TOY BOX RULES
THE RATHER BRILLIANT British online lifestyle store Cox & Cox has launched a specialist toy arm, called Toy Box. Modelled “on the little toy shop, that barely exists now on the high street, that is a treasure trove of both beautiful and quirky toys,” Toy Box features the likes of old-fashioned Tiddlywinks sets (pictured below), giant bubble makers, and craft/making sets for boys and girls [such as the Skyrail engineering kit pictured bottom, £33].
We asked its co-founder Michelle Follett Holt - mother to two girls aged 11 and 15, “who are my best product testers and severest critics but who think it is the best job for a mum to have in the whole wide world!” - how to deal with the nightmare that can be living with toys; why we’re all coveting the toys of our childhoods; and what to buy and not to buy for your little ones…
LittleBig: Why do nostalgic / timeless toys of our own childhoods seem to have a renewed relevance and popularity now?
MFH: Parents are naturally more inclined to join in with a game they are familiar with. Many of the retro toys that are having a comeback are great at encouraging family participation which is so important. Most children I think, given the choice, would prefer to play tiddlywinks with Dad than play a new game alone. Traditionally when times are tough people tend to focus more on the past and this comes through even in toys.
LB: What are your personal favourites in the Toy Box collection?
MFH: I love the Dragon Bonz [pictured top, £20]. It is an unusual, funky toy that is great value and it allows the child’s imagination to run wild as they make up a host of scary-looking dragons with the 55 weird and wonderfully shaped pieces that push together. I also adore the Russian Nesting Dolls [pictured right, £22]. They are a gorgeous modern take on the traditional in fabulous fresh colours.
LB: Does it surprise you what toys children pick for themselves?
MFH: Sometimes as adults I think we can over judge toys and might consider them as being unattractive, cheap looking, unproductive, un-educational, etc. Children don’t make this judgement and can love a product just because it is fun and amuses them - just what toys should do! I wasn’t quite sure about our Nellie the Rocking Elephant, £55, at first but every child who saw it, including my way-too-old 11-year-old, sat on it and adored the way you can pull the cord and her trunk comes up and squeeze her ear and she trumpets! Read the rest of this article
Posted 2 December 2009 in Toys
HANNO THE GORILLA: by David Weeks
“I FELT LIKE a modern day Geppetto,” admits American designer David Weeks - perhaps best known in the UK as the designer of the Semana leather chair for Habitat - of the process behind creating his new weighty wooden gorilla toy character for New York design outfit Areaware. “When I was making the initial prototype I was bringing home a new version every few nights. My son loves them. He still plays with them to this day.”
Originally Weeks - whose graphic, modern furniture lines are sold by Ralph Pucci - had intended to create a robot figure for Areaware that was somewhere between the Danish wooden toy figures so well loved by design critics and the Kid Robot figures, but, says Weeks, “as I sanded the articulated parts, it began to evolve into a gorilla.” Read the rest of this article
Posted 5 February 2009 in Toys
FOCUS: Esthex Soft Toys
ESTHER SCHUIVENS (LEFT) IS just 30, and yet has a fully fledged family (3-year-old twins, Hannah and Moos), under her belt as well as her sweet and quirky handmade soft toys collection, Esthex.
The company sounds as unplanned and fortuitous as the arrival of her twins. In her last year of art school in Maastricht, The Netherlands, the Dutch art textiles student participated in a contest at Hema, a large department store, to design a soft toy. Esther didn’t win. But, “It was SO much fun to do,” she says from her Belgian home. More importantly, she sold some of the toys and discovered the selling bug: “I discovered I loved the idea of people buying your product and taking it home.”
Esther went back to the drawing board (her original design was a long-armed monster), and came up with the first Esthex dolls - pretty, endearing, kooky, infinitely original. A local shopkeeper loved them, and, encouraged, a few months later she had an order for 300, and had to seek out help from her current (and socially responsible) makers in Bangkok. “I’m not the best sewer at all,” she admits.
Posted 20 November 2008 in Toys
INDIAN SUMMER: Top Five Tipis
MOVE OVER WENDYHOUSES, the Tipi (Tepee, Teepee, Wigwam, whatever) is the new mother of fantasy undercover play. It is all, says Beth Davies, the 38-year-old owner of Native Play Designs, a children’s tipi design company based in Newport, down to the fact tipis “have captured a desire to escape from modern day, gadget riddled living.” Parents, says she, “on the whole crave an escape from the technology that has infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. The dream of living outdoors with bare necessities and no reception seems to come together in the romantic silhouette of the Tipi.”
As for the kids, the appeal is that “children love a den. And ours in 100% cotton are a refreshing antidote to garish polyester pop-ups; they’re cooler inside as well.” [ED: Ah yes, we remember with fondness the sweltering heat inside those plastic wendyhouses of yesteryear.] “Give a child an imaginative play environment and a few simple toys and watch their imagination run away with them,” concludes Davies, whose own interest in a modern play version of the tipi came from “nostalgia and childhood memories of hours spent desperately trying to tie sheets around bamboo poles.”
Posted 2 September 2008 in Toys
PROFILE: ZidZid Kids
Photography & Styling: Marc Holden and Claire Bingham
EX-TEACHERS Julie Klear (American) and husband Moulay Essakalli (Moroccan) are ZidZid, a charming design company based in the heart of Marrakech.
Merging European and American sensibilities with Moroccan handicraft techniques, they make tiny poufs, soft toys, babouches, storage, and bags (see the aeroplane bag, pictured left) - all hand-stitched in the house next door to the duo’s home, which they share with their children, Noor and Zak. The range is both growing fast (more shoes and books are next), and is guaranteed to charm your little one with its “Moroccan flair.” Read the rest of this article
Posted 1 September 2008 in Designer Profiles, Toys
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