Fat Brain Toys SpiroKu
(Fat Brain $19.99)
Remember Little Jack Horner? He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum? Well, if you stick your thumb into the SprioKu, you’ll get a lot more of a show than a little plum! SpiroKu is a nesting toy that stretches into a tower or turn it over and it does a colorful nose-dive. While it’s all stretched out try humming through it like a long horn. Lift it to your eye and you have a telescope. Turn it again and all the pieces can fall in a heap that need to be fitted together again, to remake a tower. But watch out! The colorful pieces have irregular shapes with one end smooth the other wavy, something they will soon discover, or they won’t fit. There’s a lot of trial and error, chances to experiment and use the pieces with their blocks or for an imaginary village that Duplo people can inhabit. As a stacking/nesting toy it’s anything but usual. Fitting it together, the pieces must go in one right way, if they are to work as a tower. However, it’s quite an open-ended toy with multiple ways to explore and play. Despite the company’s label—Early Learning Toys for Babies, that’s not this one. SpiroKu is an interesting preschool toy, not for babies at all. Quite apart from everything else one might say, this is a sleek and handsome object.
Ages: Preschoolers
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award 2021
