In this article we look at the wooden train set sold by Ikea and check to see whether it fits with Bigjigs railway, Brio or any of the other leading brands. Firstly we have to say it is fantastic value. Sold under the name of Lillabo, Ikea offer a basic 20 piece set for £7.99 and a pack of 10 track pieces for just £4.99. The track pieces seem to be made of beech, which isn’t cheap. As the old…
Are children’s toys and Christmas presents about to become more expensive ? Last week The Times carried an article suggesting that manufacturing costs in China were climbing as workers look for ever higher wages, and materials costs are rising too. It seems certain that those costs will be passed on to Western consumers, and here at Mulberry Bush we’ve already seen a number of proposed price increases from importers. Needless to say we’re negotiating hard to keep increases to a…
There’s going to be a shortage of toys this Christmas – so says BBC Breakfast today. Well for the must-have, toy-of-the-year Barbie Roller Girl or Transformers Movie Leader type of toy that may very well be true. The big distributors have to place their orders in the Far East many months before Christmas, and at the beginning of this year with all the doom and gloom there was it was not surprising that many importers were cautious. Bear in mind…
The opportunity for our customers to add their own reviews of their purchases was a recent enhancement to our website just a few weeks ago. Opening up this service was not without some trepidation on our part it has to be said. Most of the conversations we have with you our customers take place before the toy has been bought and whilst we’ve had many, many compliments over the years we never really know what people really think about their…
This is a chid’s bike that starts as a 4 wheeler, then can quickly and easily be changed to a trike by removing one front wheel and repositioning the other by means of the clever axle system. Then when your child is ready the rear wheels are changed in the same way converting the same frame into a first pedalled two-wheeler bike. This is such a fantastic idea we thought it well worth putting on the front cover of our…
Times may be a little tough in Britain right now, but we are already seeing large orders placed for Christmas which suggests that many children will certainly not go short this year. Even if the presents are slightly smaller or a little less expensive it’s safe to say that Christmas will still be a joyous occasion with plenty of toys, food and drink. Contrast that with the lives of millions of children in the third world who may not know…
We regularly receive orders for toys and games from overseas, or to be sent overseas, but calculating the Postage & Packing cost is frequently difficult. The cost depends on the weight and size of the parcel, where it is to be sent, what service is to be used etc. Given the number of countries, we have been asked to send to the permutations are enormous. We tell our customers that we will advise the actual cost of delivery, (plus a…
When my wife and I started Mulberry Bush twelve years ago our aim was to build a collection of traditional toys and games that Grandparents would want to buy for their grandchildren. Lots of wooden toys, not too much plastic, nothing to do with computers, and none of those character or film related toys that are the “must have” one Christmas and gone the next. The only slight snag was that we weren’t grandparents ourselves, nor indeed did we have…
There’s a nicely written piece about traditional games on Time Magazine’s website with the author describing how he and his primary schoolmates played marbles in the playground in the 1970s. No doubt he thinks that makes him sound old, but I could have written the same about my primary school in the 1950s and I reckon if I asked my father – now in his 80s – he could have done the same for the 1920s and ’30s. But in…
We didn’t realise it but it turns out we’re celebrating our 400th anniversary this year, in a here-we-go-round-the-mulberry-bush sort of way. Today’s Times carries a fascinating letter – if slightly arcane – from the Master of the Garden of the Inner Temple, London (no less) explaining the provenance of the two mulberry trees that grow there. It emerges that the mulberry was introduced into England exactly 400 years ago, in 1608, by James I in an attempt to build a…