17 stores · curated ORBIS register
Rubber chickens and other gag gifts fill Archie McPhee, the Wallingford shop that has designed and sold novelties since 1983. Its range also includes bacon-scented pieces and glow-in-the-dark aliens, keeping humour at the centre of the stock. Italy's Città del Sole takes a different approach through wooden and scientific toys, with cooperative games among its screenless choices. Paris's Djeco makes toys and games, with arts-and-crafts kits added to the family business's range in 2007.
Seattle (Wallingford, 45th St)
Archie McPhee has designed and sold absurd gag gifts from its Wallingford store since 1983. Rubber chickens, bacon-scented novelties and glow-in-the-dark aliens fill the shelves.
Best for Quirky novelties, gag gifts and oddball toys
Channapatna
Third-generation family business, Meeran Art & Crafts, founded in 1946, making GI-tagged Channapatna wooden toys with natural, non-toxic lac colours. Based in the Handicrafts Colony on T K Road Cross, Channapatna, and recognized under India's ODOP scheme.
Best for Gi tagged lacquered wooden toys
Via della Scrofa, Rome / Online
Since 1977 Città del Sole has curated the intelligent toy — wooden, scientific, cooperative, screenless — from its Roman flagship to shops across Italy. A children's store parents linger in.
Best for Serious toys for creative childhoods
Langeais / Loire / Online
French doll maker founded 1979, design studio based in Langeais in the Loire Valley; debut doll Bebe Cheri set the brand's realistic, vanilla-scented style. Dolls are designed in France and manufactured in Asia.
Best for Baby dolls, doll fashion, and first-doll gifts.
Corolle was founded in 1979 in Langeais, in the Loire Valley, with its first product, Bebe Cheri - a 20-inch newborn doll sized to resemble a real infant. The company built its identity on realism and a signature vanilla scent applied to its dolls, and has since won more than 30 international design and play awards. Corolle's design team remains based in Langeais, but actual manufacturing takes place in Asia rather than France, following standard practice for the toy industry. Corolle dolls are sold in more than 20 countries and the brand is now part of the Simba Dickie Group.
Paris / Online
Paris toy and games brand founded in 1954 by Veronique Michel-Dales, named after the gecko; still a family business - her son Frederic took over in 1989 and added arts-and-crafts kits to the range in 2007.
Best for Artist-designed puzzles, wooden toys and imaginative games
Djeco was founded in Paris in 1954 by Veronique Michel-Dales, who named the company after the gecko, traditionally a symbol of good luck. The brand specialized in educational games designed to be both beautiful and fun, and Michel-Dales won four Oscars du Jouet through the 1960s. Her son Frederic took over the family business in 1989 and began designing original toy and game collections. In 2007 the brand expanded into arts and crafts, introducing kits for origami, glitter boards and fabric painting alongside its existing puzzles and games.
Pearl Street, Boulder
Into The Wind has sold kites from its Pearl Street shop since 1980, from simple diamonds to stunt and box kites, along with windsocks, banners and flying toys. The independent store designs some of its own kites and ships them worldwide.
Best for Kites and flying toys
Liezey, Gérardmer
A family workshop in the Liezey hamlet above Gérardmer, turning wooden toys and household objects by hand since 1980. Made-to-order pieces sit alongside spinning tops, puzzles and utensils cut from local timber.
Best for Handmade wooden toys
Paris / Online
The 1972 French toy cooperative — plush worlds and paper theatres of gentle Loire imagination.
Best for Plush toys and paper theatres from this 1972 Loire toy cooperative
Paris / Multiple
Descended from Eveil & Jeux, a mail-order educational-toy catalogue Margaret Milan started from a garage in 1989; renamed Oxybul éveil et jeux in 2011 after a decade as Fnac Eveil & Jeux, it now runs about 40 stores across France.
Best for Educational toys, games, books, and craft kits for family gift shopping
Oxybul traces back to 1989, when Margaret Milan, unhappy with the quality of toys available for her own children, started Eveil & Jeux as a mail-order catalogue of educational and playful toys, run out of a garage by a team of parents rather than a conventional retail operation. The company grew from that catalogue model into childcare products and, in 2000, established the Fondation Eveil & Jeux, aimed at improving children's access to play and learning-through-play, particularly for disadvantaged children, a project tied to the brand's founding rationale about the educational value of toys. Between 2001 and 2010, the company operated jointly with Fnac's youth division under the name Fnac Eveil & Jeux, which is also when its first physical stores opened, moving the business beyond mail order. Following a change in shareholders, the chain was renamed Oxybul éveil et jeux on 14 February 2011. Today it operates roughly 40 stores across France, serving children from birth to age 12 and their parents, with the original emphasis on educational and awakening-focused ('éveil') toys, books, games and craft kits still organizing its product range.
Passage Jouffroy
Toy and dollhouse-miniatures shop open since 1972 in Paris's 19th-century Passage Jouffroy, near the Musée Grévin. Two floors specialize in handmade wooden toys, dollhouse furniture, stuffed animals and vintage-style games.
Best for Dollhouse furniture and old-Paris toys in the Passage Jouffroy since 1972
Pain d'Épices has operated since 1972 inside the Passage Jouffroy, one of the covered 19th-century shopping arcades running through Paris's 9th arrondissement near the Musée Grévin waxworks. The shop takes its name from pain d'épices, the spiced honey bread traditionally associated with French children's teatime treats of past generations — a name chosen to evoke nostalgia rather than describe what it sells. Spread across two floors under the arcade's glass roof, the store specializes in dollhouse miniatures and furniture, handmade wooden toys, stuffed animals and dolls, along with vintage-style games and unusual collectible objects aimed at both children and adult collectors. It has become particularly known among miniature and dollhouse enthusiasts as a source for pieces sized and finished for serious display collections rather than mass-market toy versions. The shop's survival since 1972 inside Passage Jouffroy — itself a protected example of Paris's historic covered-arcade architecture — has made it a fixture of that stretch of the 9th arrondissement, alongside the arcade's other longstanding independent shops.
Nashville / United States
Family-owned since 1946, Phillips Toy Mart is a Nashville toy store on Harding Pike stocking everything from Playmobil and Brio to plush, dolls, games and a large model-train display. It offers gift wrapping, a birthday registry and in-store shopping for all ages.
Best for Toy store, games, dolls, model trains
Rumilly / Haute-Savoie / Online
Natural-rubber teething toy invented on 25 May 1961 by a Hevea-rubber craftsman known as Monsieur Rampeau, named for the feast day of St. Madeleine-Sophie Barat. Manufactured by the Vulli company in Rumilly, Haute-Savoie, since 1991, still made from 100% natural rubber via more than 14 manual steps.
Best for The iconic teether and baby gift sets.
Sophie la girafe was created on 25 May 1961 by an expert in molding latex from the Hevea rubber tree, credited in brand histories as Monsieur Rampeau; the toy was named for St. Madeleine-Sophie Barat, whose feast day fell that day. Rampeau reportedly chose a giraffe deliberately, wanting to move infant toys away from the usual farm-animal designs. The first Sophie toys were produced at a Delacoste company office in Paris, under what became the Vulli company. Since 1991, manufacturing has been based at Vulli's factory in Rumilly, in the Haute-Savoie region of France, where the toy is still made from 100% natural Hevea rubber through more than 14 manual operations per piece.
Harbor Springs / United States
The Rocking Horse Toy Company has been a family-run toy store in Northern Michigan since 1981, with shops in Harbor Springs and Petoskey stocking puzzles, games, Lego and thousands of toys. It offers free gift wrapping, curbside pickup and coast-to-coast shipping, taking orders by phone, email or Facebook.
Best for Toys, games, puzzles, family-run
Mystic Connecticut / United States
The Toy Soldier is a family-owned toy store, the first shop to open in Olde Mistick Village back in 1973, stocking collectible toy soldiers, dolls, plush, puzzles and imaginative-play sets. Its shelves favour games, science kits and gifts that spark reading and time together over screens.
Best for Toys, games, dolls, collectibles
Malha Mall, Jerusalem
Israeli branch of the U.S. toy chain founded in 1957 by Charles Lazarus; opened its first Israeli store in 1995 under license to Fishman Retail Group, with this location on the third floor of Malha Mall.
Best for Action figures, dolls, games, educational toys, and outdoor play gear
This Malha Mall location is part of the Israeli Toys R Us franchise, which opened its first store in the country in 1995, run under license by Fishman Retail Group. The global Toys R Us chain traces to 1948, when Charles Lazarus opened Children's Supermart, a baby-furniture store, in Washington, D.C.; he opened the first store dedicated purely to toys, under the Toys R Us name, in 1957. The Israeli operation has continued trading under the Toys R Us name even through the U.S. parent company's 2017-2018 bankruptcy and store liquidation, since the Israeli stores are run independently under license rather than owned directly by the U.S. corporate entity. The Jerusalem store, on the third floor of Malha Mall, carries the standard Toys R Us range across baby gear, action figures, dolls, games, educational toys, and outdoor play equipment.
Tarcento / Friuli / Online
Founded in 1954 in Tarcento (Udine) by German-born artist Gertrud 'Trudi' Mueller Patriarca, who began hand-sewing plush toys at home. Now owned by the Giochi Preziosi group since 2019.
Best for Heirloom-soft plush animals.
Trudi takes its name from Gertrud Mueller Patriarca, a German-born artist trained in Munich who settled in Molinis di Tarcento after marrying Antonio Patriarca in 1948. In the early 1950s she began making plush toys by hand at home, and in 1954 the hobby became a company headquartered in Tarcento, Friuli, near Udine. The company expanded through the late 1990s, adding subsidiaries in Germany, Spain and France. By the late 2010s Trudi employed roughly 100 people and reported revenue of about EUR10.5 million in 2018. In July 2019 the company was acquired by the Giochi Preziosi group.
Tokyo
Undercover Aoyama is the Tokyo shop of Jun Takahashi's label at 5-3-18 Minami Aoyama in Minato. Takahashi started Undercover in 1989 as a Bunka student and founded it formally in 1993 with the Nowhere store in Harajuku alongside Nigo. The label has shown in Paris since 2002. The shop carries the men's and women's collections, the kids' line and collaborations from Vans and George Cox to Medicom Toy.
Best for Jun Takahashi's punk-inspired streetwear-meets-high-fashion collections
Undercover's Aoyama shop stands at 5-3-18 Minami Aoyama in Minato ward, the district Jun Takahashi moved into after his first Harajuku store. Takahashi was born in 1969 in Kiryu, in Gunma prefecture. He studied apparel design at the Bunka Academy of Fashion from 1989 to 1991. There he sang in a Sex Pistols cover band and picked up the nickname Jonio for his resemblance to Johnny Rotten. He began Undercover in 1989 while still a student. The label was formally founded in 1993, the year he and Nigo, later of A Bathing Ape, opened the Nowhere store in Harajuku. The Aoyama shop followed as the brand grew. The first Undercover collection showed in Tokyo in 1994. The same year Takahashi began the intermittent A.F.F.A. project with Hiroshi Fujiwara. The Paris debut came in 2002, and in 2003 the Mainichi Shimbun gave him two fashion awards. The clothes take punk and street references with tattered or frayed elements and printed fabrics. The cuts lean feminine. Takahashi has described the work as strange but beautiful. The brand's own site now lists men's and women's lines, a kids' line and the Shepherd Undercover. Collaborations run from George Cox shoes and Vans OTW to Medicom Toy, The North Face and a Cindy Sherman capsule. A History of U archive and a stockists list sit alongside the shop pages for anyone tracing the label's seasons back to 2013.
Curated ORBIS register · official links shown where recorded
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