BEST SELLERS

Before robots take over completely, it might be a good idea to learn a little about how they work. Start with this Elenco® Joysticks Robotic Arm Kit. After building it, you’ll understand mechanical basics and be able to watch the inner parts working in tandem (mechanical rods, planetary gears and transmission) as you control the arm’s (4) axes in (8) different directions simultaneously and easily with (2) joysticks. Pick up objects of different sizes and shapes with the convertible (2)- and (4)-claw grippers. Fully constructed, the machine measures approx 20” long x 10-1/2” high x 6-1/2” wide. Requires (2) “D” batteries, not included, but we’ve got them for you. Ages 10+

The Gidget Widget stress and anxiety relief gadget picks up where fidget spinners left off. It’s a handsome plastic cube, about an 1-1/4" per side, with calming colored buttons and dials for your fidgeting pleasure. This is the model with all new fidget functions, including dial, scroll, slide, click, flip and jump. Sounds like a junior high on a Friday afternoon, but it’s all at your fingertips anytime you need or want it. Ages 6+.

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. Tin and train car colors may vary. You add a "AA" battery and you're the engineer. 

These, squishy dinosaur eggs are egg-shaped and XL egg-size, but the thing that makes it so cool is when you squeeze them, a baby dino appears in the bubble that pops out of the “X” in the end. Our resident paleontologist and Amazing Critters Department Head, Grace, has personally identified grey, green and yellow eggs, all about 2-3/4” x 2”, containing baby triceratops, pteranodons and t-rexs. How fun are they to squeeze? We started writing this description 47 minutes ago. Just a few more squeezes and we’ll be done. There.

Painters need paints, right? This set of (24) acrylic paints from Zenacolor® includes cobalt blue, French ultramarine, Prussian blue, cerulean blue, crimson red, scarlet red, vermillion, orange, beige, ocher, primary yellow, lemon yellow, Titanium white, lamp black, gray, raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, burnt sienna, violet, hooker's green (hey, we don’t name the colors), veridian green, sap green and emerald green. Tubes are 12ml each, and come in a nice 9” x 7-1/2” storage box.

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.

Does anyone need to be told what a Slinky(tm) toy is?? Okay, it is a very slack spring, 2-7/8" dia x 2-1/2" long, compressed. It will stretch out to about 5 or 6 feet long without deforming. That's the boring part. The interesting part is that it "follows" itself. Slosh it from hand to hand. Put in on the top step of stairs, flip the end down a step, and watch it walk down stairs, or down an incline. Believe us, no childhood (or adulthood) is complete without an original steel Slinky(tm). It was hard for us to find it, but we are glad we did. You should be too.

This hard-plastic ducky is like a rubber ducky, but with a pull-back mechanism that makes it roll on its own. Who doesn’t love a pull-back duck? In authentic rubber-ducky yellow with (2) rubber wheels on the bottom, independent suspension and no fuel required. No batteries, either. This thing basically drives itself. Let’s see a rubber ducky do that.

The ingenious Sir Isaac Newton spent years coming up with his laws of motion, but now your kid can learn all about them fast by building (8) working models in this Discovering STEM Newton’s Law snap-together kit from Engino®. Models include a ballistic catapult, a gravity fan, a collision car, a moving cabin, a balloon-powered plane and a dragster. Included booklet provides detailed explanations of the different scientific principles, and a quiz section is also available to challenge your kid’s newly acquired knowledge! Also has an interactive 3D app.

Here’s a fidget toy you can fidget with while you’re fidgeting! This bright, multi-colored ring expands and retracts, from 5" dia to just under 10”, and works well as a flying disc or halo-like headpiece. Its shapes, colors and movements will keep active minds and hands occupied for hours. Easy to store or slip into a bag, at about 1/2” thick.

Decidedly clever little gizmo reminiscent of our ever popular tornado tube. It consists of a plastic sleeve into which one screws two empty 2-liter soda bottles. Inserted into the connecting tube are clear plastic "straws", one extending toward the bottom of each bottle. Fill one bottle 3/4" full of water, colored if you like, invert the duo, and watch water spew from the top end of the top "straw". It is all because of the vacuum created as the water drains from one bottle to the other and is a great physics demo item. It looks as though the water defies gravity. Instructions/description are on the package.

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.

A bunch of seagulls is a flock, but a bunch of crows is a murder. Hey, we don’t come up with this stuff—blame the ornithologists. If you’re into black crows, and want a murder of them, these rubbery plastic figurines are nicely detailed, and approx 2” x 1” each, in different poses. You’ll get (4) in a handsome 3-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 1-1/2” box with a nest in it. Black crows only—no flocks of seagulls, eagles or yardbirds.

Back in the days when technology was a good guy, and cereal boxes came with real toys, kids got diving submarines that they charged with baking powder and played with in the bath tub. Now kids can have the same fun again. We have found a (gray!) submarine, about 4-1/2" long, that can dive and surface up to a dozen times with a single charge of the baking powder that you get to supply. Comes with instructions and made in the USA.

Zivko the Robot is back in stock! 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+.

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.

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.

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.