The UK bases toy and play furniture distributor are the exclusive distributors for P’kolino, and have enjoyed a fantastic first year, attracting such stockists as Amazon, John Lewis and Firebox during this time.

Their product ranges have also been featured on television on BBC1 as well as the Disney Junior Channel , and also a number of national interiors and parenting magazines.

Riding the wave of the ‘slow toy’ movement, the new kids on the block will be exhibiting the P’kolino range of award winning wooden puzzles and eco-friendly Arts and Crafts on stand G136 at the London Olympia Toy Fair.

The range features;

Crayons and pencils which are coloured with food dye and angular shaped so
they won’t roll away;

A stylish wall mounted Safari elephant easel, which releases the valuable floor
space taken up by traditional easels; and Silly Soft modular toddler seating that’s part furniture, part toy.

Also available will be the award-winning Multi Solution Puzzles, which were quickly snapped up by the London Design Museum and have proved popular with independent stores.

Gander Kids founder Maxine Lewis said: “We have gone from zero to 100mph in the space of one year.” 2012 will see us launching a number of new products and the LondonToy Fair will be a great opportunity for us as a small business to reach a wider audience.”

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This is the resting place for those tortured souls who have nowhere else to go, literally. You collect different characters and their coffins, then log onto the brilliant interactive website to create your own character, your own tombstones, and then bury them with epitaphs that you have created.

There are literally thousands of unburied bodies to inter using the codes from the Deadstone Valley collectable packs. On line you can visit all the graves and HGL expect to create the largest cemetery in the world with over 100 thousand burials in the first year alone!
Gory? Maybe – but market research shows that kids love it. The range launches with a collection of twelve characters which will be extended through the year

Come along to stand E39 at the London Toy Fair, Olympia from 24th-26th Jan and see the entire collection and meet the man behind the hottest toy products of the last decade.

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When you want to delight your children by giving them a great gift, it is worth considering getting them something that they are less likely to discard in the near future. If a toy is based entirely on a television show or a movie, then it is more likely that it won’t have much impact in a month’s time. There is probably another toy that will be of more, long term, interest.

Perhaps an educational game would be a good choice. While you might get the immediate reaction that you seek, if they do play it they could still be playing it in month’s time, or even longer. Traditional toys can also be good. If it was popular when you were a child and is still for sale, then it is something that they could play with for years, and you could get a chance to relive your youth.

Whatever the occasion, remember that there is nothing to say that a single big present is better than many small presents. A lot of the fun comes from the anticipation and the unwrapping.

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If that all sounds like nonsense to adults, to kids it is the latest playground obsession. As well as the game and the figures themselves, players can also collect character cards and weapons to help them become better players.

The game starts when two players from the opposing sides place their characters on the Ninjago Spinner and choose a weapon for them to fight with. The Spinner, as the name suggests, spins the two pieces towards each other and the winner is the last man standing.

Whoever wins each round doesn’t just get the glory, though; they also get to take their opponents character and weapon to add to their own army. Although the rules of Ninjago Spinners are very clear in stating that once a contest has been finished, all pieces should be handed back to their original owner!

Should both pieces fall off their Spinner at the same time, the game is a tie and both players can try again. On the other hand if both survive the  initial spin, both players simply try again with their original pieces.

Each contest lasts for a previously agreed number of rounds, or when one contestant has managed to take all their opponents’ figures and weapons. The battle cards that come with each character can add more detail to the contest, although at the beginning younger children may want to just concentrate on operating the Ninjago Spinner itself, before making the game more complex.

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Those who cared for their monsters the best were rewarded with ‘rox’ which is a type of currency to use in the game. This allows the players to buy additional things for their monsters and special decorative items within the game.

Since its launch the membership of the website has grown rapidly. After one year over 10 million people were registered with the website and in the middle of last year membership reached 50 million people. The success of the website has meant that many other products related to it were launched, such as physical toys and a special children’s magazine.

Plush toys are one of the main releases related to the franchise and there are currently six different types of Moshi Monsters available on the market. The first of these is a creature that looks like a rabbit and is known as a Katsuma. These are very social pets and enjoy being tickled by their child owners as well being kept in well decorated rooms.

The second type of toy resembles a demon and is unsurprisingly more popular with boys. This creature is known as a Diavlos and is a friendly but mysterious creature. It also craves attention and if you ignore it, it is likely to become fiery and angry, much like a demon would.

The furriest of the creatures is known as Furis, and other than being known for its excessive amounts of hair it is known for enjoying food as well as the decorations that surround it. If this type of toy is not bought nice decorations they tend to complain and will become angry at their owner.

The toy that is most popular with girls is known as Poppet and likes beautiful things and fashion. They are the most bossy of the toys and enjoy getting attention from their owners.  The last type of available toy is called the Zommer and this toy is one of the most difficult to look after. They need to be fed every day if they are to survive but if they are looked after they are certainly one of the most delightful monsters to have.

The plush toys that are available are interactive and children can squeeze on the tummy of the toy to hear them talk, laugh and giggle. When you buy the toy it will come with an adoption certificate to show that you are the owner and there is also a secret code to be used on the website to gain a special type of reward.

While the website is mostly targeting children seven years and older, these soft toys are suitable for any children who are over four years old and any child is sure to love and care for them.

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The Autobots have a mission:  to save the Universe, including the planet Earth, from the bad guys like Megatron and his cohorts.  Well, that’s a very simplified back story, but you get the idea, hopefully.

Now pay attention, because here are the latest and greatest of the Transformer series, and anyone who is hooked on the whole Transformer scene (and that includes uncounted millions of kids, of all ages) will want to add them to their collections.

Optimus Prime is the best known figure in the Transformers inventory; he was the leading character in the latest Transformers movie, Dark of the Moon.  Now he is available as the biggest and most versatile action figure yet, the Ultimate Optimus Prime that can be converted from vehicle to robot to robot with a suit of armour.  There is a trailer that serves as a weapons depot and is also used to make wings and armour, and two feet of arm and leg extensions.

He also has the Ultimax Super Cannon, a huge weapon that makes cannon noises and lights, and can be gripped and pointed to fire, or stored on the action figure’s back.  The Ultimate Optimus Prime is one amazing Autobot, and there’s more.  The Transformers Leader Optimus Prime has energy swords that snap out, it produces the noise of engines revving and racing, its eyes light up and there is electronic speech between robot and vehicle.

Another figure from Dark of the Moon is the MechTech Voyager-Optimus Prime.  This one lacks a couple of the features the Ultimate has, but it’s also a bit less expensive.  MechTech Voyager lets you convert Optimus from truck to warrior, and it comes with a battle cannon.  You can also purchase other   weapons that are sold separately but can be used with any MechTech action figure.

This Transformer craze seems to be escalating rather than declining, and a lot of imagination and techno-wizardry has gone into action figures that just get more detailed and more fun to play with every time a new one comes out.  None of them are recommended for youngsters under five, mostly due to the danger involved with small parts.  With that one warning, the rest of the kids and oh yes, their parents, will find the new Optimus Prime action figures to be irresistible playmates.

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Just in case you aren’t quite up on the background intel, spy speak for knowing who is who, Finn McMissile is the ultra sophisticated and suave British master spy who, in the upcoming Cars 2 film, has sniffed out an evil plot that is being hatched regarding the World Grand Prix. He does, of course, like any master spy would, embark on a thrilling adventure to save the day.

Just like in the film, the secret spy attack Finn McMissile comes with a great variety of the kind of high tech weaponry that will hep him succeed in his mission. This toy is the ultimate in cool, he talks and says many of his signature lines from the film, you just press the hood to make Finn talk, and to make it even simpler they have even put a sticker in the appropriate place saying ‘press’.

If you press Finn’s hood in as far as possible 2 ultra high tech missile launchers pop out, all ready to launch the missiles needed to feel the nearest adversary. As if that wasn’t enough, this unique toy has even more hidden features to amuse the kids for hours. Press on the back bumper another launcher pops up from the boot as well as an infra green spy screen appearing from the roof.

When these have been used and Fin needs to return to normal in the way that only a super spy can, you just push them back in again. With all these features and attention to detail, this is set to become a hot favourite, and is likely to sell out fast once Cars 2 hits the cinemas.

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This is just the latest in a range of products that has been hitting the market-based on the game. T-shirts, flip-flops, pillows and keychains are just some of the items that have been created around the Angry Birds franchise.

The videogame tells the story of a group of birds who have had their eggs stolen by some pigs. In order to get these eggs back they work together and use their special abilities to attack the pigs. In the game the birds are launched towards the pigs and the idea is to hit as many as possible.

The physical boardgame works in a very similar way and players have to construct a formation of wooden blocks as specified by the instructions. The wooden blocks are very similar to jenga and it is very easy for a player to build a wooden block structure.

As with many boardgames it starts off by players determining what order they are going to play and once this has happened they draw a card from a deck which determines what sort of construction is going to be made from the wooden blocks. These wooden blocks are what the pigs use as their defence from the birds.

There are three different types of cards in the game and they have different levels of difficulty. The more difficult cards mean that structures are made to be more challenging to destroy. There are also two special cards in the game which create very complex structures which are difficult to destroy but will earn the player points if they manage to do so. The structures that can be created by players are very complicated and range from simple barriers to complex towers which players will find very hard to destroy.

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In the films the toys come to life and they all want to be played with by the child who owns them, Andy. The main characters in the film are Buzz Lightyear and Woody the Cowboy. The film promotes a positive message for children and tells them of the value of friendship.

The third film has come a long time after the release of the second but it picks up where the originals left off and it was released last year. The film was one of the first children’s films to utilise the new 3-D technology that has since become very popular.

The film was a financial hit, much like the previous toy story films, and it was also very popular with critics. Much of the money from the franchise has not come from the films however, but through the toys that have been franchised out.

It is expected that $1 billion of merchandising will be sold around Toy Story 3 alone. Many toy manufacturers have been keen to capitalise on the incredible success of the film and many think that this latest Buzz Lightyear toy is going to be a huge hit. Many retailers have said that despite stocking up on numbers of the toys they are probably going to run out. To avoid disappointment parents have been urged to buy the toy early.

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tweetsfortoys from Refuge and Freestyle Interactive

An innovative campaign for Christmas has been created by the digital agency  Freestyle Interactive called #tweetsfortoys. The aim of the campaign is to give support to Refuge , the charity that is dedicated to providing shelter and support for women and children who have suffered from the devastating effects of domestic violence.

This campaign has come about as a result of the decision Freestyle made to replace their usual Secret Santa with something that was altogether more meaningful and worthy. The aim of  #tweetsfortoys is for presents to be donated to the children who are spending Christmas in the refuges in the Midlands and in Warwickshire.

To be involved, all you have to do is to tweet a message using the gift tag #tweetsfortoys. Every day until Christmas, Freestyle will pick the best 20 messages and donate a toy to Refuge on behalf of the tweeter.

Refuge Chief Executive Sandra Horley CBE says: “#tweetsfortoys and Freestyle’s campaign gives people a great way to support Refuge’s work whilst giving some of the country’s most vulnerable and isolated young people some joy at what can be a difficult time of year. Thank you to all those who show their support.”

She adds: “Domestic violence is a serious crime that takes place all year round and kills two women every week. Domestic violence has been happening for centuries, to all races, all classes and at all times of the year.

Thousands of women and children are living in daily fear and terror and Christmas is no exception. It is perhaps at Christmas that women experiencing domestic violence feel, most acutely, a sense of isolation and despair. Christmas is meant to be a time of joy, a time of generosity, a time of love. Yet many of the women and children in our refuges have given up everything as they face their first Christmas away from home. “

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