Big Kids

A couple of days ago we headed down to Regent street to visit the famous toy store Hamleys, who this year are celebrating their 250th birthday (yes, the store was started way back in 1760!) The Regent street location isn't the original building but is the flagship store nowadays, and it is apparently the biggest toy store in the world.

Big spinning logo disc thing from the fifth floor.

Hamleys is pretty amazing, although admittedly a lot of the newer generation of toys didn't mean anything to me (what is this whole Ben 10 thing? And apparently there are like 500 pokémon now, madness). Still, there were plenty of timeless and nostalgia-inducing things too, such as a huge jigsaw puzzle section (£150 for an 18,000 piece puzzle - tempting!) and masses of Playmobil, which I hadn't seen for years.

They even had construction-themed stuff like we had as kids.

When it comes to good, clean fun, you can't beat marbles, and there sure were a lot of them, though none of the kids running around the place seemed too interested in them.

What a marble-ous place.

There were also sections dedicated to Lego and soft toys, both of which were excellent.

We found a Jo-sized Lego Buzz Lightyear...

...And a bigger-than-Oren-sized camel, only £1,500.

Phillip the giant polar bear, a steal at £600.

Bobby Bears, complete with badge and ID card.

Cousins of Rex.

My favourite toy was this awesome R2D2 Play-Doh cutter, as it combines two of my favourite things - Star Wars and colourful putty - and because it is something of a throwback to a simpler kind of toy that you don't see much now. If it didn't say 'Clone Wars' on it I could probably have mistaken it for a toy from the '80s (man, I really sound like an old nerd, don't I?) For some reason it was in the "girls' toys" department, though it is clearly a toy for MEN.

Just look at how much fun this kid is having.

In a somewhat related trip, after Hamleys we walked to Trafalgar Square to see the new installation on the Fourth Plinth:


It's a giant, four-tonne ship-in-a-bottle of Lord Nelson's flagship from the battle of Trafalgar, the awesomely named HMS Victory. Pretty much puts all the models at Hamleys to shame.