Back some time before Christmas, I bashed toys in general here on my blog.   While I was a little tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing, there is some truth in what I was trying to say.  As parents, we do spend too much money on toys when our kids would really rather play with our cell phones or our car keys.  However, I am not anti-toy, and we have a houseful of them to prove it. 

Some of the toys that we have purchased over the years have been passed on to other families or our church nursery.  Some of them were sold at yard sales.  Some of them are in pieces under beds. Some of them are now gracing the shelves at Goodwill.  Yet some of them are played with often.  Some of them have value.  Some of them are GOOD toys.  So I thought that when I come across a GOOD toy now and then that I would share that info with all you parents out there, so you can finally reclaim your measuring cups.

For Christmas, I bought Cap’n Jack Henry the Parents Busy School Activity Cube. 

I was walking the aisles on day at Costco when it caught my eye.  Jack Henry, being a preemie-sized infant, has been a bit behind in the large motor skills area, and I thought this would be a great benefit and encouragement to him to start pulling up and cruising.  I was right.  He’s pulled up on it several times and regularly makes his way around the entire hexagon exploring all the toy’s bells and whistles.

On the top it is a the model of a school yard and is maze of beads and chunky, movable figures.

Is it just me, or does the school teacher (despite being Hispanic) look a little like Indiana Mimi?

The top of this toy alone will keep your toddler busy for quite some time, but the toy also has six sides, instead of the standard four of most cube toys, that offer even more fun activities.

First of all, there is a school bus with movable kids and numbers…

Now, while it may be fun and colorful on a toy, you might want to teach your child to never go anywhere with a middle-aged man wearing a Cat-in-the-Hat stovepipe hat in the colors reminiscent of Freddy Kruger’s sweater.  Just sayin’…

One panel teaches the ABC’s…

On another side is a tree with movable, colorful birds…

One of Jack Henry’s favorite sides at the moment has a spinning color wheel…

Another fun side has colorful shapes…

And, finally, the last side has a cute game of tic-tac-toe…

If your toddler doesn’t appreciate this side yet, your older kids might.  Dirty Harry and I spent a happy thirty minutes the other day playing this game using a Nerf gun.  Well, it was happy for me anyway because I won.  Dirty Harry may have another take on it, but I have seen him using it for target practice since, so I’m probably in for a rematch in a day or two.

The toy is very sturdy too.  It’s virtually impossible for Jack Henry to pull this thing over, and if he does topple over, the makers even made sure that the hardware was not exposed and that the corners were rounded off.

Unfortunately, it looks like this toy is not available for purchase right now.  I couldn’t find it at all on Costco’s site.  I found it on Amazon here , but it looks like it is currently unavailable.  It also looks like Target carried it at one time.  There are no signs of it being discontinued though, so maybe it’s just a case of having to build up more stock after Christmas.  Even if you can’t find this one in particular, I found several compatible options in my searching.

What toys do you find are worth emptying your wallet and cluttering your home for?  Which ones are the GOOD toys?