Toy Donations Bring Out The Kid In Animals At Memphis Zoo

The doorway was a little small, but that didn't stop Mwelu from squeezing his way inside for a quick look.

Mwelu, a Western Lowland Gorilla, and his three female companions weren't sure what to make of the new addition to their habitat at the Memphis Zoo, but simian body language seemed to indicate they were impressed.

"It's not about just giving toys to the animals," noted curator Courtney Janney. "It's about changing up their environment. That's not just physical stimulation; it's mental stimulation as well."

Thanks to Janney and plenty of Facebook friends, the zoo's animal population has lots to stimulate them these days.

Janney came up with the idea of collecting children's toys, those the kids had outgrown or in which they had lost interest, and giving them to her animal family.

"I'm part of a Facebook group where I donate or sell my kids' stuff," said Janney, a mother of two. "It's always been in the back of my mind that if I asked for donations to the zoo, people might donate."

And donate they did -- the fort that enthralls the four gorillas; several plastic cars, just the right size for the Sulawesi Crested Black Macaques to sit in or (more likely) tip over; slides, basketball hoops, sand tables and water tables.

"It was amazing to me because people could have very easily looked to sell them," Janney said. "But I posted a picture of a monkey with one of those Cozy Coupe cars, and people just went nuts over it."


It really is a win-win, Janney noted. The donations keep discarded toys out of the landfill, while providing the stimulation animals need. Making sure they get it is part of the zoo's accreditation process.

Jennifer Brown is a regular zoo patron who saw Janney's Facebook appeal for toys. She sent a stock photo of the fort she was willing to donate.

"One of our favorite family outings is the Memphis Zoo," Brown, a mother of three, said in a video Facebook produced for its Community Voices feature. "She (Janney) said, 'You've made every monkey's Christmas dream come true.'

"I chuckle because I think, 'that was in our back yard. Now, primates are playing on our castle.'"

Janney said "it speaks volumes" that the community has been so supportive of the zoo through the toy donations.

"They just donated without hesitation," Janney said. "They were showing it to their kids, and the kids were totally willing to donate too."

There are certain donations that cannot be accepted -- no sharp edges, no metal toys, no toys with lots of parts since some of the animals, Janney notes, are very adept at taking toys apart.

"But," Janney added, "if anyone wants to donate, I'm willing to talk to them about pretty much anything. Some of our animals like to destroy the toys, so we're always looking for donations."

Young Girl Distributes Toys to Marathon Runners in Virginia Beach to Raise Awareness for IBS

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – A 12-year-old girl has been handing out stuffed Poo-nicorn toys to runners to help raise awareness for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which she suffers from.

Anastacia Wartmann also has arthritis, and has handed out toys at the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. and the Wicked 10k in Virginia Beach recently.

According to Swerver PR, the toys that Wartmann has been handing out are a mixture between a poo emoji and rainbow unicorn.

Wartmann gave her first Poonicorn Droplings to an Angle Runner in September when she raced in the Camp Lejune Marine Corps 1/2 in North Carolina.

“I can be sad about it or I can just be happy. Poonicorns help me do that,” said Wartmann about how handing out these toys, which she believes, makes her feel better about what she goes through with her illnesses.

Her goal is to make runners smile when they see the notes she has attached to the droplings toy. Even though she has arthritis, and it is hard for her to write them, Wartmann write original inspirational and motivational notes for each of the runners who receives a droplings toy.

The 7th graders from Great Neck Middle School is active in Girl Scouts and is also involved with Ainsley’s Angels, where in the last year, she has raced in Triathlons, 5k, 8k, 10k and 1/2 and full marathons as part of representing the organization.

Meet the 2017 Nominees for The National Toy Hall of Fame

IS A MAGIC 8-BALL SUPERIOR to Matchbox cars? Is toy food more fun than the paper airplane? Is sand a more enduring source of joy than Risk? These are just some of the questions posed by this year’s nominees for inclusion in the National Toy Hall of Fame.

The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, has just announced the finalists for 2017 induction. The 12 playthings up for consideration are the games Clue, Uno, and Risk; brand-name classics Matchbox cars, My Little Pony, Transformers, and PEZ dispensers; vintage holdovers the Magic 8-Ball and the Wiffle ball; and a few broader categories of toys—play food, paper airplanes, and sand!

The National Toy Hall of Fame, curated by the Strong Museum, currently recognizes 62 other toys from over the years, including Etch-A-Sketch, LEGO, the ball (all of them), Star Wars action figures, and the Slinky. In 2016, both Fisher-Price Little People and Dungeons & Dragons made the cut. The museum, billed as the National Museum of Play, has special exhibitions of the selected toys, which are chosen for their ability to inspire imaginative play and wonder over generations.

This group of finalists all seem like heavy hitters, but at most a handful will be chosen for induction, so it’s anybody’s guess. Transformers and My Little Pony have high modern profiles, but neither can match the simple, universal appeal of the paper airplane or a Matchbox car. And it’s hard to imagine any more basic and primal toy than sand (maybe the first toy?) with which kids can excavate pits, build castles, or bury their parents.

The honorees will be announced in a ceremony on November 9, 2017, but until then, let the playground arguments commence

The Lessons Of Fidget Spinners

YOU can spin it on your nose, chin, finger or tongue. Some include LED lights, others resemble a ship’s wheel, or even a skull and crossbones. The fidget spinner has three paddle-shaped blades attached to a central, weighted disc containing ball bearings. Flick a blade and it spins, for anything up to 12 minutes in an advanced version from Japan. It was originally designed to help calm children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism, but swept the world earlier this year as a toy that everyone can play with.

Retail sales have undoubtedly slowed recently, says Mark Austin of ToyWorld, a trade publication—good news for the schools that have banned it as too distracting for pupils. But the spinner has created a new “fidget” category of toys. And the global toy industry, which was surprised by its success, has learned lessons.

The fad started in America in February. By May, all 20 of the top-selling toys on Amazon, an online retailer, were either fidget spinners or fidget cubes, a close relation. There have been many such crazes—who can forget the great loom-band mania of 2014?—but none that spread as fast. Frédérique Tutt, an analyst of the global toy market for NPD, a data company, says that it took just three weeks to cross the Atlantic and go global. No one knows exactly how many have been sold but NPD estimates that at least 19m were sold in the 12 rich-world countries that they track (including America and the biggest European markets) during the first six months of this year. Others put the figure at over 50m.

Big toy retailers, the usual arbiters of what sells, were initially caught flat-footed. Fidget spinners were a plaything that children themselves discovered and shared on social media, particularly on YouTube and Instagram. No person or firm had a patent on spinners, so with no patenting or licensing fees to pay, anyone was able to make one. They are produced in huge quantities in China, often by businesses that previously manufactured smartphone accessories. Others were made using 3D-printing. That has been a boon for small shops, which have been able to stock these unbranded goods from wherever they can find them.

Andrew Moulsher, managing director of Peterkin, a firm that imports toys into Britain, calls it a “watershed moment” for the business. Big retailers usually plan their inventory as much as 18 months ahead of peak seasons such as summer or Christmas; schedules are often tied to toy-filled films such as the Star Wars and Cars franchises. This is where most of their attention, as well as their marketing and advertising budgets, go. So it was easy for big retailers to miss the eruption of fidget spinners on the internet. (Subsequently they reacted as well as they could, says Mr Austin, ordering spinners in by air freight.)

Developing and manufacturing a toy can take even longer than inventory planning—up to three years. But now there is pressure to spot new fads and bring products to market far more quickly. After the fidget spinner, both manufacturers and retailers know they must respond faster to signals from social media. A Californian company, MGA, which was founded in 1979, spotted that children were watching YouTube videos of other youngsters opening presents; to take advantage of this “unboxing” trend, it managed to produce the L.O.L Surprise! doll, which contains several layers of gifts, in just nine months. It has been another best-seller.

The successor to the spinner may be the roller, an oblong-shaped object weighted at either end. Mr Moulsher started importing Japan’s Mokuru brand of rollers into Britain in July. He has sold about 40,000. Learning from the fidget fad, he is hoping that the return of schools this month and a smart social-media strategy will see sales rocket. Teachers, be warned.

Justice League Talking Toys & Action Gear Revealed

Justice League toys are finally stocking the shelves of most major retailers, and some of the newest reveals from Mattel include the new Talking Heroes and Action Gear series. When it comes to toys, most of the recent focus has been on Star Wars thanks to the recent Force Friday II, seeing the official launch of hordes of new collectibles for a galaxy far, far away, and while DC’s merchandising power is nowhere near the behemoth that is Star Wars toys and collectibles, there will no doubt be a variety of tie-in merchandise to purchase before the movie is released.

We’ve already seen a number of items from Mattel, including the full Justice League roster that comes with pieces of a larger Steppenwolf figure, and those figures all appear to sport high-quality movie accurate paint work and versatile articulation, but the Talking Heroes figures diverge from that a bit, offering more restricted motion in the joints, a far more simple paint job, and a giant battery bulge, instead highlighting the built-in speaker that plays iconic catch phrases from each character.

Unfortunately, anyone expecting Superman to utter something spoilery like “I hope you like my black suit,”  “sorry I was evil when you resurrected me,” or “let’s team up with Green Lantern to fight Darkseid!” is in for a letdown. The phrases are unfortunately far more simplistic with Superman saying things like “I’ll use my heat vision,” and Batman resorting to familiar lines like “I’m Batman.”

While those lines are fairly boring, the figures also have some “interactive” dialogue options where they refer to other figures near them (utilizing an IR sensor). Unfortunately, these lines are just as generic, and Superman even says “Batman, join the Justice League,” which we know (with a fair amount of certainty) is now how the plot of the movie plays out.

The other toy line, Action Gear, is targeted at a much younger audience. Meant for ages 4 and up, the Action Gear is inspired (fairly loosely) by the armor and gadget of the league. Each character has a basic Action Gear set that includes a character mask and themed disk thrower. In the case of Aquaman, the thrower is a small trident, while others are less canonically concerned, usually taking the form of some sort of baton, or even separating into two separate batons in the case of Batman and The Flash.

In addition to the basic disk throwers, each character has a separate gear pack that includes a themed utility belt, Justice League communicator, and other character themed gadgets. It’s not exactly the makings of the next big thing for cosplayers, but when it comes to fighting parademons in the backyard, it’s probably exactly what most little DC fans want.

Winnie-the-Pooh Heads To V&A For Big Winter Exhibition

Pattering in the footsteps of David Bowie and Pink Floyd, the Bear of Very Little Brain is heading for the Victoria and Albert museum (V&A) to star in its first exhibition celebrating the most famous bear in literary history, Winnie-the-Pooh.

The museum has been on a roll, with record visitor numbers for the giant rock music exhibitions, but Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic will be the first in the main museum targeted at families with young children. It will have playful settings by Tom Piper, the designer whose torrent of red ceramic poppies brought crowds to the Tower of London in the centenary year of the first world war.

The exhibition will be the largest to date on the bear and his friends from the 100 Aker Wood, and will bring together loans from other collections including a Winnie-the-Pooh tea service presented to the young Princess Elizabeth, coming from the Royal Collection, original illustrations, letters, photographs, manuscripts, and the museum’s own delicate pencil sketches by EH Shepard for the beloved characters, which are so fragile they have not been exhibited for 40 years.

There will of course also be hunny from very distinguished bees – from the hives on the roof of the museum.

The museum’s director, Tristram Hunt, said the V&A, which houses the world’s largest collection of Shepard drawings, was the perfect home for the exhibition. “This is our first exhibition specifically for younger families and we look forward to welcoming another generation into AA Milne’s magical, intimate, joyous world,” he said.

The museum will look at the links between Milne’s characters and the real world, most famously his own son, Christopher Robin, whose life was haunted by his alter ego. In adult life he recalled that he hated the girlish clothes and long hair his mother kept him in, that he learned to box to cope with bullying at school, and that his father – apart from the stories – was “not good with children”. He died in 1996.

Winnie-the-Pooh was inspired by bedtime stories about Christopher Robin’s bear Edward, and Shepard studied the toys and the trees in Ashdown Forest near their home to create his enduring images. When We Were Very Young, a collection of poems, came out in 1924 soon after Christopher Robin’s fourth birthday: the initial edition was 5,000 copies, but it had to be rapidly reprinted as 44,000 copies sold in the first eight weeks. Winnie-the-Pooh followed in 1926. Together with the second book of poems and The House at Pooh Corner, the books have since sold millions of copies in every language including Latin and Esperanto.

The exhibition will also feature many objects drawn from 90 years of merchandising, including toys and games, ceramics and textiles, and from the Walt Disney animations that almost overshadowed the originals. Many self-help books have appeared inspired by the bear’s apparently simple approach to life: one aphorism, captured in a Shepard illustration in the museum collection, is “When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you’re coming”. In one poll the public voted Winnie-the-Pooh the greatest philosopher of all time, and the 19th anniversary of his creation was marked with a talking “Thotful Spot” bench installed at sites including the real wood and near the statue of Confucius at King’s College London.

Milne, already a successful playwright, first met Shepard when they were both working on Punch magazine. The origins of their most successful joint creation lay in the teddy bear bought from Harrods by his parents for Christopher Robin’s first birthday, but the final version of Shepard’s drawings looked more like his own son’s bear, a Steiff teddy called Growler. The name Winnie-the-Pooh (always hyphenated) was inspired by Winnie, a bear at London zoo that fascinated the child, and the setting for the stories came when in 1925 the Milnes bought a large house, Cotchford Farm, on the edge of the 500 acres of Ashford Forest.

The house has a bleaker fascination for a very different group of fans: it was later the home of Brian Jones, a founder member of the Rolling Stones, who drowned in the swimming pool there in 1969.

Popular Toys Linked with Safety Hazards

A U.S. government agency is warning of the safety hazards linked with the widely popular toys called fidget spinners.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has released new safety guidelines for fidget spinners on Aug. 10, after receiving several reports of children choking on fidget spinner pieces, as well as reports of battery-operated spinners catching fire.

"Fidget spinners can be fun to use, but consumers and companies should be aware of some of the safety concerns associated with this product," Ann Marie Buerkle, acting chairwoman of the CPSC, said in a statement.

Plastic and metal fidget spinners may break and release small pieces that can be a choking hazard, according to the guidelines. For this reason, children younger than 3 years old should not use fidget spinners, and children of any age should not put fidget spinners in their mouths. (Some reports of choking have involved children as old as 14, the CPSC said.) [Beyond Fidget Spinners: 10 Ways to Help Kids Concentrate]

In addition, there have been some reports of fires involving battery-operated fidget spinners, the CPSC said. For example, a woman in Michigan told NBC News that her Bluetooth-enabled fidget spinner caught fire after charging on her counter for less than 30 minutes.

The CPSC recommends that consumers be present in the room when their fidget spinner is charging and that they always use the cable that came with the toy. If the spinner didn't come with a cable, consumers should make sure to use a cable that has the correct connections for charging the device. Once the device is charged, consumers should unplug it immediately, the CPSC said.

If the fidget spinner is made for children 12 years and younger, it must meet certain testing, labeling and other requirements, according to the CPSC.