Beyond blocks

Fighting for shelf space with plastic action figures and robotic pets, wooden toys are still perennial favorites. How is a plain wooden train meant to compete for a child's attention with Nintendo or an electric-powered Lego? Quite simply, it isn't, but only because wood is entirely in a class of its own.

In Disney's Toy Story, the reason the wooden cowboy, Woody, was as much loved as the deluxe plastic space adventurer, Buzz Lightyear, was because Woody was a classic, a family heirloom that endured. For consumers and retailers alike, that durability, that quality and the nostalgic mystique are all part of the appeal.

Plastic may offer more versatility, but wood, as a medium, has its own unique attributes. Patti Wehr- man, manager of customer relations for Imagiix, which manufactures a range of wooden toys including trikes and rocking horses, says, "We have such a good response to wood. Our customers really appreciate the quality of wooden toys, they're much nicer, aesthetically, than plastic, and wood is more durable, more natural. It has a different texture to anything else and I think it's important that kids experience that."

Peter Reynolds, president of BRIO, one of America's largest wooden toy manufacturers, feels that the price factor of wood does come into play. "It becomes an investment, as all good toys should be. You're getting value in the durability and the quality," he tells PLAYTHINGS.

T.C. Timber's sales manager, Frank Sierpina, says, "People are living longer, they're more affluent and have more disposable income than ever before and they want to invest money in a toy that isn't going to fall apart. Our toys come with a lifetime guarantee."

Reynolds attributes the warm fuzzy feelings wooden toys seem to inspire in parents and grandparents to the quality factor. "It's a nostalgia based on the success of a product that delivers."

Wehrman says there has been a major growth in interest among grandparents in wooden toys because of that nostalgia. "It's great for them to be able to pass on the associated memories to their grandchildren, and I think they have a better understanding of wood than high-tech toys," she says.

Jennifer Bergman, one of the owners of New York-based toy store, West Side Kids, has noticed wooden toys are also very popular with new moms, especially items like Manhattan Toy's Woogle Rattle and Uncle Goose Toys' alphabet blocks.

"Aesthetically, I think parents appreciate wood more than plastic," Bergman says. "Maybe it's just a New York thing, because apartments here are so small and toys tend to end up in the living room, but I think parents would rather have a wooden dollhouse cluttering up their space than a bright pink plastic one."

Sometimes wood isn't always the obvious choice, however. "I often have to convince parents to buy a wooden rattle because they didn't even consider it as an option," Bergman says. "But the feel of wood is really nice for babies. It's organic. It's natural. It just has an appeal that nothing else comes close to."

It's precisely that naturalness that has made wooden toys a focus for Looby Loo, a specialty toy store in the South Park mall in Charlotte, N.C. Manager Chris Peace says, "We made a commitment when we started that we were going to concentrate on wooden toys. We believe intuitively that children playing with natural materials and interacting with wood is informative in a really positive way and the quality, texture and personality of wood all contributes to important early experience."

It's a belief shared by Rick Glanker, the brand manager at Learning Curve, which manufactures the popular Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends products. "We find that our best customers are 'Renaissance' parents," Glanker tells PLAY- THINGS . "They're not looking for all the bells and whistles. They want developmental educational toys that will teach kids as they grow."

As Peace says, "Wooden toys make such a refreshing change from toys with batteries that bleep where kids just sit there like a bump on a log instead of playing."

Linda Kuiken, product manager at International Playthings agrees, "So many toys today provide kids with instant gratification at the push of a button. We feel it's important to introduce kids to different kinds of play which classic basic wooden toys provide. They're great tools for parent-child interaction, providing a springboard to learn about colors, shapes and counting, problem-solving skills and creative play. Basic wooden toys help increase attention spans and patience. Children have to work at something to get a reward, whether that's building up a stack of blocks or knocking down one mommy built."

And in the cases of puzzles and building sets, wooden toys can teach kids spatial skills and even math. Kapla's Director, Cheryl Lee, believes a good toy is "unstructured and open-ended." She says, "Building sets require a lot of imagination and creativity and, in our case, even mathematics. Whether kids realize it or not, they're using math skills (when) putting together shapes and working with ratios as five planks length-wise equal one plank width-wise."

That's not to say that wooden toys are limited to the basics of wooden blocks and push-wagons. A number of companies are coming up with entirely new and award-winning offerings, while others simply put a fresh twist on a classic.

Maxim Enterprise, for example, just released a new line of products, Woodland Fantasies. The line consists of all handmade wooden figures and buildings and has a wide variety of different settings ranging from farms to jungles. Each set fits neatly into its own wooden storage box, which accompanies the set.

The company, Maxim Marketing Coordinator Kris Millington tells PLAYTHINGS, has put its 30-years worth of wood knowledge into developing the new product line, which includes a native American setting, as well as castle, farm and circus environments.

K'NEX revived the classic Lincoln Logs and expanded the brand with a range of new sets like the Prairie Express, complete with a bucking horse and character figures. International Playthings has First Sound Blocks, wooden blocks with different combinations of rattling beads inside that produce a variety of noises. Pamela Drake produces layered puzzles, while Toys-n-Things teaches kids to build simple machines with the Gear Works kit that works with their rod-and-connector Fiddlesticks sets.

While it's a little more tricky to incorporate technology into wooden toys without compromising the medium, a couple of companies are doing it very successfully. Simba Toys, for example, has a train set that makes announcements in four different languages, BRIO has a rescue vehicle with a wailing siren, and Learning Curve's new Thomas the Tank Engine airport has a magnetized crane that allows kids to pick up the plane character and, with the push of a button, send it whizzing in circles around the control tower.

Looby Loo's Peace says his favorites among the more innovative wooden toys include Tree Blocks' gnome houses, T.C Timber's wriggly Curling Caterpillar and Skwish from Manhattan Toy, a molecular dodecahedron of wooden rods and beads strung together with flexible elastic cord. "It's wonderful for infants because it has bells that jingle and there is a lot of tactile stimulation," Peace says.

Manufacturers aren't adverse to picking up licenses either, and while they might not be cashing in on the latest movie releases, they are doing well with established brands like Thomas the Tank Engine. Pamela Drake's ingenious and award-winning Woodkins, wooden dress-up dolls that allow kids to design fashions by sandwiching material onto the dolls' bodies, has licensed Arthur, Madeline and Eloise, while T.C. Timber has licensed Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs, like the Guggenheim museum, for its building sets.

Ultimately, the quality and durability of wood ensures the ongoing success of the wooden toy market, not only in the lifetime of the product, often spanning generations, but in the reliability of the category too.

Mike Rainville, the President of Maple Landmark, which now also includes Montgomery School-house, says, "The reaction we've had from our successful retailers has been that wooden toys are a good staple product. There is always a demand. You may not have the big peaks as you do with fads like, say, Pokémon, but it doesn't become a game of how much you should buy or having to worry about leftover stock, unless you've bought bad quality product. People are always looking for building blocks or wooden trains and it's remiss if a toy store doesn't have those essentials."

From the retail side, West Side Kids' Jennifer Bergman couldn't agree more. "Fads go in and out, up and down and put people out of business, but wooden toys are always going to be around. I think the favorite toys of all time are wooden ones. "