assembling toys, deconstructing them

I talked with a friend about his son's birthday toys. He said he's constantly coming up to him and asking him to fix a Transformer Dinosaur toy. As I mentioned earlier in a post about Legos, many toys seem sturdier than they really are. The toys purchased at the dollar-type stores are often of such poor quality they're only good for an afternoon. But the books and workbooks you can buy there are often much higher quality.

Parents are always fixing toys these days. But as the dad and I agreed, we could use an electronics or engineer degree just to get some of these things working properly.

We have a large selection of Playmobils in our house. Still, for small fingers they are sometimes difficult to put together. But most of them have smiling faces, even though they may be "bad guys." We like that there's more imagination involved in these. Playmobil characters also have a weird sensibility when it comes to U.S. history. It's filtered through a German lens, so sometimes it's odd. But in general, Playmobils are a lot of fun to have in the house. Everything except the space toys have been very sturdy. They lead to imaginative play for girls and boys. Check the shopping links for my favorite online site to buy Playmobil. Puffins is a cute store in Madison, Wisconsin. The online site has many other of the educational-type toys.