Jump to:
ZRecs Home |
Z Recommends |
PRIZEY |
The Tranquil Parent |
Punnybop |
The ZRecs Guide to Safer Children's Products
Get Z Recommends posts and links delivered free via -
-
As seen in
Natural, gender-neutral pretend play with Ryan’s Room
By Jeremiah | June 25, 2009 | 6 comments / Join the conversation!
Ryan's Room toys first attracted us with their all-wood and cloth construction and relatively gender-neutral themes, a great alternative to plastic dollhouse furniture and dolls that are mostly directed towards girls. Figures are poseable, and play sets offer a wide variety of pretend play options.
The company sent us their Happy Campers play set and Utility Room set of furnishings and appliances, at our request - the former because we are always looking for good indoor/outdoor pretend play items, and the latter because we figured the quality of furnishings in this set would tell us a lot about the quality of construction in the wooden furniture Ryan's Room produces - as we've seen with other mass-marketed wooden toys like Melissa & Doug, quality control can be an issue when you're mass-producing small wooden toys for young children. The Utility Room set includes items with small bits of cloth and string and a washer and dryer set with opening doors and small painted parts.
The Utility Room furnishings did not disappoint - washer and dryer doors opened smoothly on wooden pins, all parts were firmly connected with no visible glues, and the vacuum was very handy for cleaning rabbits.
We have since purchased several other sets of Ryan's Room furniture, and have been very happy with it. (Other plastic toys above were introduced by our toy tester.)
Our hammock was a little... snug, but I think we could have just tied it a little too tight. We love these trees - they are wooden poles with fabric donut-like rings that create bands of greenery. Really, these trees are a lot cuter than we made them... For proper installation, please see the setup below.
At any rate, these toys have been played with, put out of sight by well-meaning reviewers looking to move on, and dragged out again by Z to be played with intensively.
The tent, which deserves a better photo, has a nice design - a two-part "A-frame" that fits together with notches to make a four-cornered support under the one-piece fabric tent. The Happy Campers set comes with two of Ryan's Room's cute poseable figures. Note that a Polly Pocket has snuck into the hammock.
You can check out the wide variety of Ryan's Room play sets, including a full range of dollhouse furniture and wooden dollhouses, on Amazon.com. Many items are offered there at significant discounts, and you're likely to find occasional sales at your favorite big-box, doesn't-know-good-toys-when-they-see-them retailer.
The company sent us their Happy Campers play set and Utility Room set of furnishings and appliances, at our request - the former because we are always looking for good indoor/outdoor pretend play items, and the latter because we figured the quality of furnishings in this set would tell us a lot about the quality of construction in the wooden furniture Ryan's Room produces - as we've seen with other mass-marketed wooden toys like Melissa & Doug, quality control can be an issue when you're mass-producing small wooden toys for young children. The Utility Room set includes items with small bits of cloth and string and a washer and dryer set with opening doors and small painted parts.
The Utility Room furnishings did not disappoint - washer and dryer doors opened smoothly on wooden pins, all parts were firmly connected with no visible glues, and the vacuum was very handy for cleaning rabbits.
We have since purchased several other sets of Ryan's Room furniture, and have been very happy with it. (Other plastic toys above were introduced by our toy tester.)
Our hammock was a little... snug, but I think we could have just tied it a little too tight. We love these trees - they are wooden poles with fabric donut-like rings that create bands of greenery. Really, these trees are a lot cuter than we made them... For proper installation, please see the setup below.
At any rate, these toys have been played with, put out of sight by well-meaning reviewers looking to move on, and dragged out again by Z to be played with intensively.
The tent, which deserves a better photo, has a nice design - a two-part "A-frame" that fits together with notches to make a four-cornered support under the one-piece fabric tent. The Happy Campers set comes with two of Ryan's Room's cute poseable figures. Note that a Polly Pocket has snuck into the hammock.
You can check out the wide variety of Ryan's Room play sets, including a full range of dollhouse furniture and wooden dollhouses, on Amazon.com. Many items are offered there at significant discounts, and you're likely to find occasional sales at your favorite big-box, doesn't-know-good-toys-when-they-see-them retailer.
Categories:
toys
Browse Z Recommends
-
recent posts
Improvisational Obstacle Course How to pose with two snakes Concerns raised over performance of Safety 1st harness adjuster Hands-on building and creativity toys from the 2010 Toy Fair Tyranny in the playroom The year’s best new easy-to-learn, fun-to-play children’s board games 2010 Toy Fair: Toy Fair goes green 2010: Year of the balance bike (and helicopter, and crane, and…) A portrait of the artist having her hair brushed by her mother BPA in toilet paper, fitting in exercise, a yoga game for kids: Links from the archives
- categories
- blog archive
- blogs we read
Looking for something?
Search
The ZRecs Guide
1316 products, 250 brands, and counting...
Get ZRecs’ monthly newsletter
Learn about our privacy policy
More good stuff
Advertisements
Advertisements
I am assuming these are made in China since you didn’t state otherwise. Is that correct?
Yes, Alicia! All Ryan’s Room products are made in China, as are most other mass-marketed wooden toys, even those of European design. The economics are so skewed in favor of Chinese production that it is more common for conscientious companies - Haba, Imagiplay, and others - to talk about how they monitor, coach, and/or control the manufacturing process IN China than producing elsewhere, although there are certainly exceptions.
We haven’t looked specifically into Small World Toys’ relationship with its manufacturers, but do know that there have been two Ryan’s Room recalls in the last decade, which is neither a stellar record nor a very bad one. The recalls were for a shape sorter (back in ‘02) and some puzzles that had knobs that came off.
Some Haba toys are made in Germany - mostly the all wood toys. Their soft toys and some of their items are produced in China. I really like the Selecta toys but unfortunately they are no longer distributing into the United States.
I am hoping that due to all of the toy recalls in the past few years (and 90% of them are made in China), that there will be a backlash against Chinese made products. Hopefully this will result in production of these items in the United States or in other European countries where the standards are much higher.
Thanks for the clarification, Alicia. I hadn’t noticed that the distinction with Haba production generally does fall along wood vs. plush lines. We are huge, probably too huge, fans of Haba’s toys, wood and otherwise, and especially their outstanding children’s games!
Yay for gender neutral toys! I am so sick of the awesome imaginative toys all being PINK! Those trees and hammock are adorable. I can see my son really enjoying something like this in a few years.
Off to peek at the rest of their line.
After reading _The World is Flat_ (VERY much recommended), I think it more likely that Chinese standards will increase than that we will see production move back to the US.