Alligator Juice: Misc.: Peek-a-Blocks

I have no shame. Well, okay, I have some. A little. Minute amounts. Right. So here's the thing. I have a weakness, and it is thus: I like going to toy stores and looking at stuff. And not just the toys that could be acceptable for childless adults to be thinking of purchasing, like Nerf sports equipment, video games, or... uh, puzzles or something. No, I like to visit the aisles of the type of toys I loved when I was two. And not only that, but sometimes I like to push the TRY ME buttons and watch the lights twinkle and listen to the pretty sounds play Old MacDonald Had A Farm so loudly that they attract the attention of everyone with in a three-aisle radius. It's an illness, I know this.

Eleven-odd years ago, my cousins started popping out kids. The first one to come along was treated like royalty. He was exciting & new, like love on the Love Boat. Everyone wanted to hold him and play with him, so he was not in need of much toy-driven entertainment. Even so, when he was young, we kept a small basket of toys for his enjoyment out, which included a ball and one of Mr. Potato Head's eyeballs and a kaleidoscope and a piece of twine. And he was happy. Two years later, another mini-cousin came along. Then another. By the time the ninth one arrived, things were getting a bit hostile come Family Get-Together time. When kids come to your house and you have no toys to offer them (besides twine), they tend to get a little... oh... ~~restless~~ violent and homicidal. They break things. They invent games of kick the can, substituting your lamp for the can. And so forth.

The obvious solution here? Buy toys to keep on hand for when young 'uns are nigh. And so I did.

The sad part is, I actually already had a lot of toys, things from my childhood that my mother hadn't yet found a way to sell, such as those Fisher-Price Little People. But I have a sentimental attachment to most of those things, and I didn't want little kids pawing my old stuff. Those toys belong in a museum that I will someday build, not the grubby little hands of small children.

But what to buy? The toy stores these days are full of stuff that runs on batteries, and I was not really eager to buy anything that lit up or played music. Sure, those buttons are fun to push at the store, but once you get the toy home and turn it over to a kid with a trigger finger, you're going to have to listen to the twangy, happy sounds over and over, until the day its batteries die.

No good.

Thankfully, I discovered Peek-a-Blocks.

Stupid name, great toys.

Discovered them... and then bought 88 of them. I know what you're probably thinking: So you bought these toys. And you hoarded them for yourself and still gave your cousins the twine, am I right? WRONG. I have been very generous with the Peek-a-Blocks. The kids love them. Babies all the way up to preschoolers have spent time with them -- examining them, stacking them, and sorting them. Okay, so one of my cousins threw them... but don't worry -- he's been eliminated.

The concept is simple -- Peek-a-Blocks are not-quite-perfect cubes that are a little less than 2 inches in all directions. Four of the sides are made of clear plastic; the top and the bottom are made of solid, colored plastic (or sometimes a frame of solid plastic with a window of clear plastic in the middle). Each Peek-a-Block has something different going on inside, which you can see clearly thanks to the see-throughness of the plastic. Not only that, but every block's "inner object" is interactive in some way. Take the above chick, for example. On the top of that Peek-a-Block, there is a circular button; if you press it, the eggshell will slightly compress and the chick will squeak. Hmmm, that's actually kind of cruel, once you think about it. But whatever. No harm comes to the chick, because when you release the button the eggshell goes back to normal, and the chick is still smiling happily.

So what else can these "inner objects" do? Well, some just jiggle around like bobbleheads. Some blocks have little beads inside that rattle. There are bells that ring, treasure chests that open up with the press of a button, things that spin on their own, things that twirl when you spin a kind of plate at the bottom of that Peek-a-Block.... One Peek-a-Block even has water and glitter inside. Some Peek-a-Blocks don't have anything going on inside -- the Touch Sensations blocks have things going on on the outside... but they're anomalies in the world of Peek-a-Blocks.

While many Peek-a-Blocks come in themed sets of six blocks, others come with bigger sets that include some sort of large toy/object. You can get a big blue hippo, a wagon, a giraffe, an Incrediblock, a dump truck, and more... each of these is electronic and comes with a few special Peek-a-Blocks. They'll have space for the Peek-a-Blocks to sit, and the blocks themselves can often twirl or whatever thanks to the big toy they're sitting on. It's interactive, folks. Plus, these big toys make music and light up.

Want to see pictures of some of those big, noisy sets? Check out Fisher-Price's Website.

It's almost pathetic how much I love these blocks. But you know -- when toy shopping for kids... any kids, whether it be gifts for my mini-cousins or a present for a Giving Tree child, I try to pick out toys that I know I would have liked when I was a kid. And what I loved most were toys that could serve multiple purposes. For example, my grandparents had these wooden blocks at their house, and I loved building with them. But my favorite block of all was one that somebody had drilled a hole into, a hole about the size of a fifty-cent piece. They hadn't drilled all the way through the block, just far enough so that there was this little cave inside this piece of wood. When I was very young, my grandpa would build block structures with me, and sometimes he would take a gumdrop or a jellybean and put it inside the little cave for me to find. I've spent the rest of my life being extremely intrigued by things that have secrets.

Peek-a-Blocks may not have secrets, exactly -- their innerworkings are visible for the world to see. But to a small child, each block will be a discovery. Some will be loved more than others, I'm sure. I personally like the fish one with the real water in it; the one with the plastic train that goes around & around, and through a tunnel; and the treasure chest whose lid opens up to reveal a heap of gold. And even when a child is done figuring out what's inside each block, he or she can still have fun with them as blocks... because building and stacking = fun fun fun.

...

I sound like a Fisher-Price salesperson, don't I?

Don't answer that.

Below are thumbnails of the sets I own. Click on any of them to see a larger picture.