My favorite toy

Maybe there has been a post or two about this toy, but my memory fails me :)

Anyway I love Imaginext....not the new "young" Imaginext....the old stuff that was made to have 100s of pieces to mix and match among sets. It was more of a building toy, while "today's Imaingext" are more like Little People for slightly older boys - sort of an imagination play game where you can pretend to be different characters.

They changed Imaginext probably 5 years ago, so all of our Imaginext to date were Matthew's. Luckily he shares well, because all the kids (and I) love this activity. I got rid of a tote of Little People (we still have one tote :), but now will need a second tote for Imaginext. I bought 3 new kits online - one for Joel's birthday (coming Sunday) and one to share for Valentine's day (everyone will get pieces saying "you rescue me with love"....together their pieces will build the rescue station) and then this one. Normally we don't get new toys "just cuz", but today we made an exception and built this castle.

Back in the day, Matthew didn't like to build according to the directions, rather he just liked to build according to his imagination. By the time he was old enough that he liked to build according to directions, the directions already had been recycled. It was nice to get this set with the directions...although there was a piece or two missing. Since you can no longer buy "good" Imaginext new, I bought these sets used off of Ebay. We have enough parts from other sets we were able to build the castle without any trouble.

Like anything else on Ebay, you can get good deals or you can pay a fortune for other people's over-priced stuff. I think I got good deals :)

Here is our current tote of Imaginext. It might seem crazy like this, but once 3 or 4 kids build a "home", there aren't many pieces left.