Frequently Asked Questions

Why do we do what we do?

Seriously, own and operate a toy store?

 Okay, seriously, we get up every day and ask ourselves not "what are you wearing to work today?" but, "What play clothes are you gonna wear today?" It looks like I wore my I- think- I -might- play -knights- today clothes on this day! We need to know how well the toys are made, how authentic they look, and how easy they are to play with. In this case it looks like both the toys being tested ranked very highly! 

The best part of why we do what we do is that my friend comes in every Friday afternoon after he gets out of preschool and we often have a sword fight while wearing Pirate hats! Arrrggghh!!

 Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday!!!

Again, another great day to be me because we all get to sit around the play table and make different things that do different things!

We venture far and wide to Craftopia and back seeking just the right hands on craft project. 

I get to gather all the goodies and make the prototype every week. 

It gets pretty Wacky with tape, glue, scissors, and glitter!

Whaaa? Whaaaaat? 

What is this? A gift for me?

No silly, this is just one of the many birthday presents we get to gift wrap for the lucky birthday girl or boy!

We like to jazz up our packages as you can see by the kazoo attached to this one. The best part of giving a gift is the look on the person's face when they open it!

Did Ya Know?

Meet an Inventor!

Choon Ng is like a lot of other men in one respect: He had to put a ring on his wife's finger before she was on board for the next chapter of their life together.

From the end of the summer into the fall of 2010, Ng tried hard to convince his wife Fen Chan to let him sink all of their savings into a toy loom that turned small, colorful rubber bands into bracelets, charms and other jewelry. “She is the boss, she controls the money. It wasn’t easy to convince her. I was making lots of bracelets, rubber-band hair bands, wearable anklets, chokers, and she was kind of impressed but she wasn’t agreeing to invest,” says Ng, 45, who immigrated to the U.S. from Malaysia in 1991 to attend college at Wichita State University. She eventually saw how great this invention is!

There's a million different possibilities and a million different color combinations to choose from. Your creativity is your guide!

Boredom Busters

 Visit us (and many others today) at the Fairgrounds and explore art, Durango stores and much more all under one roof!

 Host an impromptu Hula Hoop contest!
Who can Hula Hoop the longest?
Who can Hula Hoop the trickiest?
Who has the coolest Hula Hoop?

Decorate your bike for no apparent reason except that you want to!

The possibilities are endless! Flowers, streamers, lights, the list goes on!

Flashback Friday

It helps when you have a store, a toy store perhaps, to travel to other places and look at how other people set up their stores, to look at what kind of stuff they have and to travel to giant convention centers to see what all the manufacturers have.

We've done that! We went to Anaheim California for our first show a couple years back! Wouldn't ya know, the hotel we stayed at was within walking distance of Disneyland? So, not only did we work hard at the toy show, picking out new toys, meeting new companies, and negotiating deals, we also had to work hard at playing at Disneyland!

What a fantabulous place for new ideas to bring home... we had to.....

Dinosaurs 101

  

Meet our own Cee Lo!

Coelophysis! SEE-lo- FIE sis! Or Cee Lo for short!

No relation to this guy! 

Cee Lo was a small, lightly-built dinosaur that walked on two long legs. This predator was about 9 feet long. He had light, hollow bones, a long, pointed head with dozens of small, serrated teeth, three clawed fingers on its hands, and a long neck.

Two types of Coelophysis fossils have been found, 'robust' and 'gracile.' These two forms probably represent males and females. 
Did you know? A Coelophysis skull from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was brought into space by the space shuttle Endeavor on January 22, 1998. It traveled to the space station Mir. He was beat into space by almost 3 years by Mr. Maiasura.

Coelophysis lived  roughly 210 million years ago; it was one of the earliest-known dinosaurs. Cee Lo lived in what was then a seasonally dry, desert-like environment, a savanna-type climate perhaps like modern-day Kenya without the grasses.

Cee Lo Coelophysis was a carnivore, a meat eater. He may also have been a scavenger.
Cee Lo probably lived and hunted in packs; this is suggested by the existence of fossil bonebeds of hundreds of Coelophysis  found at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, USA.

Wacky Wednesday

It's a musical Wacky Wednesday 

as we convert some ordinary 

treasures into a Banjo!

We're not so sure our banjos will look as slick as 

this one but we're gonna give it a try!

What we need:

2 Paper Plates

3 or 4 large Rubber Bands

Paint stir stick

Tape, glue, glitter, stickers, markers

Start by connecting the 2 paper plates with glue or tape on top of one another. Attach the paint stir stick to the back of the plates with tape or glue so the tapered end is opposite the plates. Stretch the rubber bands across the plate from the stick side to the opposite side. The rubber bands will cross the back of the plates as well. Viola! Finish your instrument by personalizing it with glitter, stickers and markers. That's it, you're now ready to be the next Ricky Skaggs!

Word of the Day

Legendary

leh-jen-dare-eee

1. based on the nature of a legend

2. renowned, famous, celebrated, exalted, popular

We were talking about Bigfoot today and what makes him legendary!