When my son Benjamin’s first birthday approached back in July 2016 I found myself looking for a great toy that I could give to him as a birthday present, and that Benni and I could enjoy together. You know, when having a one year old toddler at home, it can become quite difficult to find toys that your kid will love and that you as a mom or dad won’t find boring right?

I was always into Lego, but let’s be honest: Even Lego Duplo is quite difficult to play with for a one year old. I tried it every now and then, but it always turned out to follow one simple rule: I build he, Benni destroys it 🙂 Don’t get me wrong, this can also be tons of fun, and I’ll probably describe my experience with that in another blog post soon, but it is not what I wanted to get as a first-birthday-present-experience!

So, as the toy obsessed dad I am I decided that this would be a great opportunity to go explore and visit a “real store” instead of just searching online. I love toys store anyways, so obviously I didn’t let this chance slip. I drove to Toys”R”Us near where we live and started looking around. There is tons of stuff for babies and toddlers, but I felt that for a one year old lot’s of these toys are either too simple (in terms of: they are made for babies) or simply too boring for me as Bennis Dad. And That Toy Dad does not like boring toys 🙂

Somewhere in the back of the store I found what I was looking for. There was a whole area with VTech toys, and they caught my attention. What I saw there were tons of colorful, well designed boxes with playing and laughing kids on them. Well, obviously, you shouldn’t make your buying decision based on smiling kids printed on a box by some company you’ve probably never heard of before; but what I’m saying that it caught my attention. Another great thing I remember was that if you want to, you can basically try out every toy, as the VTech boxes have cutout on certain positions, and you can press buttons etc. and really see what that toy does and sounds like before you actually commit to spending money on it, right?

So there I was, standing in front of talking crocodiles, singing dogs, plastic sheep, flashing trains and – nice one – colorful, exciting looking cars. Cars with  sound and light. And as we all know: Men and little Kids are ALWAYS attracted to sound and flashing lights, right?

I liked what I saw, so my next step was to look at the company’s age recommendation. It showed “Recommended Ages 1-5 Years” – Ding, ding, ding, I had a winner 🙂 Continue reading →