At MudPuddles Toys, play is work

By Elena Boryczka

The Sherwood Gazette, Oct 2, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Jaime Valdez / The Sherwood Gazette

I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN – Four-year-old Elijah Potter plays with a Thomas & Friends wooden railway at MudPuddles Toys in Sherwood. The local toy shop sells several games and toys that are made in the United States and Europe.

Some people are clueless when it comes to picking out the best toy for a child.

Which toy is safe? Which one is mentally stimulating? What is the most age-appropriate?

The answers to all of these questions and more lie just inside the door of MudPuddles Toys and Books in Sherwood.

“Parents come in wanting the very best for their children,” said Eddi Miglavs, who owns and actively runs the store. “What they don’t know is what is best, and they're bombarded by the advertisement for this cheapy, fabulous, ridiculous whatever it is on television, and we don’t have most of that stuff here. They’ll come in and they’ll ask for things, and I don’t even know what it is, and then I say, ‘How old is your child? What are they interested in?’ We have hundreds of things that are probably (appropriate).”

Among the seemingly endless selection of products in the store are wooden blocks, baby dolls, science kits, model horses, puzzles, toy cars and a special section of dress-up clothes. An area in the back part of the store is dedicated to board games, with a box of each of the games open for families to demo and see if a particular item is worth buying. Many of the other toys on the shelves are also readily available for children to test-drive.

“They find the right thing that way,” said MudPuddles Manager Rebecca Olsen.

The store also carries a large selection of toys manufactured in the United States, which is an ever-growing concern of parents following the recall of Chinese-made toys.

“The toy recall has not impacted our business much; people still like thinking they can trust things that they can buy here. It has heightened my awareness - Rebecca’s done a great job of researching in our store where things are made, and we’re now trying to buy . . . things that are made in Israel, things that are made in Europe, things that are made elsewhere,” Miglavs said. “I’m just using some caution about that, but I feel pretty confident in the companies that I buy from.”

Olson agreed.

“Most of the customers come in knowing they can trust the items we sell in the store,” she said. “We have a wonderful tradition of excellence here in Sherwood; however, we do have customers who have come in specifically saying, ‘I want something made in the U.S.,’ or ‘I want something not made in China,’ so we have a list.”

The perfect toy

Before Miglavs opened MudPuddles eight years ago, she was a child and family therapist who specialized in young children who had experienced trauma such as divorce and death. She said she enjoyed 11 of the 12 years she spent working with the children, only getting burnt out from constantly going to court for custody battles.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit