Toys: GeoTrax
Fisher-Price (annoying flash intro, sorry) has a this huge collection of track and vehicles in a collection they call GeoTrax. They are listed as being for 2 1/2 - 6 year olds, but I'm 36 and they seem awesome to me. I've picked up a few base sets and some of the individual vehicles for my son and he and I are both very fond of them.
The vehicles are $3-4 for the "push powered" variety and the ones with simple remotes are $15-20. One of the neat things is all the vehicles are still pushable, even if the power is off or the batteries are dead. The sets run from $15-40, although I've seen a large base set that was $100. They sell extra track packs for $10-20 as a bonus.
I thought I'd bring this up since we seem to have a rash of recent Goodjer spawns and I was having difficulty finding some toys that were interesting and fun for both my son and I. Speaking of which, any suggestions on what else I should check out?
Just to second Wounder on this,
This year for christmas we had all the Grandparents and aunts and uncle by pieces of Geo-Trax for my 3 year old. We have quite the collection going and my boys love em.
Yup all the bouys, from 9, 6 and 3.
They will pull them out and set up a huge track, we have 3 remote control trains, so they all get to control 1 engine.
The parts are very sturdy and well made...
Given the variety of pricing once you have a base set it is an excellent gift for people in the 10.00 - 20.00 budget range.
"My motto is, if it's not strong enough to release bowel control, it's not strong enough!"
Morrolan
I'm not sure how old your son is, Wounder, but we got my 3 1/2 y.o. daughter this camera and she loves it. She takes pictures of everything, and every couple of days, I dump it to one of the laptops, and she gets to see what she did. It's pretty cool, and I'm thinking I'm going to make a picture collage out of them at some point and throw it on a decent sized poster for her.
I do wish to confirm on the great awesomeness that is GeoTrax. We have several kits, and we enjoy the great nice quiet bonding time building them and playing together with the little one. We have a setup assembled at home right now. Typically they stay assembled for days. Will post up a pic when I'm back home.
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
I've got both the GeoTrax and the camera in my house, and the kids love them. My four year old loves making train tracks, while my one year old plays Godzilla and tears it down. It's great.
Xbox Live: Stilgar Black
Id love these if they didn't involve buying anything else. I'm so tired of the toys underfoot already. Plus we've got a substantial rokenbok investment I'm waiting for the kids to grow into.
Camera is cool.
Gamertag: GWJ Rabbit | Last.fm | Twitter
"Think of it as 'grinding SO rep in the Kitchen instance.' " - Montalban
Real estate is at a premium in our house also. We're going to be getting rid of my daughter's train table shortly because it doesn't get used enough in relation to the amount of space it takes up.
Some friends of ours have enough rooms so they can dedicate an entire one to toys and whatnot, but our master bedroom is currently the bedroom/office/studio. Kind of tough to live like that.
Wow, I've never heard of this. After googling, I have to ask: can you pull yourself away from this to let your kids play? No wonder you've got a substantial investment.
As for buying geotrax, it doesn't take a lot. We've got the starter set + one track pack, and it more than meets our "needs".
Xbox Live: Stilgar Black
Oh my, now I just need some kids.
Xbox Live gamertag Druidpeak
Rokenbok is pretty damn cool. I bought it when my daughter was 2 (hah!) and she finally got interested around 5. My 3 year old son is now somewhat interested, but he can't do the more complicated stuff like actually move balls around.
It's awesome good fun.
Gamertag: GWJ Rabbit | Last.fm | Twitter
"Think of it as 'grinding SO rep in the Kitchen instance.' " - Montalban
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
Thanks for the suggestions and continued evidence that I'm not the only overly large two year old who likes playing with this stuff. My son is 20 months old, so he's technically too young for GeoTrax, but that doesn't seem to be slowing him down too much. I did want to point out that the extra track sets are as cheap as $10 for a set of 12-15 pieces... Goriila could really put some space between those buildings (thanks for the shot, by the way!). I'll post a shot of my son's fevered play soon as well.
Rokenbok are very cool, but I knew that was way outside my boy's age range. I'm looking forward to having an excuse to buy those as well, though.
What I really want to know is, where the heck were these toys when I was the "correct" age for them?!
Amen, brother, amen. Signs continually point to the fact I was born 30 years too early.
Xbox Live: Stilgar Black
My 4 year old son LOVES these! We have spent many hours building up different playsets only to tear them down and start all over. Its a good way for dad and runt to play together, besides Star Wars Legos on xbox360 that is. There is a guy on ebay who designs books of plans in Autocad and sells them. Nice if you ever run out of ideas.
OpSteel
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Ours is playing with them since about 2.5 y.o.
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
A couple more GeoTrax pics, taken just a few minutes ago: