Have you been Farkel'ed? Well you might be wondering why we haven't posted to the Blog in 2 and a half months, we haven't because we have been very busy developing our inventory to include more "non-China" toys, testing toys and games (and not just playing Farkel), and we have also been attending to the store and other life/family events.

ASTRA Marketplace was a recent event which we attended and came away feeling that the Specialty Toy industry might be one route to world peace because everyone attending was united and striving to add value to play time and assure the value of the toys we bring to the marketplace are the best quality and value for our customers.

While attending ASTRA Marketplace we reacquainted ourselves with the dice game Farkel. While being a simple game with folk origins, it only uses six dice and a few simple rules. The principle of the game is to use each roll of the dice to gain points. With each consecutive role of the dice, as one's, five's, multiples of threes, pairs, and straights are removed from play, points are earned until the play is passed to the next player, or you "Farkel" with a bad roll (no countable points) and lose any points earned during that turn at play. The player with the most points at the end of the game (when the one(s) losing give up) wins. Simple, easy to carry and store in your pants pocket, this very challenging game for players ages 7 to 100+, and is a great value and good for helping keep your mind fresh and working healthy.

SAFETOYS.com

Safetoys.com keeps coming up as a source of Toy Industry News here in the goHeidi Blog Toy News feed providing great information on toys, toy recalls, and safe toy legislation.

SAFETOYS.com is a source for information on toy safety, the latest recalls, tips for parents, and ways to keep kids safe. In the About Us page on the Safetoys.com website, Safetoys.com states their "goal is to give you the tools you need to make educated decisions when shopping for your children or those of your friends and family. There is more to toy safety than knowing which products have been recalled. Many toys that are considered “safe” may still hold serious risks for children and many products designed to protect children may not work unless used properly. Being able to identify toy safety hazards and use safety equipment is just as important as buying a safe toy."

We here at goHeidi.com like what we have found on the Safetoys.com website and we encourage you to visit the site and add it to your bookmarks to make it easier for you to return often for updates and news.

Videos of new toys......TDmonthly ToyTv

Toy Directory Monthly is another good resource to see what's hot, and of course, what's not in the toy industry. A trade e-zine for the toy, hobby, game & gift industry, TDmonthly covers all bases from the top ten toys, pending legislation, toy reviews, and helpful toy industry links.

My new favorite page on the TDmonthly website is ToyTV. TDmonthly Magazine's ToyTV crew has shot more than 1,000 videos of amazing toys and games, and these are available for viewing on the ToyTV page.

I encourage everyone to visit TDmonthly's ToyTV page and check for videos of the newest toys from the industry. Enjoy the 150+ videos of new toys!

Bananagrams are appealing!

How do you make an anagram game appealing to a bunch of people? Well, package it in a banana skin and call it Bananagrams!

Bananagrams is a really great game. We gave a Bananagrams game to our best friends as a "hostess gift" last night for our appreciation of them inviting us to dinner. After dinner we cleared the table and unpeeled the game. We had a blast. We played several rounds trying to make the letter tiles into different words while we learned the game rules and when to peel, dump, and call bananas.

As the four of us played the game it was really fun to see how each of us put together the letters to make words we that came to our minds. After playing four rounds, Michael figured it was best to start with one long word and branch words off of that. Dianne (the PhD) was making all sorts of scientific words, but got hung up the first round because she picked too many vowels. Heidi got the hang of it quickly and won a round. I won the Banana Smoothie round ("Banana Smoothie" is just one variation on how to play the game).

It is easy to see why Bananagrams has won so many prestigious awards. The game challenges the mind, stimulates creativity, promotes some healthy competition, and has several different ways of being played. I also have to mention, the game is low tech – no batteries required, no game board to use, no scores to keep, it stores in a little pouch, and is very portable. In addition to being a good staple in your household game collection, Bananagrams will make a great travel game.

Bananagrams is a goHeidi favorite.

goHeidi's Global Reach

As of 2006, goHeidi shipped toys to welcoming customers on every continent on Planet Earth - Wow! Even Antarctica, very cool (literally)!

Since this blog was established earlier this month we have had visitors from the Philippines, China, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as domestic visitors for many of the 50 states. Using a variety of international shippers, we can quickly and reasonably deliver toys to all corners of the planet. We look forward to seeing the list of our customer's countries grow.

Come back often and check us out. We will soon be updating our blog content with reviews of the many new toys we recently discovered at Toy Fair 2008 and added to our store inventory.

Thanks for visiting, we will see you on your next visit. Heidi and Jim

We love Uglydoll!

We love Uglydoll.

Uglydoll relaunched their website this week during Toy Fair 2008. In addition to really cool new graphics, links to the ugly blog, user forums, ugly games, and much more are now on their website. You have to check it out, so go to www.uglydolls.com when you get a chance.

Also a must see; CNNMoney.com has a video piece on Uglydolls taken at Toy Fair 2008 with Alita Friedman, Director of Operations at Pretty Ugly LLC. Check out the video here: Video Clip.

goHeidi has shipped Uglydolls to every continent on Planet Earth, yes we even shipped Uglydolls to Antarctica (McMurdo Station). Uglydolls surely are global. To check out our selection of Uglydolls, click here.

My feet hurt!!!!! But, I am still smiling

Why my feet hurt…

There are 630,000 thousand reasons why my feet hurt, and it is the square footage of the exhibition space occupied by this year’s Toy Industry Association's Toy Fair at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

We managed to cover most of Toy Fair in two days. If we had a third day, I am sure we would have seen everything and talked to everyone. As it was, we prepared ourselves in advance with a list of manufacturers and reps, and we mapped out exactly where we wanted to go. While we were very focused with our plan, we were able to see a lot more than what was on our list, and we met a lot of really nice and very helpful people.

All-in-all we had a great experience, the only major disappointment was the arrogant attitude we encountered at the Ganz Webkinz booth. Our visit to their booth really was a not nice experience.

On a high note, we are adding to our product line many quality items, and several being Made in USA. We are adding Made in USA Scientific Explorer Kits, Harrisville Designs weaving kits, Find It Games, and Do A Dot Art books and kits. Madame Alexander is another US Company we will be carrying. European additions include Steiff plush dolls, and Pustefix Bubble products. Canadian additions include Blue Orange games. There are a bunch more toys, games, and manufacturers we have added to our offerings, so please visit our store or check us out at http://www.goheidi.com/ to see what we have added.

See you soon – Heidi and Jim

Toy News

The toy industry is huge and there are many issues which effect what toys are manufactured and which of those toys we buy. Because the list of issues is so broad it helps to scan current news to get a better handle on the state of the industry and what consumers might want to be thinking about before walking into a toy store.

To help you be as informed as possible, we have posted on this site a Toy News resource that provides news summaries on several current toy related topics and includes links to full text news articles. We encourage you to navigate through the different search topics and engross yourself in Toy News.

Just a head's up, sometimes the news search engine we use will post news summaries on the subject of adult pleasure toys, despite goHeidi's best efforts to choose search terms designed to avoid inappropriate content. We expect such occurrences will be extremely rare, but we apologize in advance if inappropriate content does appear on the Toy News list while you are visiting our site, and should this happen we suggest you just ignore those articles. Thank you for your understanding that some things in cyberspace are very difficult to avoid.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions on additional Toy News search terms.

Heidi and Jim

Our Helpful Links

There is a lot more to a toy than what meets the eye. At goHeidi.com we have placed Helpful Links here on our blog for you to have access to resources that can help your research and learn more about the toys you are buying, like any recalls, awards, and where you can buy them (of course if you are looking to buy a new toy, we suggest you start here at goHeidi.com - Thank you).

ASTRA - The website for the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association. Founded in 1992, ASTRA's premise: to bring members of the independent toy industry together to help each other succeed has grown to be the largest association for companies in the toy and children’s products. The ASTRA website includes information and links to independent toy retailers, specialty toy manufacturers, manufacturers’ representatives, industry affiliates, suppliers and service providers, and other children’s businesses including furniture, equipment, publishing and entertainment companies.

CPSC - This link brings you to the homepage of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission which is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction.

CPSC Toy Recall Information - This link brings you directly to the CPSC's Toy Hazards Recall webpage. Here is the most current list of the CPSC's toy recalls.

Dr. Toy - (from the "About Dr. Toy" webpage) "Dr. Toy, Stevanne Auerbach, PhD, has been for many years one of the nation's and world’s leading experts on play, toys, and children's products. With 30 years of direct experience, Dr. Auerbach includes educationally oriented, developmental and skill building products from the best large and small companies in her four annual award programs. Many parents, teachers and toy buyers use Dr. Toy’s guidance in making selections." Dr. Toys website provides a significant gateway to explore many resources available the toy buyer.

goHeidi Online Toy Shop - Here is a link to our eCommerce site where you can find and buy many of the award winning toys referenced in many of the resource links provided on this page.

Oppenheim Toy Portfolio - (from their "about us page" on their website) "The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio was founded in 1989 as the only independent consumer review of children's media. [The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio] newsletter is published quarterly and is an ad-free subscription-based periodical for parents, grandparents, libraries and childcare providers. How We Select the Best. [The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio] test and review products for children the year-round-only we get to do what most parents wish they could do before they buy. We open the toys, run the videos, read the books, play the music, and boot up the software. We send the best of these products on to our families of testers for further evaluation."

Toy Industry Association - (from their "about us page" on their website) The "Toy Industry Association™, Inc. (TIA) is the not-for-profit trade association for producers and importers of toys and youth entertainment products sold in North America, representing over 500 companies who account for approximately 85% of domestic toy sales. Associate members include licensors, designers, inventors, safety consultants, testing laboratories, communications professionals and the media." Their website provides access to many toy industry resources.

USPIRG Toy Safety - (from the "about us page" on their website) "U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), takes on powerful interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of researchers, advocates, organizers and students in state capitols across the country, we stand up to powerful special interests on issues where powerful special interests stand in the way of reform, like product safety, identity theft, political corruption, prescription drugs, and voting rights." The USPIRG Toy Safety webpage contains relavent news and links on the subject of toy safety.

New York International Toy Fair is around the corner.

Toy Fair is coming!!!

The New York International Toy Fair is the once a year week-long menagerie of plastics, metal, cardboard, bling, and crowds of people with one thing on their minds, toys, toys, and more toys!

Walking into the Jacob Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan (as in New York City) you are overcome by the smell of toys. The smell is reminiscent of what I knew as a child as the smell of Christmas morning, new vinyl – you know that toxic nose tingling smell of new toys, yep, that’s it. This huge convention center is jam packed with three different levels of people presenting and selling new, classic, innovative, and envelope pushing toys. Without knowing, you may stroll right past the “hottest toy of the year”, that one toy that out sells all the others, which everyone wants, and makes a few people really rich – if they are lucky.

This year goHeidi has a mission at Toy Fair to find “Made in USA” toys to sell in our store and on our website. This may not be as easy as it sounds. In 2007, 60% of the US$71-billion global toy industry was produced in China. With 86% of the toys imported into the United States during 2007 being made in China, (http://www.asiapacificbusiness.ca/apbn/pdfs/bulletin292.pdf), the reality is most of the new toys being sold in the USA are made in China. It has not been easy finding a good variety of “Made in USA” toys, but our mission is to do so and bring them to our customers at goHeidi.com starting in the second quarter of the year.

goHeidi is confident our mission to bring our customers a good variety of Made in USA toys will be successful. Our confidence is being stoked by our visit last weekend to the New York International Gift Fair, also held at the Jacob Javits Center just three weeks before Toy Fair, where we found toy companies that are still making their toys in the USA. We will be revisiting these companies during Toy Fair to place orders for their Made in USA toys.

We can’t wait for Toy Fair.

Toys are cool.

Welcome to our blog about toys and our toy store in Pelham, NY. Come back soon as our blog grows. Thanks.