My highlights from The London Toy Fair
In the past week, four-year-old Big Girl has been hugging a leaflet with pictures of the cute and cuddly Bush Babies from Golden Bear Toys. She’s never seen Bush Babies before, but she’s already a fan of the magical little creatures with wobbly eyes that are yet to be released.
Bush Babies were one of the highlights at the Golden Bear Toys stand when I went for a breakfast there at The London Toy Fair last week, and after seeing Big Girl’s reaction to the pictures I can see the new collectable brand with cuddly Bush Babies who live in a dream tree becoming a hit with the target audience of girls aged 5 to 9.
From Golden Bear Toys, I also adore the new In the Night Garden baby range with soft toys and soothers, among others. The new collection gives the charming In the Night Garden characters a nice makeover with more soft colours.
After reviewing My 1st JCB tractors last year, I was excited to see the Golden Bear Toy range being expanded this year with some cool new talking toys and fun water squirters with mud spots that disappear in hot water.
Another highlight at the breakfast was of course meeting Mr Tumble, and this year will see the release of a new colourful Mr Tumble track set from Golden Bear Toys.
The other booths I visited at The London Toy Fair included Learning Resources, a brand I love because of their collection of educational toys that make learning fun. I started buying a set from Learning Resources to reinforce number recognition at home when Big Girl was younger, and I’ve since reviewed a number of their products.
At The Toy Fair this year, I could see how the brand had expanded their offerings for toddlers and preschoolers, and there are a number of fun things to get little ones started on their educational journey, such as the new boat, plane and car building set and the Peekaboo Barn Game (£25) based on the Peekaboo Barn app.
I also think preschoolers will like the cool new smoothie maker in the New Sprouts range of durable pretend toys, and for school age children, I liked the look of the fun new sight word game Sight Word Swat (£14), the new Gears Gears Gears! Space Explorer Building Set (£35), and the new 3D Mental Blox Jr puzzle (£20) to encourage critical thinking.
We’re also playing more and more board games at home now that Big Girl is getting older, and Learning Resources has a selection of new ones this year, including a castle-themed new educational board game called Royal Roundup (£15), which I could see Big Girl liking.
After visiting Learning Resources, I had a chance to catch up with Orchard Toys, and in the past years we’ve bought a number of their puzzles and games to help prepare Big Girl for school. Now that she’s in school I particularly liked the new Match and Spell Next Steps set, which follows on from Match and Spell and looks brilliant for practising spelling, offering an alternative to the standard worksheets and workbooks.
Orchard Toys also has a wide range of two-piece puzzles for toddlers, and this year there’s a new cute Toys (£6.75) puzzle set with six 2-piece puzzles.
In addition to looking at educational toys, I also visited Little Brian to see the new metallic and glow-in-the-dark paint sticks, which look like chunky crayons but are mess-free paint.
I wish I could have stayed at the buzzing trade show for the full three days, but this year I only had a chance to go for a quick visit. My takeaway, however, is that the collectible toy trend for girls continues, and there are also more and more creative arts and crafts kits and exciting techie toys.
When I brought home the show newspaper and catalogues Big Girl quickly started to do her birthday wish list, which is getting longer by the minute and now also includes a new Sylvanian Families Ballet Theatre.
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