Annoyed With Toy Companies Trying To Poison Your Kids? Make Your Own Toys.
Craft magazine has put together a round-up of safe toys that you can make for your kids. The downside is that you have to stop being lazy and learn to do something yourself. (Awful, we know.) The upside is that unless you're buying the cloth from New Zealand, the odds of you poisoning your own child are low.
Natalie from Craft says:
"With al the recent scary news of the toy recall, now more than ever is the time to take back our children's safety in our own hands and have fun in the process by crafting our own toys! To get you started, here's a roundup of some great toy projects you can make."
It's not a solution to the contamination problem, but it might actually be sorta fun.
Safe Toys You Can Make [CRAFT via boingboing]
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Comments:
I thought making toys was one of those famous Jobs Americans Won't Do.
Hey! Kids of America! Its handpainted wooden ball-in-a-cup! Who needs constant electronic video stimulation when you have ball-in-a-cup?
I teach little-little girls how to sew (doll clothes, mostly) through the local park district and I am SHOCKED how many sign up for my class every time. Kids want to make things too!
I can't crochet to save my life but those plushies and softies are totally kid-doable.
Kids or not, everyone make some 'Gak'. Its great fun and cheap. I've done it as a team building event to kick off meetings in corporate america as well as entertaining the nieces. It is a gooey, long protein that is fun to play with - previously marketed by Nickelodeon - [www.trans-man.org]
note - can be tough to clean up if your not careful...don't get it on the carpet...
I just bought the authentic replica "Log". It's big, it's heavy it's wood. Only cost me $99.
Yes, I'm annoyed with foreign countries trying to poison my kids. Everybody knows that parents are more equipped to poison their own kids themselves!
What rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, and over the neighbors dog?
It's great for a snack, it fits on your back...
The best possible toy you could get for your child is an empty refrigerator box. Those things are like imagination cocaine to them.
I miss tinker toys and lincoln logs! Being raised by my grandparents I would play jacks, pick up sticks, and tiddly winks all day with my grandmother! Reminds me of an experience lately with a nephew of mine. 6 yrs old, didn't want any fancy toys, he would only play with anything new for a few minutes... but we bought him a yo-yo. My husband taught him how to yoyo... three days later he was still running around the house with his yo-yo. He had to stand on a chair to get the full "up and down" but dangit he was PROUD of his ability to yoyo.
oh, I dunno. I knew a kid who only really had a roll of ductape and sandpaper. At the age of three or four, he could sand down sticks he found and duct tape them together to make swords or gatling guns or whatever he liked that had that general shape.
Handmade toys are fantastic for children. You can even involve the child and help bring out their creative side.
Making stuff is good for you!
@Trillium -- Tinker toys are back! I just saw a huge display of them at Costco. Yay!
Lincoln Logs are made in China these days and older sets can be pricey on ebay (I suppose, though, that vintage Logs are just as subject to unhealthy paints and finishes as the newer Chinese-made variety).
We just bought a Lincoln Log-esque toy from a company called Roy Toy that are marked as having been made in the U.S. Maine-based Taurus Toys makes super cool marble run components that are compatible with Duplos - they've been a hot number at our house this summer, too. For anything-but-China, Lego and Ikea are good sources, as well as any number of Waldorf-inspired cottage companies. Oh, and K'Nex are US-made, too.
But, yeah, making toys is cool and fun. My daughter loves the Dollar Store puppets she received from Grandma last year so I'm making her a puppet theater that will fit into a doorway with tension rods. She's also been on the receiving end of a homemade tutu, beanbags, salt dough "food" for her play kitchen and all kinds of other made-at-home-with-love stuff. Warms the bottom of my heart, it does, when she complains that her cousins' toys are "too loud".
Not a single new post on the weekend...sad
When I was a kid we made stuff. When I buy gifts for children it is usually stuff like Sock Monkey Kits [www.SockMonkey.net] or Taurus Toys like above.
Believe it or not, you have to teach kids how to be creative if they have been exposed to TV or Video Games most of their lives.
I'm making cthulhu plushies for everyone for the holidays. Well, everyone at my house.
You honestly can't tell me that just because it's labor day weekend that you haven't made any new posts?
It's just labor day... do some labor!
Poison your OWN kids!
It's fun! AND entertaining!!!
:D
Hmmm... $8.00 for a poisonous action figure, five years ago, Kbee toys would have sales like 3 for $10 or 2 for $5, poison free. I guess poison is valued added. Then again, its probably cheaper to buy real poison though, and most of the cool action figures back then were cool colors, not neon yellow and orange
Look on the bright side....your kid dies so you no longer have a little brat running around and you have a huge lawsuit so you're set for life... I see no downside to the Chinese poison train.
But, if we make the toys for our children what reason will parents have anymore to get into fistfights while fighting over a "hard to find toy" in the aisles of the local "Overpriced and Poisoned Toys B US" store at Christmas time?
Oh silly me, I forgot, there will STILL be children's sporting events!
I don't understand why people aren't doing this in the first place. Buying a commercial toy just means spending money on junk that's probably a licensed product designed to get your kid to recognize the character on another box and get you to buy more overpriced stuff.