ADULT & KID TOYS

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. 

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.

Sunprints (or cyanotypes, or photograms) are everyone's favorite photo-sensitivity experiment, from third-graders to graphic artists and fine artists. You pick: The Sunprinters are a dozen 3-15/16" square sheets of photosensitive paper, an acrylic backing sheet and instructions. The large Sunprint Kit has (15) sheets of 12" x 7-3/4" photosensitive paper plus a clear acrylic sheet of the same size. Great for classroom demonstrations, and can be used to make prints from photo negatives as well as interesting effects from opaque or translucent objects. All you add is sunshine and water.

Hey, that’s like a frog that swallowed a flashlight. But also this kneadable and stretchy lab putty, which is puttier than slime and glows really brightly. Did we mention it’s bouncy? It comes in a tin, approx 3” dia x 1” deep, like shoe polish, except it’s more fun than shoe polish. Might even be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but it depends on the monkeys.

Squeeze this squishy version of the eight-legged tardigrade, aks moss piglet, aka water bear, and it takes up to (9) seconds to slowly morph back into shape while you feel your stress disappear like the cashews in a bowl of mixed nuts. Measures 4-1/2” long in green with the squeezability of a marshmallow. You probably don’t even know you need it, but you’ll know you needed it once you start squeezing it.

Satchel Paige said never look back, something might be gaining on you, but he was a pitcher, not a spy. We recommend checking behind you with these stylish black spy sunglasses with rear-view mirrors at the edges of both lenses. The flexible frame means one size fits all noggins. For ages 5+.

And we say that with a history of silly that’s virtually unmatched. You slip on this pair of lens-less glasses with the tiny bucket and ball on a string attached, and try, while looking like a demented chipmunk, to swing the little ball on its cord and drop it into the cup. With the classic styled black glasses, blue basket and orange ball, you will be filmed on a smart phone, it will be put on social media, and you will be famous for it for the rest of your life. Best to order a couple so you’re not alone.

is best done with the sacred mother of all novelty items, the original Whoopee Cushion. Marlon Brando owned one. Of course he did, they're both American classics, except the cushion was born in Toronto. Ours is the classic 8" version.

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.

Baseball is for the boys of summer, but American Bandstand is forever. Some of us cared about the infield fly rule, but the smart money cared a bunch more about Fabian, Otis Redding, Frankie Valli and the other immortals on Dick Clark's afternoon TV delight. Now you can collect them all and swap them with your friends. You’ll get a pack of collectible 1980's American Bandstand trading cards, each pack with (8) cards featuring different artists and groups, some with gold-foil signatures. Cards are approx playing-card size. You might get Jerry Lee Lewis, you might get The Turtles. All we know for sure is you are going to want a bunch of packs because there are a lot of different cards and it's gonna take a dozen Donna Summer cards to get a Bo Diddley, because, come on, Who Do You Love?

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.

A plastic pistol shaped toy that shoots slugs of raw potato. Push the barrel into a potato, break off the slug, aim and shoot up to fifteen feet. Loads of fun, environmentally harmless, and about as safe as any "projectile" toy can be!! Pulls apart for cleaning. For kids ages 5 and up.

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!

Lots of people had piano keyboard neckties in the '80s, but no one could play them--not even the piano players! That's because they weren't actual musical instruments. Can you imagine a time like that? Thankfully, those days are long gone. Our piano tie is a working keyboard with (8) different electronic notes that you can play through the tiny speaker hidden in the knot. Polyester and 16-1/2" long, the tie has a quick-release for easy attachment and removal. Also has an on-off switch, for when you decide you're done playing for the night. Runs on button cell batteries (included). Lessons not included, but trust us, you don't need lessons for this thing to kill at parties. Great addition to dad's neck tie collection.

Emergency underpants in a can. Says it all, doesn't it? Quite stretchable in a Tyvekish white fabric, "one pair fits most adults." They're hip-hugger, semi-bikini, translucent type drawers, so despite the smiling man wearing them and a red bow-tie on the can, some (insecure) guys might find these just a touch jeune fille-ish. "Safe, Sanitary, Secure." Says so right on the 3" x 1-1/2" x 2/3" flip-top metal can. Better buy (3) in case of a long weekend.

It’s blue, soft and squishy—and it flies. Yet it’s not a Smurf that’s been shot out of a cannon. It’s a flying disc with an LED light that flashes blue and red. Measures approx 5" dia x 1/8" at the edge and 1-1/2” at the center, where the light is. And no—just because it flies doesn’t mean it’s an LED Zeppelin.

No, it doesn't; it runs out. See for yourself with this hourglass full of iron filings. The steel base has a magnet, so time flies when the glass is on it, and the filings make pretty stalagmites. Stick a magnet on the neck, however, and you can stop time altogether. Glass is 5-1/2" tall on the base and filings run out in about 40 seconds (three trips make a two-minute egg) with the magnet, somewhat longer without it.

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.