Too Much Awesome

In 1946, a small Minnesota company sought to manufacture gardening tools under the name Mound Metalcraft. This business model quickly evolved however, when their side project of crafting metal toys became a much more viable market. Business and life (and toys) can be unpredictable, and sometimes our crazy side projects take on a life of [...]

Remember that useless collection of objects that decided your status in grade school? Tell Beanie Babies to slide down the bench, because the new generation is hooked on Silly Bandz.

Hot Wheels is one of the most affordable toys to collect. Since most cars are only a dollar, it means anyone with a pocket or a purse can cobble together enough spare change to buy a few toy cars. Most people might think Hot Wheels starts with kids scooting them across the kitchen floor and [...]

What better way to wrap up my Pokeweek than with a little trip down memory lane to remember all the Pokemon toys I had when I was a kid? While the games were what introduced us to the concept of Pokemon, it was the phenomenon that exploded shortly afterward with the toys, cards, clothes, and [...]

Video games breed better toys. I consider this a fact. After all, toy-peddlers need to compete with all of those moving images, sounds, and moments of euphoria that come with beating a boss.

Everybody is going green these days. It’s rather trendy to say the least, so it’s no surprise that toys are following the trend and selling big when it comes to eco-friendly categories. If you’d very much like to give your kids something fun to play with that they’re guaranteed to enjoy plus is quite possibly [...]

True Fact: I grew up in the United States of America. I’m not trying to brag or anything, it’s just simple stating of fact. Why this is important to The Simpsons has to do with what The Simpsons is to me: An American Institution. This in no way means that I believe The Simpsons is [...]

If I were pressed to defend the educational value of video games, I probably couldn’t do much other than say they can teach reading, math, problem solving, community interaction, cause and effect, and hand-eye coordination skills, so really I’d have an uphill battle talking about their benefits (wink). However, there are a handful of very [...]

I wrote an article last week about Hot Wheels cars, but upon posting it something started gnawing at me. While talking about Hot Wheels, I had completely neglected to mention Matchbox, the opposing brand. What makes this worse is that as a kid, I couldn’t distinguish between the two as both brands made little toy [...]

I was insanely jealous of anyone who had a Power Wheels as a kid. Sure, I was fairly content with my Hot Wheels, but how was I supposed to compete with those kids that could ride around in their toy and laugh at me? I couldn’t, that’s how. And why? Because Power Wheels were beyond [...]