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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.