for boredom There s No better cure By Bryan Lufkin Andy Barter Set Design by Bryn Bowen

Transcription

1 for boredom There s No better cure By Bryan Lufkin Andy Barter Set Design by Bryn Bowen

2 than A fully stocked Toy chest. Play Nice

3 Toy Chest Doodles in the Third Dimension Sometimes two-dimensional scribbles just won t cut it. Make yours pop off the page with this cleverly designed compass that lets you draw with both red and blue pencils simultaneously. Use the included specs to give you all the joys of 3-D without the Michael Bay crashbang overload. NPW 3-D Doodle Kit $10 Beach Volley The brew-filled cooler, the unwieldy umbrella, the awkward folding chairs beach gear is bulky. The games you bring shouldn t have to be. These paddles from Brooklyn design firm Fredericks & Mae are made from Baltic birch and cork, making them a cinch to carry from your car, through the sand, to the shore. Fredericks & Mae Beach Tennis $140 Bryan says Dominate your Scrabble foes by memorizing all 101 two-letter words. Learn the highestscoring ones first: QI and ZA Naoya Fujishiro

4 Jump for Joy Forget about those plastic, beaded death whips you used in grade school. The Tybee jump rope is constructed from a much more pleasing (and skin-friendly) combination of materials: a leather cord, walnut handles, and colorful grips strengthened in hot water. General Manufacturing Tybee Jump Rope $65 Brick by Brick If Lego Fallingwater wasn t enough to satisfy your inner architect, the Danish brick behemoth is back with a new set for design nerds. The 1,200-piece Architecture Studio comes with a 272-page guidebook filled with tips and projects endorsed by leading firms like SOM, REX, and Tham & Videgard. Lego Architecture Studio $150 Wordplay This reimagining of the classic 1930s version of Scrabble sports a style that s aged to perfection. It has all the gameplay you love, plus a solid wood game base, metal tile racks, and a storage drawer built into the main unit. Don t worry, the board can still be flipped over when you discover zzz is an accepted word. Vintage Edition Scrabble $200

5 Toy Chest Eye Spy Studying grasshopper antennas and leaf vascular structures isn t exactly a walk in the park. Unless, of course, the microscope you re carrying was designed for portability. This 6-inch pocket model has a point-and-view design that delivers 30X magnification for highly mobile pollen perusal. NPW Pocket Microscope $15 Star Streamer This 48-inch-wide kite with a stellar shape and fiberglass frame is designed by New Tech Kites, three-time Kite Manufacturer of the Year. Outfitted with ripstop nylon the same material found in hot-air balloons this tenacious high flier can shred in winds up to 20 miles per hour. New Tech Kites Shooting Star Kite $40 Short Circuits Ayah Bdeir wanted an easy way to teach engineering to kids. The result is littlebits, tiny electronic modules that snap together magnetically. They can be mixed and matched with household miscellanea to make everything from moving Ferris wheels to a pizza box phonograph. littlebits Deluxe Kit $ design Life 2013

6 Small World A map without colors is like beer without hops. Geografia s Sectional Globes come with individual paper sections of Earth that can be colored in, decorated, and pieced into a polygonal globe. Bonus: When fully assembled, the globe tilts at 23.4 degrees, the same as the planet s actual axial tilt. Geografia Sectional Globes $24 and up Beastly Mien Great for little kids and adults with serious crafting deficiencies, these Animal Masks require no scissors or glue to assemble. They come in sets of eight: four farm animals, four forest animals. Made of 100 percent recycled cardboard, so the critters are ecofriendly too. Animal Masks by Andree Prigent $20 Beautiful Bones White dots on black tiles is the traditional domino look, but Fredericks & Mae decided it was time for a maritime makeover. Silk-screen nautical flags grace the pieces, with different flags representing zero through six. The handsome wooden carrying case keeps your set shipshape. Fredericks & Mae Flag Dominoes $100

7 Shopping Guide: Toy Chest Fredericks & Mae Beach Tennis $140 fredericksandmae.myshopify.com NPW 3-D Doodle Kit $10 fredflare.com General Manufacturing Tybee Jump Rope $65 genmfg.co Vintage Edition Scrabble $200 restorationhardware.com Lego Architecture Studio $150 shop.lego.com NPW Pocket Microscope $15 fredflare.com New Tech Kites Shooting Star Kite $40 newtechkites.com littlebits Deluxe Kit $199 littlebits.com Geografia Sectional Globes $24 and up theghostlystore.com Animal Masks by Andree Prigent $20 momastore.org Fredericks & Mae Flag Dominoes $100 fredericksandmae.myshopify.com design Life 2013