NOVELTIES

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. 

Zivko the Robot. Our best selling STEM kit ever! Just call her (or him--it’s unclear and we don’t like to ask) “Zivko” because “the Robot” is her last name. Using just a screwdriver and side cutters, you build Zivko from this 107-piece S.T.E.M. kit. Set the mode for “Follow Me” or “Explore,” and Zivko will, yes, track you, or evade obstacles, respectively, via an infrared sensor and micro-controller programming. Interactive LEDs and sounds abound. Measures approx 5" x 5-1/2" x 6-1/2" when assembled with all (6) legs. You add (4) “AAA”s for power, which is the least you can do for someone this cute. Ages 10+.

Looking to upgrade and build a more advanced robot with more programming options? Try the Tobbie II!   https://www.sciplus.com/tobbie-ii-diy-coding-robot-kit-65185-p

Pop one of these roughly 1-1/4" dia stones into the toe of a sock, smash it with a hammer, and be the first person ever to see your real-as-Nature-makes-it geode!! Ninety percent of them have the familiar beautiful white crystals inside. Formed by volcanic action, they are found all over the world, but ours are from Mexico. There is no way to tell from the outside if they have crystal centers, but we will send you two just to raise your odds, and we haven't had a dud yet in our stores!! Much much more fun and satisfaction than buying one already cracked.

This set of alphanumeric stencils features 1-1/4" tall characters in a blocky, serifed typeface and includes the uppercase alphabet, numbers 0-9, a question mark, period, exclamation mark and ampersand. Each is on a separate, 2-3/4" tall x 1-3/4" wide red plastic tab.

Why yes, it is. There are three kinds of stunts, actually, in this box of (3) styro stunt gliders, complete with nose pieces and (3) sheets of stick-on numbers and aerial decorations. From Dabble Lab™, which says you'll learn engineering, basic physics and forces of flight. We say you'll have fun flinging them around the back yard.

Yes, we have The Amazing Live Sea Monkey® aquarium kit, just like the ones from the comic books. The (9) piece ocean zoo includes brine shrimp eggs, growth food, water purifier, plus an official plastic feeding spoon, 32-page handbook, life insurance policy, growth guarantee, and the plastic aquarium with built-in magnifiers for viewing your little friends, and a vented cover. We'll pick the aquarium color that best matches your decor. Great gift for those budding young marine biologists. Ages 6+.

That’s the decade when happiness was a pack of warm Shrinky Dinks®. Well, climb into the way-back seat with us and get this DIY Shrinky Dinks® pin kit to make nifty pins to put on your jean jacket. You’ll get (4) 5” x 8” frosted white shrink sheets, (2) 5” x 8” crystal clear sheets, (4) traceable art sheets, a holographic glitter sticker sheet, (8) decal sheets, and (8) pin-backs. Tracing pics include a bike, butterfly, pizza, French fries, panda, boom box and a cassette tape. Includes easy instructions. To really take yourself back to those golden days of the 1970s, ask your mom for permission to use the oven.

2" flywheel in a well-made metal frame. The trick is the same as it has been for 100 years. Wind the string through the spindle, pull it firmly to set the flywheel spinning, and perform effortless balancing magic on pencil tips, string tightropes, and the like. We tend to forget that bicycles and aircraft navigation both rely heavily on gyroscopic principles. It's never too early to tell the kids. Besides, it's fun.

…in your pocket, or are you just itching to see us? Pure surplus—these small extension back-scratchers were promo items—"Elect Jim Flummer!” or “Nevada Financial Concepts,” among many, many others—with ball points at the other end and caps with pocket clips. Don't know what happened to Jim, or in Nevada, but we've got 'em now. Some pen inserts might be gone, they could be any color in the rainbow, and some could use a drop of glue to keep from over-extending when you pull them out. But let's not look a gift (practically) scratcher in the tines. Also dandy for raking the sand in your desktop Japanese garden.

From THINKIQ, these fist sized colorful wooden puzzles will let you prove it; Or not. We'll pick one of the (6) available puzzles. Take a good look before you take yours apart, because there are no instructions—it's just you and your spatial IQ. No extra charge for the extra challenge—you’re welcome. About the size of a kids fist. 

This goldenesque rubber chicken can talk! Actually, squawk. Known as the Shrilling Chicken, it’s 11” long, in chicken-skin goldish color, complete with goose bumps, a squish me tag and don't forget the gaping mouth. Squeeze it for hours of humorous, attention-grabbing squawks. Work it into your stand-up routine or sneak it into parties. You’re hilarious!

About 30-40 highly polished stones, all shiny, translucent, or brightly colored, ranging from 3/4" long to 1/8" long. Great for mosaics, jewelry, or aquariums.

Forget that the 6-3/4" long body is festooned with Latin phrases and old maps. The stones/beads/glass inside the tube would make designing windows in cathedrals a snap. And hey, that's good work if you can get it. A nice gift for Rosetta window fans, and a must for that special bishop in your life.

Or the Swanee whistle. Whatever you call it, this little slide whistle (just consider it the smallest trombone in the universe) has an outsized musical history. No elevator has ever fallen in a cartoon without its accompaniment, and no jug band is complete without one, but Louis Armstrong also played one on his Hot Five recordings, and Ravel even required one in an opera score. In assorted plastic colors with a steel slide, 6-7/8" long x 1/2" dia.

These pretty, and pretty small, polished semiprecious stones include sodalite, tiger eye, quartz crystal, aventurine, amethyst, red jasper, fluorite, and rose quartz, plus a bonus assortment. You’ll get approx 1/2 oz of each in small corked bottles, 7/8” dia x 1-1/2” tall. The semiprecious pebbles are roughly 1/8” to 3/8” long.

Any Star Wars™ fans out there? Our newest Metal Earth model is of Kylo Ren’s Upsilon-class command shuttle. Yes, this is the one many of you have been waiting for since about 30 years after the Battle of Endor. It’s an epic, highly detailed, museum-quality, 3D steel sheet model, and it’ll be about 4” when finished. Then, all you’ll need is a prominent place to display it.

There's optical science and high school physics, and then there's making pretty colors with this little 4-1/2" x about 1" acrylic prism. It makes the same rainbows that the beveled edges on the glass in the French doors to your grandmother's living room used to make on the floor in the afternoon while she was making supper. If you had a grandmother with French doors with beveled glass, who made you supper. If not, you'd better buy this prism or you won't have anything to remember after she's gone.

Just the one, actually, but it’s been sliced in half so the pair is perfectly symmetrical and mighty pretty. Although ammonites have been extinct for 65,000,000 years, we’ve got their approx 1” dia fossils for you. Our each is a book-matched pair of polished ammonites fossils of a single critter halved and polished to a bright symmetrical shininess. The colors vary from light tan to dark brown and we’ll pick because we have impeccable ammonitical color-shade taste. And yes, they’re just screaming to become cuff-links or earrings.