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. 

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.

Why, when we were your age all we had to play with was a stick and an old tin can. But never mind that--now you too can make your own fun in the form of actual wind-up toys with this small wind-up motor with an attached pair of 9/16” dia wheels on a 1-1/8” wheelbase. The winding shaft is 1-1/8” long and the whole shebang measures 1-1/4" x 5/8" x 1/2" and has a good long running time of approx 10 seconds.

Cutest drone ever. Shaped, and sized, like a chicken egg, just over 2-1/2” tall . Opens up to a 5” wide quad-rotor drone with a range of approx 100 feet, and it’ll fly for approx 6 minutes on a 45-minute charge. Features auto-hover and 360-degree roll, headless remote and (3) speeds. Includes charging cord, spare blades and a small screwdriver. Has a 2.4 GHz transmitter that uses (2) “AAA” batteries.

AKA hand boiler. An exotic bit of hand blown glass with a bulb at top and bottom connected by some zippy tubing that spirals, loops, and/or jogs. In the closed system is some colored liquid (methylene chloride) that is very light. Hold the lower bulb in your hand and as the liquid is warmed it pushes through the loops to the upper chamber. When all the liquid is pushed out of the lower bulb, expanding air will bubble through the tubing making it appear that the liquid is boiling. WARNING! The glass is fragile and the liquid is nasty. If you drop the thing on the kitchen tile, it will eat the finish off the tile and the stain in the liquid will permanently stain the floor, so don't let kids handle this item unsupervised. About 7" tall, it is a favorite in our stores.

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.

Good clean fun for trips to the beach or pool. This 4-3/4” rubber shark has a small human foot sticking out of its maw. Give him a good squeeze and the leg pops out up to the shin. Quickly repeated squeezes make it look like the shark is having lunch.

From France comes this fun mechanical plastic bird that really flies by flapping its wings. It is about 8" long and has a wingspan of 16" tip to tip. Snap the wings in place, wind up the rubberband drive and toss it gently into the air on its maiden flight. It flies up to fifty yards with a satisfying fluttering sound. 

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.