Comments (2)
August 23, 2004
Babysmash is a shareware program at kidsdomain.com for infants and toddlers which flashes colors and shapes on your computer screen with each slap of the keyboard. Your actual system is locked and protected, however, by certain keystrokes that they'll have...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 PM
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Comments (1)
August 15, 2004
These limited production plush toy flowers are by the contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, and are similar to the designs he made for the jellybean-colored Louis Vuitton bags so popular with the ladies these days. Considering that an authentic purse can...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 PM
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Comments (0)
August 14, 2004
Normally, I would think this is too cutesy sweet to mention, but remember, I just got back from Japan, where literally Every. Single. Company. has a cuddly cute Hello Kitty-esque mascot. Right now, a Fisher-Price Loving Family� Dad & Baby...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (0)
July 22, 2004
Thomas Heaton, 44, a single United Methodist pastor in Nashville, Ind., has been making rice and beans for Sunday supper since adopting his son Manuel, 9, in Guatemala five years ago. (Because Guatemala is one of the few countries that...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 PM
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Comments (0)
July 15, 2004
Cuboro is a beatiful-looking game/system from Switzerland. You build intricate marble trails using 5cm wood cubes with various holes and channels cut into them. The birch cubes seem as Swiss-engineered as a, um, Swiss watch. I don't know how young...
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Posted by greg at
2:44 PM
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Comments (2)
July 12, 2004
Depending on how big your hands have grown since you were ten, you may have to buy your Russian Dancer hats by the pound instead of by the can. Either way, they also seem like perfectly sized choke hazards....
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Posted by greg at
9:04 AM
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Comments (0)
July 9, 2004
Ahh, Japan. I'm getting psyched up to take the kid to visit my old stomping grounds by reading up on Japanese baby gear, practicalities, etc. Which is how I came across these nursery products for putting the kid to sleep...
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Posted by greg at
2:28 PM
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Comments (1)
June 27, 2004
Finger puppets? They're not just for Hindus anymore. A beautiful Sunday morning seems like the right time to point out [sic] the finger puppets of other faiths: Nativity Scene finger puppets for six-fingered Christians: "Set of 6 plush Nativity Finger...
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11:28 AM
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Yesterday we went over the river and through the woods (lots of woods) to Grandma's house, where the kid found this fabric farm from Ikea waiting for her. The animals are all very grabbable--and chewable--and machine-washable. And the whole brood...
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10:33 AM
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June 15, 2004
You don't have to be Hindu--and neither does your kid--to appreciate these finger puppet representations of the Hindu gods Brahma, Ganesha, Garuda and Kali. My brother-in-law gave these to us for Christmas (pre-kid. he's an artist.), and I think they'll...
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11:50 PM
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Ben Macneil reminded me* of Giant Microbes, plush toy versions of disease-causing germs and viruses. This one here is the rhinovirus, which causes colds. The collection runs from the benign (halitosis, athlete's foot) to the calamitous (ebola and the black...
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10:18 AM
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June 5, 2004
I've been meaning to post about Ugly Dolls for a while. We just got a couple for a friend's kid's first birthday, and they're really soft and cuddly. But the main thing they've got going for them is they're not...
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4:08 PM
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May 31, 2004
Some friends with a 4-month old kid recommended we get this silly-looking Lamaze Multi-Sensory Clutch Cube; their kid totally loved it, they said, it's by far his favorite toy. Well, we got one, and our kid loves it. At first,...
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8:22 AM
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May 19, 2004
So sue me. It turns out I did not invent fatherhood, and Daddy Types is not the first search for gear for kids. Kid Size: The Material World of Childhood is an exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum that explores three...
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12:29 PM
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April 24, 2004
[Post delayed a couple of days due to wild Earth Day revelry] A friend gave the kid this eco-friendly stuffed puppy, handmade in Vermont from unbleached, undyed, organic cotton by a company called Peace Toys. They're the original manufacturer of...
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10:34 AM
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March 16, 2004
Melissa and Doug make wooden toys, including the kind of blocks you think you remember your parents playing with. They're smooth-sanded and plain, and they pack neatly into a little wooden crate for storage. (As if. These things are gonna...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 PM
Although you'd never know it from most baby/kid stores, kids and good design don't have to be mutually exclusive. And Modern Seed is an online-only shop that proves it. There are classic design toys like House of Cards by Ray...
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Posted by greg at
9:39 PM
