About nicknack: Toys and Craft Kits Made in Small Numbers

nicknack makes small toys and craft kits for kids. Kits that cost less than a cinema trip, party favors counted out in hundreds, mini spinners that fit inside a plastic egg, and a handful of musical toys for children too young for any of that. We are not a big company and this is not a big catalog: twenty-five products, and we can tell you what is inside each one.

What a maker of toys and craft kits for kids tries to be good at

Counting honestly, mostly. A box that says 195 pieces should contain 195 pieces, and the count should include the things you actually need rather than padding the number with stickers. When one of our kits needs batteries we would rather say so on the card than have you discover it at a birthday party. This sounds like a low bar. In the bulk toy trade it is not.

The second thing

Making the age band mean something. A craft kit aimed at the wrong year is the kit that gets opened once. We print the band the toy was designed around, including the awkward truth that some of them want a grown-up at the table for the first ten minutes.

The odd one out

We also make a heavy duty furniture dolly set, which sits in the booth a few steps from the goodie bag fillers. It is ours, we are pleased with it, and we decided that pretending otherwise would be stranger than leaving it where it is.

What we think a cheap toy is for

Let's not oversell it. A bouncy ball does not build creativity and a sticker sheet is not a learning programme. What small things do is start a game. A child picks one up, invents a rule, and the imagination does the rest; the activity we sell is really just the first minute of it. The joy is in being handed something that is yours, and that is worth about forty cents.

So the collection stays little on purpose. One project per box, real counts on the label, safety testing on the finished article, and nothing that needs an app. Kids play together more easily around cheap things than expensive ones, because nobody is being careful. That is most of the fun, it is most of the magic, and it is why a booth like this still makes sense in a world of screens.

What we love making most

Craft kits with reusable parts, so the box survives the first afternoon
Bulk mixes counted by hand, because a wrong count ruins a party
Toys that work the second they leave the bag, with nothing to build
Age bands that mean something, including the awkward ones
One furniture dolly, which has nothing to do with any of the above

Where the orders go

We keep the catalog, the piece counts and the photographs. The partner store that lists our products keeps the warehouse, and handles payment, delivery, tracking and returns. Every stamp on this site opens our listing there.