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

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+.

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.

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.

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. 

Introducing the Aeromax 2000. This update of the classic parachute toy has mesh under the canopy instead of lines, so it's tangle-free. Big 20" chute floats the little 3-1/2" tall trooper gently to the ground. In assorted colors, which we'll pick because we have really good color sense.

Meet mini floppy! (AKA wacky waver) You know floppy. You see his larger family members all over the place, promoting sales and events of all kinds. Floppy measures a mini 12" tall, has a battery operated fan in the base, and operates on a single 9-volt battery that you supply. (Available here) Floppy is a great attention grabber and gets giggles from Grandma or the baby sitter. Get yours today!

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 assorted colors, along with a lesson plan and suggested activities.

If Werner Von Braun had used these, Londonwould have just gotten wet. Have somegood 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 funnelsand a piston pump for power. Includes a 6-page pamphlet on rocketry. For ages 8+, for good clean outside fun.

Even if you're not a female flamingo yourself, you can still hatch an adorable hot pink flamingo. You’ll get an equally hot pink, 4-1/4" egg, which you immerse in water and wait a couple-three days while it hatches and grows to 8”+ tall. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Take Pinky out of the water and it will shrink back to egg-size and regrow endless times. (The egg, however, will be history.)

Just like our famous cow popper, but this guy is a 5-1/4” tall rubber axolotl with a mouth big enough to take a 1-1/8” dia foam ball and spit it 20 feet when you squeeze it, as you will want to do. And if you’re axolotl-ignorant, they’re neotenic salamanders, the world’s cutest amphibians, and they also answer to “Mexican walking fish.” Ours come with (6) foam balls for your axolotl-squeezing convenience. For ages 4+.

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.

Hold the bottom onion-shaped bulb of this 4" glass toy in your hand and watch the liquid (green, red, blue or purple, we'll pick) magically bubble up into the top chamber and keep on bubbling like the dickens, as your grandmother used to say. The magic is ethyl alcohol and physics. WARNING! The glass if fragile and the liquid is nasty. If you drop the thing in the kitchen it will eat the finish off the tile and permanently stain the floor, so don't let the kids handle this item unsupervised.

It's real name is the Rock Dove, and it ought to be the national bird. Doesn't fly south for the winter like those wimpy geese, never swoops out of the sky to eat unsuspecting bunnies like bald eagles, just minds its own business and eats whatever you drop on the El station platform. It's not even bald. This hard vinyl version is gray with a rosy breast, and it measures 5” beak to tail. Wind it up and watch it bounce and bob around. Take it home, and it's a homing pigeon.

We love Kikkerland® because they come up with surreal stuff like this 8-1/2" tall DIY Critter, a mechanical stickperson kit for the ages. You assemble the wire-frame shaking toy with a wind-up gearbox and offset cam that allows it to “walk.” Critter legs are roughly the thickness of a heavy paper clip. This kit is not for little kids! Ages 16+.

Actually, your chickens, plural, since our each is multiples of lovely, plucked and naked chickens in full chicken color. And unlike the real thing, these are small enough to carry in your pocket, because you never know. In molded plastic, you pick the dozen micro-mini pullets at 1-1/2” long, or the 3-pack of 3” long birds. Either way, you’re prepared for any chicken emergency you’re likely to encounter.

From Insect Lore, these rubber band-powered, wind-up butterfly toys will delight any child of wonder, and probably some adults, too. Measure approx 5” x 5” each, and actually fly. For extra fun, wind one up and place it inside a greeting card. When the card opens, the butterfly escapes. You’ll get (2) different colors and/or designs, ranging from yellow to orange to blue. Ages 4+.

Behold our version of the gravity-fed sliding woodpecker. Ours is a 1-3/4" standard black woodpecker, not counting his cute red plume, slowly pecking his way down a 16-1/2" tall metal rod. His super-rapid, lifelike pecking action is strangely compelling to adults, and draws belly laughs from toddlers!