We've gone on and on about our love for Playmobil. Last year we discovered we'd been missing out on a whole line of Playmobil toys specifically made for the toddler set, so were excited to receive a recently released Playmobil 123 Farm for review.



From the instant we unboxed it for examination, six-year-old Z was all over it. A lot of toys -- including a lot of toddler toys -- make their way through our house, and very few of the toys designed for toddlers hold Z's attention for long. For some reason, she played with this set for days.

One of the best features of Playmobil 123 toys is the chunky figures that fit nicely in little hands and are balanced enough to not fall over when your unsteady two-year-old tries to make them stand or sit on the playset. Like other small, chunky figures, there are some complications when it comes to sitting; in their life on the farm, Mom and Dad need their chairs scootched back a bit from the table, and their daughter likes to take spills. But this is more than made up for by the grid their feet gently lock into and easily pop out of which makes it easy and natural to position them anywhere, firmly, with geometric exactitude. Like Legos, these figures actually attach to the flat surfaces of their environment -- both floors of the farmhouse and the two flaps that form a patio and lawn/field.

Contrast this with the frustration that consumed our household when Z, at age two or three, lacked the coordination to successfully balance her smaller toy figures and pieces of furniture. (I'm looking at you, Sweet Streets.) Even now, she remains frustrated that Polly Pockets don't stand up on their own accord. It may seem like a small matter to us big folk, but the ability to make figures stand up is crucial for engaging pretend play.



The Playmobil 123 Farm set has a classic design, with a house with two sides that unfold for play and snap shut to store the pieces. The building's open floorplan means it is easy to access the inside of the bottom floor from multiple directions, but there is plenty of real estate in plain view; interior spaces interest most young children as long as they can reach and see into them, and the proportions and access points here are right. Good playsets, like good architecture, have a flow to them; the outside spaces invite you in, and the reverse is also true, so you never get trapped in one narrow view of things, but see the possibilities of the whole from whatever position you find yourself in.

The two dozen or so play items in this set -- three people, a few farm animals, a horse-drawn cart, an apple tree, an absurdly large flower, and a hay-and-feed elevator -- make it clear what this family should be up to, but without so much specificity as to limit the story. Colors are bright primaries and secondaries and the overall look is gender-neutral, although the family's child will be interpreted by most users as a girl. The injection-molded details of some pieces, like the kitchen sink and dish drainer, are MOMA-worthy abstractions of form and function that will be instantly recognizable to a child.







We tested out some of the smaller pieces with a choke tube and none of the pieces violated the standard, which I mention because sometimes Playmobil 123 sets accidentally get marked as for "ages 3 and up" on sites like Amazon.com. These toys are engineered to be used by kids as young as eighteen months old, although there are a couple of parts that are almost small enough to fit in the choke tube (the small gray cat comes to mind) and you might want to take this away from a toddler who still tries to eat toys. (Every safety standard is inevitably a compromise.)



We do have a few complaints. While we love the idea that you can shove all the pieces into the house at the end of playtime, one of the sides of the farmhouse we received doesn't snap firmly in place, so it is prone to falling open, and there are enough pieces to shove inside that when it does, some are ready to fall out. We have no way of knowing if a set you bought would have this same defect, but even isolated failures tell a story about quality control. Since one side snapped shut very well, the other's slipperiness was clearly a defect and not an intentional feature. It's worth noting, too, that there is no "catch" to the doors or windows, and the entrance doors are wide enough to toss an avocado through (hypothetically speaking), so even if the side did close tightly, there's no real guarantee that this box would be very useful for transporting the toy set. Better to think of it as a convenient cube shape for storing the set on a shelf, deposited and retrieved like a tray of fine china.

One other disadvantage -- that the frame of the house does not double as a handle, as it is removable -- has its merits, as this means a child can place the frame, and the loft door, anywhere they like -- on any side of the house, dividing the upper story in two, or even placed down on the ground floor. Totally worth it.

The only other oddity, although it did not strike Z as the slightest bit odd, is that this family of three has only two single beds to sleep in. The use of these beds is clear, as each has a nice depression molded into it so a figure can lay neatly on its back in the bed and stare up at the tiled yellow ceiling while waiting to fall asleep, mulling over the next day's chores. Z patiently explained to us that the daughter sleeps in the doghouse, which at least explains why she put the doghouse in the kitchen.



The nickel-sized openings in the doors and windows in the photo above, for example, are perfectly sized to aid little fingers in opening them from the outside.

Overall, we think this is a playset that will make many families very happy; it is compact, colorful, and open in both intent and design. At around $60, it does outprice some other brands' sets that serve the same general play function, but if you are willing to pay for quality, you won't be disappointed. Playmobil's simplicity is always deceptively simple, and their design aesthetic is based in the idea that early childhood is a time for broad visual strokes combined with age-appropriate work in motor skills development. If play is the work of childhood, we are always seeking toys that seem to respect that work and make space for it, and the designers behind the Playmobil 123 line keeps their eye on the ball far better than the makers of most of the plastic toy playsets out there.

You can purchase this or other Playmobil 123 toys on Amazon.com. Playmobil toys are made of ABS plastic, and are free of BPA, phthalates, and PVC.

In accordance with our Keep No Stuff policy, we will not be keeping this item. Most of the toys we have evaluated and reviewed this year will be donated to our local Toys for Tots program.