Gifted Originals

This time last week, thousands of boys and men converged on the Old Christ Church in Crosby for its first-ever Toys for Boys event. Over 2,500 visitors from all over the North West marvelled at all the specialist toys at the exhibition, hosted by the Friends of Old Christ Church.

According to the Crosby Herald, ‘sounds of buzzing and beeping could be heard throughout the grounds and interior of the magnificent Grade II* building, as model trains, boats and planes where on show for all enthusiasts. Huge displays of Meccano structures swung around the former church and detailed model railway lines, complete with all the buildings, people, animals, trees and fields signals and lights, tooted along the tracks’.

Alongside the railway models, guests marvelled at the model trucks, tanks, vintage cars and military vehicles showcased in the ground. As Gifted Originals has written about before, adults love to regress back to childhood, so it’s no surprise the the event saw thousands flock to it.

Now, when will the Toys for Girls event be? Well, it’s only fair!

Whether we like it or not, Christmas is approaching. The supermarkets have already begun to stock cards, 2011 calendars, and plenty of other paraphernalia to get us Christmas spirit some four months early.

While we moan every year that the preparations are getting earlier, we all still scramble around at the last minute trying to find the perfect present only to discover it sold out in October. In my family, the presents from the grandchildren to the grandparents are always pretty low on the ‘present priority list’, not because we don’t care about nanna and grandad, but because we always want to get something other than slippers.

If you’re of a similar sensibility, or you’ve realised that after the seven consecutive years of slipper receiving it’s time to shake things up, then Gifted Originals may just have the answer. As grandparents always have everything, then why not get the little ones to make them a present?

Personally-crafted presents are a wonderful way for children to not only showcase their creativity, but are more meaningful. Offering an array of craft kits, from the Plate Painting Kit to the Tea Set Painting Kit among others, grandma and grandpa will be delighted with their one-of-a-kind gift, and Gifted Originals suspects slightly pleased it’s not slippers! What’s more, as it’s only September, there’s plenty of time for the little one to brush up her painting skills before working on her masterpiece.

We can all think of times when something we cherish has been misplaced or even worse, thrown out, and the feeling of despair that then follows. For children, it’s a devastating discovery, but sooner or later they get over it (well, you hope).

So spare a thought for one Japanese mummy who threw away her son’s favourite toys. Rather than being angry for a few days or weeks, Yoshifumi Takabe, aged 30, burnt down the family home, claiming his mum’s actions had left him feeling “suicidal”. The blaze on August 9 last year completely destroyed their two-storey wooden house in Kasai, Hyogo prefecture, but no one was injured.

The toys, robots from the ‘Gundam’ animation series to be precise, were said to be enough to fill 300 boxes stacked to the ceiling. “The Gundam figures are like the partners I spend my life with,” he reportedly said after pleading guilty at western Kobe’s District Court.

“I wanted to die with them in a fire if they were to be thrown out.”

Now, Gifted Originals loves toys, but would we want to die with them in a fire? No, is the short and simple answer. Come on Takabe, yes we know toys are great fun but surely you can see that it’s time to step away from the robots and realise you have irrational attachment issues.

At Gifted Originals, we like to think we’re different to the other major toy retailers and stockists. Offering a consistently good service to our customers, we know value for money and a personal service means a lot. Maybe this, along with our excellent products is why we’re expanding when many other independent toy shops are struggling – a bittersweet fact for Gifted Originals.

In a recent article in the Independent, Martin Hickman wrote about his worry regarding the increasing decline of independent toy shops: ‘This summer the explosion of colour and shapes at a toyshop in the town of Arboga, near Stockholm, Sweden, reminded a forty-something holidaymaker of his childhood. While some toys had been updated, they were essentially the same; the children’s delight were the same too. What has changed is that in Britain, fewer and fewer 21st-century small eyes and hands experience an emporium devoted to their enjoyment and imagination. Independent toy shops are in decline.’

Yes, supermarkets and department stores may well stock toys, sometimes selling them at incredibly cheap prices that we can’t always compete with, but for Hickman, ‘the value of toy shops can’t be weighed in pounds or pence alone, though. They offer some tangible and intangible benefits. Tangibly, they have a wider range than a supermarket aisle or corner of a department store and tend to stock fewer electronics and more traditional playthings.’

The bottom line is, just like fishmongers, grocers, butchers and other specialist retailers, toy shop owners have a real passion in what they sell. This fact alone won’t save the humble toy shop, but along with Gifted Originals’s desire to offer value for money and quality, we’re certainly doing our bit for toy shops on a whole.

This may or may not come as a surprise, but Gifted Originals loves toys. We love old, new, modern, educational, and traditional toys, however, we do sometimes get spooked out how certain toys can get stranger as the years go by.

Case in point would be the new exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood. Instead of looking for inspiration from the outside, photographer Craig Deane delved into the museum storage cabinets whereby he found drawers full of tiny torsos, chubby limbs, waxy heads, unblinking glass eyes and once-fashionable miniature outfits. Around 8,000 dolls from by-gone days populate these drawers, and according to Esther Lutman, the curator of Britain’s largest public doll archive, there are 100,000 items in total here – too many to be displayed in the museum cabinets.

Making good use of the toys in the basement, the photographer has selected 35 of the brightest dolls. The Telegraph writes, ‘Brilliantly lit, blown up to one-metre-high and composed much like the artless crop of a police mugshot, the photographs draw you in and ask you to scrutinise the expressions on the faces of these figures that we might have once loved, or given to our children to love.’

Talking about how he got the dolls to strike the perfect pose, Deane said, “The result was really surprising,” he says. “I found that if you arrange the face so it looks directly down the lens it becomes transformed into something more engaging than an inanimate object. It becomes a portrait.”

If you’re thinking it’s all a bit weird, then we’re afraid you’re wrong. Apparently, the desire to bring a doll’s face to life surely stems from a human impulse that goes back centuries. To project an imagined reality on to our dolls is a habit that children pick up before they even learn to talk.

If Gifted Originals is in the vicinity, then we’ll see to it that we pop down to the V&A for the exhibition, which starts on September 3rd.

Now, in these days of austerity, you’d be forgiven for thinking councils are a bit reluctant to hand anything out. While their counterparts have been forced to make cutbacks, Bolton Council is to hand over £100,000 to registered childminders.

‘Where’s the catch?’, Gifted Originals hears you say. Well, to be eligible for the grants of up to £3,000, the childminder has to part of Bolton’s National Child Minding Association-run Children Come First network. The network, which will share the £99,000 in capital grants, said, “While a grant of this amount awarded to a network is not unheard of, it is unusual, and shows recognition of the important role childminders play in supporting local communities.”

The money will be used to buy much-needed equipment and toys, and is seen as recognition on the Council’s part that child minders are of similar importance to schools and nurseries.

Quite right, Gifted Originals says. Toys are a vital part of a child’s early years development, and as many toddlers are looked after by child minders, it’s high time they received a bit of support!

Last Tuesday, Disneyland Paris welcomed another attraction to join Mickey and co: Toy Story Playland. Proving they can work their Pixar magic off screen as well as on, Disney have made some of the toys the same size as the children that’ll be visiting.

Like Alice in Wonderland, the little ones will feel like they’ve been shrunk to size as they see life-size figurines of Buzz, Woody, Slinky Dog, the Green Army men, RC Racer, among others.

“When you are in this land, nothing is human scale and everything is made of toys,” said Chrissie Allen, Walt Disney Imagineering senior show producer.  To assist with the sense of being shrunk, Imagineers took advantage of the giant forest that edges the play area, which has trees over 100 years old, some of which are more than 30 metres in height.

“The landscape naturally enforces the sense of being immersed in this play world,” said Chrissie.  “The new land is planted with beautiful stands of 9-metre-tall bamboo which encloses the land and seals us into our new toy world.”

The new arrival to Disney’s Toon Studio will include a Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop, Slinky Dog ZigZag Spin, and RC Racer – said to be the ‘biggest attraction of the playland’.

Ohhh, now if Gifted Originals had all the money in the world, we’d build a toyland of our very own complete with a life-size Rose Cottage, the Grannimals welcoming visitors, and of course, Z Wind Ups catering to our guests’ every need!

Some children in Germany are being made to hand in their toys before entering a ‘Knowledge factory’, a kinda supplementary school to their Monday to Friday one. Apparently, there’s a huge shortage of ‘practical’ skills so Mr Fehrenbach and eight other senior managers founded Wissensfabrik which promotes science and economics among schoolchildren and fosters children’s language skills.

Established five years ago, the organisation has launched an array of projects to improve an education system that seems increasingly unable to cater for the needs of engineering, electronics and vehicle makers, all of which are the backbone of Germany’s export-driven economy. But, and in Gifted Originals’s view is a HUGE ‘but’, primary schoolchildren must trade their cuddly toys before embarking on a “trainee week” at the laser machinery maker!

Now, come on: it’s one thing to want to get children involved in engineering and what not, but why take their toys away, can they not be incorporated into the training? Hmmm, this seems to us like it’s a way of getting them disciplined and prepared early for future employment.

As Henning Kagermann, one of the founders of German software group SAP and president of Acatech, an academy that promotes technical studies and collaborates with Wissensfabrik said, “A successful recruitment strategy has to bank on long-term projects across the whole educational chain – from the early upbringing in kindergarten and the family to a lifelong, on-the-job training.”

Nooooooo, please, please, please let the little ones enjoy being able to play with toys without worrying about looking silly, a conscious awareness that steadily creeps in as we get older. Skill shortage or not, there’s just no excuse!

For many, sending your child off to school is the moment you can relax and bask in a bit of ‘me’ time. Some parents though worry about how their children will cope without them, thinking they may be susceptible to bullying.

Gifted Originals doesn’t want to scaremonger you, but being prepared is always better than not being. Speaking to Lil Sugar, Rener Gracie, a third-generation master of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and the co-creator of Gracie Bullyproof, “a multimedia confidence and character development program”, says there are measures you can take to stop the little one from falling victim.

How can parents bullyproof their children?

Rener Gracie: Somewhere between 4 and 6 years old, most children start school. Although it can be a huge relief to have someone else look after your child for four to six hours every day, sending your child off to school brings as many troubles as it does conveniences. One such problem that affects every child at one point or another is bullying. The problem is that what may start as simple name-calling or harmless teasing can easily snowball into a path of lifelong torment and drudgery. Here are five simple things to keep in mind to ensure your child is not victimized should they cross paths with an aggressive kid.

Lower the Barrier

Often times children who get bullied think it’s their fault and are reluctant to ask for help from their parents. They feel as though they did something wrong and that they deserve the physical or verbal abuse that is being directed to them. The most effective way to ensure your child will be comfortable asking for help if they are targeted by a bully is to make it a regular discussion topic around the house. Casual discussion topics such as what behaviors constitute bullying and why bullies harass other kids will help demystify bullying so that it is easy to discuss in a time of need.

Watch For Signs

Since your child may or may not tell you when they are getting bullied, it’s critical that you pay close attention to any behavioral changes that suggest your child might be getting bullied. If you notice any of these indicators: depression, weakened appetite, lowered enthusiasm, or sudden drops in self-esteem, you should ask your child if someone is bothering them at school and let them know that you want to help.

Intervene Immediately

If you discover that your child is being bullied, it is critical that you do not downplay the situation. Immediately set an appointment to speak to school administrators and ask that the parent of the bully be contacted and notified of the situation. Arrange for your child’s teacher to notify you of incidences going forward.

Instill Confidence

The most effective deterrent to bullying is confidence. Teach your child to speak assertively, make eye contact, and walk strong, when targeted by a bully. The best way to do this is to role play with your child. Come up with a fake derogatory name like “cantaloupe,” and then use it to simulate “bullying” situations with your child. Correct them carefully and praise them lavishly when they respond to the harassment correctly. Once their responses to these at-home bullying sessions become second nature, they’ll have nothing to worry about.

Help the Weak

Another great way to increase your child’s preparedness for bullies is to teach them how to recognize when others are being targeted. Teach your child what to watch out for, and how to help if they suspect that another child is being bullied. They should be able to tell the bully to stop with lines like, “Hey, cut it out!” and they should always report any incidences of bullying to a teacher or school administrator. By proactively helping others, they will make more friends, and they will be more prepared when they are targeted directly.

At one point or another, every child will be targeted by a bully, but if you teach your child how to walk strong and you keep the communication lines open, you should be able to put an end to torment and ensure a happy, prosperous, bully-free future for your child.

Crafted by the Aboriginals, the boomerang is best known for the fact it returns when you throw it. Dating back to Ancient Europe, the hunting device for some is now a throwing game for many, with the real McCoy made of roughly V-shaped hard wood, with arms slightly skewed, and the angle between the arms ranging from 90 degrees to about 160 degrees – not too good for games then!

According to the Boomerang Shack website, ‘Boomerangs are also works of art, and Aboriginals often paint or carve designs on them related to legends and traditions. In addition, boomerangs continue to be used in some religious ceremonies and are clapped together, or pounded on the ground, as accompaniment to songs.’

Geographically speaking, the existence of the real boomerang is restricted to the Eastern and Southern Australia. It was unknown to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, Tasmania, half of South Australia and the northern parts of Queensland and Western Australia.

With sharp edges, the authentic type isn’t very game-friendly with the little one running the risk of getting cut hands or even a severed finger. Gifted Originals’s  soft foam version, however, is perfect as it makes it easier to catch and to fly making it not just child-friendly but also furniture-friendly. Just like its hunting counterpart though, the Superang Boomerang comes in a range of designs!