Designers Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti customized their IKEA kitchen island by covering it with over 20,000 LEGO pieces.

The 6-in-1 Solar Craft Kit is an environmentally-friendly multiple toy set. With this kit, you can make a windmill, a boat, a plane, an airplane dock, mini-car, and even a puppy.

This oversized battle ready figurine strikes a juxtapose against the other characters in the window of New York’s Kid Robot store.

As a promotional tie-in corresponding with the launch of their upcoming series of “Dunny” action figures, toy and apparel retailers/designers Kid Robot (with the help of creative ideas studio We Are Plus) has organized a mobile phone-based scavenger hunt centered around scanning QR codes.

This design-led eco-considerate Kingdom Animalia range comes from the Brooklyn husband and wife team behind Enormous Champion. The 15 maple-wood animals in the set and their packaging are all made in the USA. The packaging is made from recycled cardboard and offset printed and the wood is stained with non-toxic finishes (which are are also from the USA)

Enormous Champion
[Via The Die Line]

Inhabitat points us to the Early Rider – a bike designed by Andy Loveland who set out to design a stabilizer-free bike that he would admire and his son would love. Loveland says his company Early Rider combines British innovation with West Coast style and world leading manufacturing. The brand also sells fashion to wear with their ‘Classic’ bike.

Early Rider

There is a ton of anticipation over Spike Jonze’s upcoming reimagining of the classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, and now enthusiasts can own a little piece of the magic. Medicom has produced a set of Where the Wild Things Are figurines, including a range of wild things creatures as well as the hero Max himself. The vinyl toys will be available in Fall 2009 – just in time for the movie release.
[via Hypebeast]

Musician Aj Pyatak, aka Gannon modifies old toys and electronic gadgets into mutant retro-futuristic musical instruments. He’s taken everything from an old Atari video game cartridge to vintage toy keyboards and warped their insides to pull out all new noisy electronic sounds. This process is commonly known as circuit bending.
MAKE brings news of one of Gannon’s fantastic creations, the Speak n’ Spellbinder. It’s a mash up of a Speak and Spell and a Rock Band Guitar controller. Watch the Speak n’Spellbinder in action below, and head over to Gannon’s site to learn more about all of his amazing devices.

[GetLoFi via [...]

Artist and medical student Satre Stuelke started the Radiology Art Project in the summer of 2007, and has since compiled a collection of beautiful views of the hidden world inside of objects. Using CT scanners and X-ray machines, he’s captured the unknown world behind everyday things including toys, food and electronics.
Radiology Art

Frantz Lasome is working on an augmented reality toy concept that takes make-believe and lays it out in front of your eyes. His project lets kids use their old toys as game pieces and controls in an virtual world. Players battle it out, assigning weapon functions to their real world toys, and can watch the virtual action through special glasses. Though it seems like a fantastic toy, you have to wonder how immersion in an augmented world will effect kid’s developing minds.
Augmented Reality Toys (Work in progress) from Frantz Lasorne on Vimeo.
Like the “is Google making us stupid argument”, [...]

Like a Netflix for toys, Baby Plays is a subscription service that will send you a set number of toys on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. The basic plan sends out 5 different toys for babies and children to play with every 60 days for $26.99. And at the top end, you can get  10 toys every 30 days for $64.99.
The service carries a variety of toys, including more educational fare for children up to age 5. Similar to Netflix, you can hold on to any of the toys for as long as you want, which just reduces the number [...]

David Horvath’s Uglydolls have taken the leap from fuzzy stuffed animal-type-thing to full on collectible action figure. The colorful plastic toys stand 3 inches tall and come in 12 different characters per series. While dolls are sold separately for $8 a piece, cases (sold for $96) include one of each, and a special one in four sets includes a rarer, red-toothed Wedgehead figure. You can order your action Uglydoll at the official shop of Uglydoll online before it hits toy stores around the U.S.
[via JoshSpear]

Poken is a new toy that attempts to bridge the gap between online and offline play. It’s a plastic creature, in the form of a panda or bumblebee or three-eyed monster, that transfers social networking information via ‘high-fives’ (and RFID). After making new friends face-to-face, kids can bust out their RFID-enabled keychains and instantly exchange their online identity details through a poken-to-poken high five. After the exchange, users then connect their toy to a computer via USB, where they can download the info onto poken’s database, which helps them manage and distribute the new data on the user’s social networking [...]

Plain old reality is rapidly being woven together with the virtual by functional augmented reality tools that attach digital to physical. We’ve seen 3D information layers used in MINI’s 2008 Cabrio ad campaign, and now Lego is playing with these auras of information. The toy company is test launching a “Digital Box”, which, when held up to an in-store camera, will superimpose a rendering of the completed Lego model on top of the product box on screen. The Digital Box was designed by Metalo for Lego, and can be seen soon at select toy stores and Lego shops around the [...]

A new law scheduled to go in effect February 10th may limit or prohibit many hand crafted toy makers to continue selling their products. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act will mandate intensive and expensive testing procedures for toys and clothing designed for children under the age of 12. The law is designed to look out for lead and other harmful substances in kids items, but the expense may be too much for small scale operations to bear. Its reported that such third party tests can run as high $50,000 which puts it out of reach for all but the [...]