April 2012 New Specialty Toys — Kits

Store your secret treasures in these super sparkly KeepSake Boxes! Follow a numbered legend and add sparkling jewels to make three special boxes. Each box features a different Princess along with her special animal friend. Launch date: March 2012.

Add sparkling jewels to these ghoulish girls. Use 8 reusable stickers to decorate mirrors, windows, notebooks and more. Create colorful frightfully fashionable designs by matching sparkling tiles to a numbered legend. Best of all, these stickers can be peeled right off with no residue and reused for years to come. Launch date: March 2012.

Add sparkling jewels to these retro owls. Use 8 reusable stickers to decorate mirrors, windows, notebooks and more. Create colorful owls on their perches by matching sparkling tiles to a numbered legend. Best of all, these stickers can be peeled right off with no residue and reused for years to come. Launch date: March 2012.

Look sweet as sugar with this Cupcake Clutch. Follow a simple numbered legend and add over 150 sparkling jewels to create this tasty clutch. Skip right to dessert and pair this with any outfit for some funky fashion flair. Launch date: March 2012.
— In a May 2012 survey, two of 13 retailers said that The Orb Factory was a best selling brand of activity kit.

PLAY-DECO is a unique craft for home decor that combines wooden "bone" with paper "skin." Users can either use the skin as is or create their own original works. "You can also download new 'skins' and accessories from the website as well as templates to design your own," Shinya Fujimoto, CEO of Magnote, told TDmonthly. Launch date: January 2012.
Awards: 2011 Good Design Award

Kids activate traps and prepare the knights to guard the Playmobil Falcon Knights' Castle from intruders. The castle comes with a drawbridge, breakout wall, drop-down ladder, and a trap door. The set also includes four Falcon Knights, horse, functional cannon, and many other accessories. Dimensions: 23.6 x 22.8 x 13.8 inches (L x W x H).
— In a May 2012 survey about best selling toys, Erin Blanton of Pufferbellies Toys & Books for Children in Staunton, Va., told TDmonthly that they sell 250 Playmobil sets each month, especially the knight sets.

Kids will learn over 30 amazing tricks and effects and learn the science principles behind them. Science and magic are very closely related. In fact, many science experiments look like magic and many cool magic tricks are science based. Kids will make water disappear, learn to read minds, mix up some disappearing orbs, levitate magnets, lift up a bottle of rice with a chop stick, stick pencils through a bag of water with noting leaking out, write secret messages and much more.
— In a late Summer 2012 survey, Joe Berardoni Sr., owner of Pun's Toys in Bryn Mawr, Penn., told TDmonthly that "Any of the Lab-in-a-Bag kits from Be Amazing Toys" become their best selling Science & Nature toys.

Grow dozens of dazzling crystals and conduct 15 illuminating experiments with this classic science kit. Experiment with four chemically different crystals each with different properties, including potassium alum crystals that form regular octahedrons, rapidly growing sodium sulfate crystals, long needle-shaped sodium acetate crystals, and plaster which is made from gypsum crystals. Mold fun plaster shapes and mix the dyes to grow a rainbow of custom colored crystals. Measure how the crystallization of solids out of a solution, and the dissolution of crystals back into solution, affect the temperature of the solution. Learn about the energy of crystallization. Investigate solutions, crystallization, and the chemistry of crystal growing. Learn about the structures and geometries of different crystal shapes. This kit is thoroughly tested and safe: Over one million units of this kit have sold worldwide. A full-color, 32-page experiment manual guides your experiments in crystal chemistry and Earth science. Launch date: Summer 2012.
— Mary Porter Green, owner of Curiosity Zone in Ashburn, Va., told TDmonthly in a Fall 2012 survey that kits from Thames & Kosmos are one of their top-2 bestselling educational products. They sell dozens each month.
— Mary Porter Green, owner of Curiosity Zone in Ashburn, Va., told TDmonthly in a March 2014 survey that crystal growing kits were a best-selling products.

Add a recycled magazine and two plastic bottles to this kit and blast a paper rocket up to 80 feet high. Exclusive to Toysmith in the U.S.
— In a January 2015 survey, 2 out of 10 retailers told TDmonthly that 4M, distributed in the US by Toysmith, was their best-selling brand of STEM toys.

Pick a theme, find the materials, and let the creativity flow. Each kit includes Makedo’s reusable re-clips, lock-hinges, safe-saw, an inspirational poster and stickers to complete the creation. Through playful creativity take recyclable materials commonly found in the home and transform them into creations. Exclusive to Toysmith in the U.S.