Brrrr!

From Dan: As if the subzero temps of this past weekend weren't enough, today the heat in our store was broken! It was only 45 degrees when we opened at 10am. Sorry to everyone who had to endure our cold store. I think I got the worst of it. Had to take a nice long hot shower when I got home.

All this cold makes our upcoming family vacation to Mexico seem like a better and better idea. In case you haven't heard,

We will be closed January 23rd thru January 30th.

We hope to return rested, recuperated, and reheated!

New Sassy Knitwear Hats

Just in time for the really cold weather, we have these wonderfully hip hats for kids and babies from Sassy Knitwear. They're made in Minneapolis from organic cotton and recycled wool sweaters and they're just about the cutest things that you can put on a kid's head.

Each hat is different and they're only available in our store, not online. Stop in to check them out!

5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

As a toy store, we're all for safety. As parents, however, we found this video very interesting. It's a speech by Gever Tulley, founder of California's Tinkering School, which is dedicated to...um...taking things apart and putting them back together in new ways.

We wholeheartedly agree that kids should learn how to use a jack knife and how to treat fire respectfully. (Not so sure about the driving the car part, though). Tulley raises some compelling points which might help to overcome the fear that makes us limit our children in unhealthy ways.

By the way, Minneapolis has it's own wonderful version of Tulley's Tinkering School called Leonardo's Basement. Their classes are great!

Happy Holidays

As 2007 draws to a close, we want to wish our customers and our community a Happy Holidays and a wonderful 2008. We appreciate your business--Thank you for trusting us in what turned out to be a difficult year to buy a toy for a child.

Truly, this has been the busiest season ever for us and many of our toymakers. None of us thought that simple, well-made toys could become so popular! We're looking forward to a less frenetic pace in the coming months as we work on restocking the store and catching up with things we've overlooked these past couple of months.

May your new year be filled with love, happiness, and peace.

Thank you,
Millie, Dan, Jule, Abby, Riley, Duncan, and all of us at Peapods

Good Morning America's "Green Toys" Segment

This morning, the ABC News Program Good Morning America had a segment on Green Toys. They featured some Haba wood toys from Germany, some Fair Trade finger puppets from Peru, an Imagiplay puzzle from Sri Lanka, and some organic soft toys by Under the Nile from Egypt. All are pretty good toys, and we have many of them in our store.

The anchor guy asked his guest, "How do you know these are safe?" His guest, an environmentally-minded blogger answered, "Well, these are all made in the USA!" All these toys happen to be in the USA, but none were actually made here.

We do wish the media would get their stories right. It makes us wonder how many other stories they get wrong.

If you're looking for USA made toys, we still have them!

Toys and the Democratic Presidential Candidates

In today's NPR Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate, the candidates were asked, "Will you be buying your family toys made in China?"

Christopher Dodd replied "My toys are coming from Iowa!"

An obvious joke, but we thought the reality behind this comment deserved a second look. The only Iowa Toy manufacturer we know of is a tiny company called Scale Model Toys of Dyersville, IA. (I'm sure there's also a few other hobby toymakers or local Amish or Amana Colonies shops. Scale Model is the only company I know that sells to toy stores like us.)

They make die cast farm toys--we've carried their Farmall tractor in the past. (We kind of stopped by from them a couple of years ago because we had trouble getting an updated price list or getting through to a live person when we called.) Scale Model Toys was started by Joseph Ertl--from the same family that founded Ertl Toys in the 1940's.

To this day, Ertl is the far larger company, selling to Wal-Mart, Target and others under the names Ertl and RC2. Ertl stopped manufacturing in Iowa in the 1990's. They now manufacture mostly in China.

You may be familiar with some of RC2/Ertl's products. One of their most popular brands is Thomas the Tank Engine.

So, we recommend to Christopher Dodd that he can still buy (with some persistence) farm toys made in Iowa. In the meantime, what are we going to do to prevent another debacle like Thomas the Tank Engine? And how can we nurture American toy makers in a age of mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart? That's the question we'd like to have answered.

And hey--if anyone knows of other Iowa toymakers, let us know!

The Little Little Little Toy Company

As we look forward to 2008, we're wondering where the issue of Chinese-made toys is going. Will the toy industry and the government institute meaningful reforms, or will this string of recalled toys continue?

Supposing that toy companies will continue to seek higher profits and less expensive toys, it seems likely that most toys will continue to be made in China. Given that, what should a responsible Chinese-based toy maker look like? We offer the example of the Little Little Little Toy Company.

Little3 is headed by Peter Reynolds, who ran the American branch of Brio Toys from 1977 to 2002, working with specialty toy stores across the country. When Brio decided to pursue mass market stores like KMart, Peter left to found Little3. Little3 seeks to be

"a little toy company for little retailers who sell to little people."

Little3 toys are made in China, but Little3 emphasizes how their approach is different. In a recent email, Peter wrote that most companies manufacturing in China are concerned only with cost. "US importers spend a great deal of time arguing with providers over price and comparatively little over safety standards. Hardly surprising, and this reality is the underpinning for our current safety crisis...Too many companies are willing to take the long-term risk for our children in order to sustain their short-term market share and profit margins. "

He calls for higher standards and mandatory proactive screening of all toys by third-party labs to ensure that they continue to meet those standards. This is what Brio has always done and what Little3 does now.

Also, toy companies innovate mostly by offering "endless additions to basic toys even when they have nothing to do with any recognized child-rearing ideal". Thus, we have computer-chip driven pounding benches with blinking lights, blaring sounds, and claims of educational qualities.

So, Little3's statement of purpose is "that toys should be viewed as the 'tools of childhood,' not possessions to be acquired. Further....that less is more, that parents can choose fewer toys, better matched to challenge and engage their children. We need more companies to adopt a philosophy where the child comes first, not the income statement."

We have always argued that it's the toy companies who have created this safety crisis. And, if the toy companies are going to get us out of it, we think Peter Reynolds' Little Little Little Toy Company offers the right blueprint.

You'll find several Little3 toys in our store, including their new line of simple wooden trains (like Brio circa 1980) called Nuchi.