Kids Toys Shop

Listen up mommy and daddy, you get more than your money's worth with this product! All the pieces are smooth, so there are no safety concerns, and as far as educational value goes, not only is this a beginning puzzle for your child, it's a beginning shape sorter AND assists in learning colors! I love this product and so do both of my children (1 and 2 years old). Highly recommend!!!

We have many plan toys, and this one is as great as the rest. My only complaint is the number of pieces. My daughter throws them everywhere!!!

I bought this for my 18-month old daughter for Christmas and she really enjoyed it from the start. She picked up on how to fit the circle shapes right away, and is still working on the others, but even putting the shapes in willy-nilly is fun for her.

The only downside is that storage is tricky - the pieces can fall away from the board and get lost easily. It seems like the designers could have fashioned some sort of rubber-band or even a lid that would hold things in place.

I'll confess, I was fairly undecided on whether this toy would be any actual fun. But since my two year old is really into shapes, colors, and simple numbers and I've just confiscated all the scary Melissa & Doug (see:toxic) puzzles in their collection, I thought this might stand as a fair replacement.

The kids, 23 months & 4 years, both immediately loved it; ie. The youngest immediately took control of the toy whilst being loudly scolded by the bossy 4-year old on how she wasn't assembling it correctly(!!!!), which quickly spun out of control, and ended up in a draw with both of them letting out an ear-splitting screech. In toddler/preschooler world, I suppose this is a "two-thumbs up."

After the dust settled, I took a look-see at this new toy, and received a few reprimands from the 4-year old on my unorthodox experiments with it. Namely the totally cool discovery that this toy not only teaches about colors, shapes numbers, with a little dexterity thrown in, but it also fits the bolts and nails that come with the Green Toys Tool Set they own, and that it also makes a whole new 'wardrobe' for their Turnello the Mouse toy that they received for Christmas. My youngest, had she not been in such a tizzy at this point might have approved, but my four-year old insisted this kind of out-of-the-box thinking was a highly unacceptable use of a toy with only one stated purpose.

Against her explicit warning, and under her disapproving eye, I continued to compose a little car - that would even roll for a time - thought the nuts inevitably fell off, and thus the 'wheels' detached.

My four year old, witnessing my experiments, eventually conceded there might be other cool things you could do with these pieces, and built a little neighborhood, with houses made from the 3-peg triangles and 4-peg rectangles, and over-sized people made from 2-peg rectangles topped with a circle. She flipped the board over to use as a mini-table for this project. Then she sat on the board, and we all held our breath thinking one of the pegs might pop off, but it withstood her 30-odd pounds of weight, so that speaks well of the integrity of the workmanship.

I bet there are even more uses for these little flat pieces we haven't yet imagined. But I'm so crazy-bored I may just discover them over the course of a few days!

In any case, chances are you can find a plethora of ways to use this toy - if the kids will allow it. Our toy seems pretty well-constructed, and it's attractive enough - though more utilitarian in appearance than most of the Plan Toys we own. And actually it's not a bad little teaching tool to have around, even if you do only use it for the stated purpose.

And, unlike Melissa & Doug, Plan Toys line of products has been tested extensively - via XRF - by the Ecology Center, with one of the best safety records of any toy on the market. So I feel pretty good about my children playing with this toy, or using the pieces as throwing stars in their endless competition of sibling rivalry. Whatever. They might lose an eye, but at least I won't have to worry about lead and cadmium, so that's something.

Bottom line: This is a great toy. Open ended. Educational. Safe. I highly recommend it.

My daughter received this as a birthday gift when she turned 1, and I remember thinking, 'This toy looks boring. She'll never play with it.' I was wrong, wrong, wrong: It is one of the best toys she has (and, trust me, she has A LOT). My daughter is 2 now, and she still plays with this almost every day. Now that she's 2, she can do all sorts of things with it, and I see that she creates challenges for herself--she'll stack them all by color (blues first, then reds, etc.), or she'll name the shape and color before putting the shape into its corresponding peg, or she'll try to see what shapes can fit into the other pegs. Sometimes she'll use components of this toy when playing with other toys. Basically, this is a great, versatile and very educational toy. And it's made very well.