More fun than a canned ham, this flip-top storage tin has a train set inside, with a plastic steam engine, tender, boxcar and caboose, as well as a 12-piece track that forms a 10" x 22" oval. You add a "AA" battery and you're the engineer. 

Spin the ribbed 7" handle of this hand-powered prop between your palms, and watch it take off. (If it lands instead of flying off into the wild blue yonder, reverse the spin!) Neon handle, bright, metallic-flaked 8" propeller, and a lift so high we imprinted it with our logo - the airborne Jarvis. It's all plastic, and won't decapitate anyone, but it's still for 10-year-olds and up.

Go fly a kite. We highly recommend this rainbow-colored nylon parafoil version, measures 20" x 23" at its widest with a 14-foot tail (over three times longer than a tiger's) on a spindle with a couple hundred feet of string. Includes a carrying pouch, too, making it a very practical, portable parafoil.

Dirt-cheap fun for the kids--at home and at school. Attach the (3) 5-1/2" long plastic blades to the whistling nozzle, blow up the little balloon and watch the world's cheapest helicopter fly away. Paul says it demonstrates Newton's third law, but he says a lot things. Great for classroom demos. Paul not included.

A big improvement on actual cats, this one will actually respond to you. Put it in direct sunlight and it waves a paw in a happy hello. Think reclining hello kitty, but with a vaguely Garfleldish look. Kind of like the waving cat statues you see in Asian restaurants, but with a twist. Paul, who bought this one, says it just doesn’t get any whimsicaller than this. Bonus: it is said to bring luck and good fortune. See good luck cat in action. Click!

This old-timey looking wooden rubber-band pistol has a ratcheting hammer that lets you load several rubber bands at once. Comes with (6) rubber bands, but you know how rubber bands are--they're everywhere.

THE American classic novelty item (even ahead of the whoopee cushion and rubber vomit, we think) is a set of chattering choppers. Auto-dentures. Invented by Eddy Goldfarb in 1949, a man who made the Toy Industry Hall of Fame ahead of Milton Bradley, these are, not to put too fine a point on it, the sine qua non of gagdom, the ne plus ultra of spring-driven frivolity. Ours are 2-1/2" dia, with a wind-up key.

Rattlebacks are plastic semi-elliptical shapes, 3-7/8" long, that illustrate Newton's laws of motion, while mystifying kids. Set them down (the rattlebacks, not the kids) and their offset center of gravity makes them spin. Spin them in one direction and they stop and reverse themselves. You get a package of (10) in blue, along with a lesson plan and suggested activities.

By popular demand from every 12-year-old in our database, our remote-control rat is back, this time in a new, improved model with an infrared sensor on his little rat back. Measures an alarming 7-1/2” long (almost 11” with the tail) and is powered by (5) “AAA” batteries, which you’ll have to add, because it’s your rat. Improved 25-foot range will reach well into your mother’s walk-in closet or the teachers’ lounge. In luxurious black velour (another first), it runs straight ahead and spins backwards. The red LED eyes just add to the rodential verisimilitude.

Behold our version of the gravity-fed sliding woodpecker. Ours is a 1-3/4" standard black woodpecker, not counting his cute red plume, slowly pecking his way down a 16-1/2" tall metal rod. His super-rapid, lifelike pecking action is strangely compelling to adults, and draws belly laughs from toddlers!

If Werner Von Braun had used these, London would have just gotten wet. Have some good clean fun with this Hydrotech" Aquazone" rocket set. You get (2) 5- 3/4" tall water rockets and (1) 8- 3/4" rocket, plus (2) filling funnels and a piston pump for power. Includes a 6-page pamphlet on rocketry. For ages 8+, for good clean outside fun.

Shoot one of these little plastic arrow-helicopter-rotor gismos straight up with the included rubber band launcher and watch it soar as far as 300 feet! A fun outdoor toy that grows in sophistication as you learn how to adjust the arrowcopter for wind conditions and flight patterns: distance, return, circular descent etc. Our "each" contains a package of two (2). Recommended for kids over the age of 9.

Hold the bottom onion-shaped bulb of this 4" glass toy in your hand and watch the liquid (green, red, blue or purple, we'll pick) magically bubble up into the top chamber and keep on bubbling like the dickens, as your grandmother used to say. The magic is ethyl alcohol and physics. WARNING! The glass if fragile and the liquid is nasty. If you drop the thing in the kitchen it will eat the finish off the tile and permanently stain the floor, so don't let the kids handle this item unsupervised.

The manufacturer calls it the Thunder Tube". We call it indispensable for the amateur Foley operator. It's a 7" long x 2-1/2" dia PVC tube with a resonant head at one end attached to a 17" long x 3/16" dia extension spring. Shake it, scrape it, wiggle it, use your palm to muffle it and you generate creaks, deep warbles, rumbles, weird heterodyne-ish gong effects, wa-wa's, rude noises, and, yes, realistic thunder. A perfect musical companion to your cuica and rain stick--and good, clean fun around the house. Don't make a sound-track without it.

Most of them are, of course, but the really cute ones turn out to be solar. You can spot solar owls because they wear yellow pants with red polka dots, which nocturnal owls don’t have the nerve for. This owl is just 3-5/8” tall, but will swing it’s head darn near 180 degrees for as long as the sun shines.

We're fresh out of weasels, and since you're a fan of foam ball poppers in general you probably already have our cow popper. Now try this unicorn popper! Stands 6-1/2" tall (it's a giant among lesser unicorns) and comes with (6) rainbow-colored foam balls, which is all they use in unicorn land.

Staggeringly silly, but still a half-ton-o’-fun on slow days in the office. The 6-3/4" long plastic “gun” has a little pencil for a barrel, and the (3) clay pigeons are really 1-3/4” long pigeon-shaped erasers. Comes with (4) rubber bands for ammo. Middle-schooler alert: the whole set will be in your teacher’s desk drawer before you can even reload.

Introducing the Aeromax 2000. This update of the classic parachute toy has mesh under the canopy instead of lines, so it's tangle-free. Big 20" chute floats the little 3-1/2" tall trooper gently to the ground. In assorted colors, which we'll pick because we have really good color sense.