What's New in July 2025?
Alton Mainstreet is once again putting on Night Market (every Thursday from 7-10pm) and once again we have a booth. This year the location changed; it's now in the green space between Cat Daddy's and Chez Marilyn. So far the turnout has been better than ever. Some of the bands have been awesome too. It's a free event! I strongly recommend checking it out!
I've been teaching Mahjong classes at the store now. In my opinion, Mahjong is the best card/tile game on the face of the earth. Sage and I learned it back in 2018 and we've been passionate fans ever since. It's a rummy game, so there's a little bit of luck, but a skilled player is going to win more often than an unskilled player.
Manufacturer's stock image of the set I use. Booze (apple juice?) not included.
I didn't want to go public until I perfected my lesson plan, but after 3 revisions and some trial and error I think I've got it down to a science. I'll post an official page soon on this website. Here are some preliminary details...
- I'm teaching what's called, "Unified Mahjong". A system that let's a group of players choose how intense of a ruleset they want to use. Groups can learn Casual Play, League Play, or an Advanced Defensive Ruleset. The variant has more in common with Asian variants vs. American Mah Jongg, but if you learn Unified, you can learn any variant (or keep playing Unified).
- Classes are after hours at the store.
- If you're interested, I recommend having a group of four people. A class session costs $40 for 2 hours ($10 per person). I can also teach a group of 3 (still $40).
- I've got a table and a nice set of chunky Mahjong tiles. As I always say, "Bring reading glasses".
It sure would be cool if we could get enough groups on board to start having tournaments or something. Baby steps though.
Here's some of the new toys we have...
We re-stocked Cobble Hill Puzzles. I think this our biggest variety yet. Piece counts range from 275 to 2000. Cobble Hill is one of the best in the business IMO. We also brought in the Romanian company Enjoy. I love the super vibrant colors of their puzzles.
We have a ton of Blind Boxes with more on the way. No, we don't have Labubu or Sonny Angel. There are a ton of other brilliant artists out there making equally quality blind boxes who don't make us jump through hoops to carry their figurines.
We expanded our engineering toys by Smartivity. These sets are super fun to build, and even more fun to play with. The Pinball Machine is my personal favorite.
We've got a bunch of new and interesting outdoor toys.
We've got a huge variety of very cool bead crafting sets.
And we're selling Wigglitz, teeny tiny 3D printed wiggly figurines that are made in the USA.
As always, a bunch of orders are in transit or planned. I know some mini animal plushies and a bunch of novelties are coming soon. I'm hoping to get a Smoko (plush and blind box) order placed this week. They have some fantastic Kewpie blind boxes too. Sea Monkeys and couple of other goofy old school novelty things suddenly sold out, so I'll be placing an order for those too.
We also really really want to get a shoppable website up and running soon. No easy task, but we see a path forward. I'll be very happy if it's up and running by Q3.
Last, we'll be closed July 30th to August 3rd for a vacation. I've got almost all of my family re-located to Alton, but Sage's is still spread out across the country.
All right, that's all. Hit me up if you wanna learn Mahjong.
~David
We're Back From Our Road Trip
May is and has always been our slowest month of the year (hence the vacation). I'm 4 hours into my shift and the only person I've seen is the FedEx guy and Lori over at Comfort Cuisine next door (great food).
So, you get an extra meandering blog post for May. Maybe this will become an annual tradition.
We're back from our vacation and boy did we pack it in. We saw 4 new states, 4 new toy stores, and about 15 new cities. I'll cover that after I tell you what's new.
We'd halted orders in the weeks leading up to the trip, but some backorders trickled in...
- Nee-Doh's Nice Cube Glow released. It's a glow-in-the-dark Nice Cube
- A new set of Nature Pocket ID books released
- We got a large shipment of books, including some great sticker and temp tattoo books
- As I was writing this post we received a re-stock of Penguin Dash and Nee-Doh Gummy Bears
- We now carry S'Noodles. A fun craft with colored packing peanut pieces you can stick together.
We're working on a bunch of orders: including some great Made in the USA novelties, more books, and hopefully some more dolls. I also want to expand our STEM section and give the axe to some of the corporate licensed stuff.
All right, our trip. In order of us visiting them, big love to the cities of...
- Columbia, MO - Bustling downtown, Mizzou is a beautiful campus
- Kansas City, MO/KS - State Line & 39th was a cool spot. Is that the Midtown Neighborhood? Idk. I'm not an expert, but that is the spot to stop.
- Lawrence, KS - Another bustling downtown. Spent way too much time there.
- Wilson, KS - Came for the 'World's Largest Czech Egg', stayed a while due to its charm. There's smaller Czech Eggs throughout the town, there's a great independent grocery store, a restaurant, and several working phone booths. Friendly friendly people. Any similar-sized Small, Midwest, Farm Country, USA town should take notes.
- Hayes, KS - Good food, great natural history museum, Arcade 11 was super fun.
- Limon, CO - What a windy city. PinBowl had a phenomenal pinball selection in perfect working condition (including 4 EM's, if, like me, you're into that sort of thing).
- Loveland, CO - My god. Food, parks, shopping, mountains. What a city. Don't move there though, it would upset the 10 remaining native Loveland-ites. I'm baffled how over-populated the Denver-Fort Collins area is.
- Lexington, NE - Pulled into the downtown on a whim. Ended up hitting 3 Guatemalan and 3 Somalian shops in quick succession. A big regret of the trip was not knowing about this town in advance. I could have spent a whole day here.
- St. Joseph, MO - Reminds me of the town where I went to college. A hollowed-out downtown with a bunch of bars, and a never-ending sea of corporate sprawl. Glore Psychiatric Museum was awesome. Regretfully didn't have time to visit the Chase Candy Shoppe.
- We visited other cities, but, they don't get "Big Love" from me.
Special shout out to all three floors of "The Toy Store" in Lawrence, Kansas. What a massive store. It's always a joy to talk to other people in the industry, but I think I could have spent 10 more hours with the owners. The store has been at it for 45+ years too, so we learned a whole lot from them. If you're in Lawrence or Topeka it's a must-visit.
A special anti-shout-out to the town of Marceline, MO. Y'all could milk that 'Disney's Boyhood Home' stuff for all it's worth, but you are squandering it. Disney's sons donated a ride to your city (unprecedented) and y'all don't do anything with it. What's up with the train cars in the park? Y'all put ladders leading up to them like, "Come hither for fun, children", and then you walk up to it and it says "NO CLIMBING". Y'all are no fun.
But really, I'm just mad because I drove off my route to visit the downtown toy store to find it was permanently closed. Bummer. Tiny toy stores in sub-1000 population towns are hard to come by.
Also, to all of y'all who told me Kansas was a boring state to drive through, I couldn't disagree more.
~David
We're Closed The First Week of May
We are closed from April 28th through May 6th. We'll re-open Wednesday May 7th.
A bunch is new. Here's two things...
Irr-Elephant is being displayed in the Playcade. It's an all-wood stacking game where first you build the tower, and then you carefully remove one elephant at a time until it tips over. Great for any age; even toddlers.
Our very cool science and optics company finally re-stocked Metal Detectors and Kids Binoculars (they've been backordered since November). We also re-stocked Microscopes and the ever-popular Monocular.
And we've got a whole bunch of new goofy cheapo novelty stuff.
We just placed a very large book order, and when we get back we're going to place another big book order with another company.
We also placed a big order for mini 3D-printed figurines.
I haven't heard anything about Pokemon Destined Rivals from my distributor. They'll be worth their weight in diamonds, so I'm not surprised (but I am a little disappointed). I'm still holding out hope that we'll get some in.
I'll post an update when we get back on the 7th.
~David
What's New in March 2025?
Well, for one, I just finished doing our taxes. Now I have time to update this blog.
January and February were kind of dull. The weather was bad and a huge chunk of our shipments were backordered. Now it's March! The weather is great and all of our shipments are coming at once!
We finally did a run of T-Shirts featuring our mascot Catpants! Shout out to Schwartzkopf Printing for being super chill and helpful through the whole process. I had never designed a T-shirt before, and was surprised by the learning curve.
The toddler toy section has a ton of new arrivals. A big chunk of them are made of wood.
We've got 3 new building sets featured in the Playcades. Hexagon Blocks, Slot-In Blocks & Wheels, and Pipe Construction.
We're now carrying a massive selection of HotWings Die-Cast Planes/Helicopters.
We re-stocked our Nature Books and Field Guides. We personally own a ton of these titles and can vouch for how great they are.
Our Spring kite shipment just arrived. Dragonfly kites are back, and we also have cool Shark, Octopus, and Peacock kites.
Nee-Doh's very popular Nice Cube collection is back in stock. We also just received the new Sploot Splat.
We've got a bunch of new Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty tins.
There's a bunch of new board games. We've got classics like Go, Yut Nori, Hexus, and one of those big ol' Checkers Rugs.
In electronics kits: we re-stocked the Retro Radio and Retro Arcade sets, and we now sell a Bat Detector kit. I'm hoping to get a few more by the end of the month.
In candy: Scorpion and Cricket suckers are back in stock. We're also selling Chili Lix (Jalapeno, Red Chili, and Habanero) and Larvets (BBQ, Cheddar, Mexican Spice). Also, Toxic Waste dropped a bunch of new flavors (they're delicious).
And, a big chunk of our Book selection is 25% off.
Also, our landlords added a step and ramp at our front entrance. It took a lot of deliberation between them and the contractors. Retrofitting an old downtown building that's on a slope is no joke, but they were able drum up something that I think is a massive improvement. Shout out to Sarah and Tom for making it happen. Sage and I are going to add some yellow paint to make the edges more visible tonight.
New Blind Boxes and Stickers are in transit. I'm hoping to get additional book, puzzle, arts & crafts, dolls, and STEM orders in soon. Lewis & Clark is holding their first Comic & Pop Culture Convention called Blazer Con on April 12th, and we'll have a booth there. Sage has been doing a lot of knitting classes, and will hopefully start another one this month.
All right, I'm done. Stop by soon!~David
What's New in December 2024
This month we're open every day until Christmas Day. Here's our hours.
Sage drew some very cute window art for Deck The Town a friendly contest between local business owners. Whoever gets the most votes for the best Christmas window display gets a prize. Such a great idea! If you like our display, shoot us a vote on their website.
New in store, we have this very handsome shelf by Family Games America. On display this month is Inversé, an extremely easy-to-learn abstract strategy game for two.
We've got more new games from Family Games, plus around 20 new titles ranging from Abstract Strategy, to Family Games, to Trivia. We've been very impressed with all of the games in this batch, but the one we are addicted to is Take 10 by Outset. It's similar to 20 Questions, but an elegant ruleset and a very fun bubble-popping mechanism takes it to the next level. Gabble and Tension are also family favorites.
We have the new Nee-Doh Nice Berg, and Nee-Doh Nice Ice Baby. We also restocked the original Nice Cube and the Dream Drop. They are flying off the shelf.
All right, that's enough toy pictures for now. We also have new jigsaw puzzles, a ton of new books, some new dolls, and a billion different squishy things. The Small Business Saturday deals are done, but we're still blowing out a ton of toys at 25-75% off.
The Letters For Santa gift registry is out, click this link to learn more.
We had a Winter Advisory on Small Business Saturday. As a former Minnesotan, 3.5 inches of snow with 1 MPH winds is a pretty sad excuse to stay home, but unfortunately that seems to be what happened. No fun.
The Holiday Season has just begun, so we'll see. Hope to see you soon.
~David
Black Friday / Small Business Saturday 2024
Happy Thanksgiving!
We're having our biggest sales yet on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and the following Sunday...
- All Board Games: 10% off
- All Books: 15% off; some titles are 25% off.
- All Yarn: 15% off
- All Diamond Art: 15% off
- All Wooden Weapons & Rubber Band Guns: 15% off
- All Jigsaw Puzzles: 20% off
- Air Forts: 20% off Mushroom House, 33% off MSRP Cozy Cabin
- All Maisto Die-cast Cars/Trucks: 20% off
- All Blue-Q Bags: 20% off
- All RollMatz Vehicle Rugs: 25% off
- All Tutti Frutti Play Dough Sets: 30% off
Also, starting Black Friday at least 50 different products are 40%-75% off. These sales will carry over through December.
I'll get a proper "What's New" post out next week. Off the top of my head I know we have new Nee Doh Nice Cubes, Enamel Pins, Estes Rockets, Board Games, Dog Toys, Books, and Color Forms.
Also, a new shipment of Handscraft miniature house kits should arrive on Black Friday.
See you soon!
~David
What's New in October 2024
We refreshed our Douglas Cuddly Plush. We got a big mix of brand new, new to us, and beloved classics.
His Royal Majesty 'Pizza Rat', and 2 very-at-capacity Douglas shelves
You can only buy a newborn baby so many rattles. Luckily we have a ton of new baby and newborn items by Malarkey. From Crib Chompers to Munch Mitts to silicone Dribble Bibs that catch every missed bite; they have a ton of useful products.
Munch Mitts, Chew Cubes, Teether Tethers, Crib Chompers, Dribble Bibs
We now carry TokiDoki blind boxes! In addition to their Unicornos we also have some extremely cute Sanrio/Hello Kitty figurines.
Foodie Unicornos, Cactus Bunnies, Hello Kitty Sakura, and some more Unicornos/Hello Kitty
We brought back the Bucket Builder Wooden Train Set and a new Wooden Domino Set.
Great toys for 3+
Pokemon Stellar Crown is in! Highlights include the Dark Powers Ex Box and the new ETB.
We re-upped on Plus Plus! I say it every time, but this is one of my favorite toys.
And then we have a bunch of odds and ends like super deluxe Hour Glasses, Hoberman Spheres, Gyroscopes, and some cute new Miniature Playsets.
A whole mess of science toys... and we're about to order more!
Sun Smith Foret and Marty McKay are working on a spiritual successor to their Iconic Alton Coloring Book! This one will feature the Village of Elsah. The coloring books aren't out yet, but in the meantime we're selling hand-colored greeting cards by Sun featuring some of Elsah's landmarks.
We love these projects
Jean Curvey has new ceramics on display!
The Killdeer Chick is my favorite
Sage is selling knitted pumpkins as fast as she can make them. She's also starting two rounds of Beginner's Knitting Classes this week.
A bunch of cuties
Sage also decked out our front windows with some giant Halloween-y spiders.
Our store spider eats bananas.
Alton Main Street's 'First Fridays' started last night, as always, we participated. The event runs from 5-8pm this year, and takes place on the first Friday of every month.
Our experiment with being open Mondays is over. We had a couple of decent Mondays at the beginning, but then they plummeted to dismal levels this past month. The people have spoken with their wallets! We've changed our hours back to Wednesday-Sunday (closed Mon/Tues). We still plan to be open in some capacity 7 days a week during the Holiday Season.
A lot is on the horizon. We'll be getting some new board games soon, so another 'Funky Game Night' at the Old Bakery Brewery is in the works. We're working on orders for big wooden action games, books, science toys, art supplies, and some toddler toys. After that we'll be working on re-upping our stocking stuffers and bringing in some new toys we saw at the ASTRA toy show.
Our craziest time of year is just around the corner and we're very very excited.
~David
What's New in August 2024
New this month we have a bunch of Gigantic Trucks (and a Barbie Jeep). They're all made in the USA!
Hard to tell, but the trucks are two feet long.
We also brought in a new publisher. AdventureKEEN puts out books for nature, outdoors, and sports lovers young and old.
Our family is passionately into nature. Sage is constantly foraging wild food and I'm an avid birdwatcher. We were slow to pick up some nature books for Funky Planet because there are a lot of crummy, low effort field guides floating around out there. AdventureKEEN graciously gave us review copies, so we were able to read through each book before we ordered them. We can definitely vouch for these books!
Board books for babies, field guides, quick guides, and kid's books
I was introduced to this publisher when I bought 'C Is For Cardinal' by Stan Tekiela on a whim last winter. Clover loves the book, and has memorized all of the birds within it. At 20 months old she would point to a robin and say, "American Robin" (but with the r's pronounced as w's). So, big recommendation from me.
Also, we have a ton of sports-themed and mystery-themed Choose Your Path books. Certain pages prompt you with a choice, and then based on that choice you turn to a specific page.
Football, Baseball, Soccer, another Football, Hockey, Wilderness Survival, Basketball, and Mystery
All right, moving on. We brought in some very cool and intricate Building Kits. You use actual miniature bricks to build structures brick by brick. The mortar is also water soluble, so if you soak the structure the building breaks down and you can build it again in the future.
Irish house, Windmill, Lighthouse, and a big ol' Castle
We also brought in more arty and crafty stuff. In the picture below we have a super deluxe Squeegee Paint Set with a bunch of stencils, a Mushroom DIY Paper Lantern, a paint-your-own ceramic Lowly Worm Apple Car, and a stylish Soap Making Kit. We also brought in a jewelry making kit, and bunch more basic art supplies.
Bright Stripes puts all of these products out, and we love them.
Each parking spot has a magnet, so the die-cast frame snaps the cars into place.
I don't have pics, but we brought in some super satisfying squishies filled with a slow-rising goo, a pooping capybara keychain, a gigantic dollhouse by the same USA Gigantic Trucks company, oh jeez, I forgot a new arrival...
We now carry science toys by Discovery. I'd been struggling to find quality optics at an affordable price since we opened. But, we ran into Discovery at ASTRA, I got to test their products out, and their prices are great. At this time we have a Microscope, Telescope, Metal Detector, and a Rock Tumbler. I intend on getting kids Binoculars soon, but in the meantime we're stocking a Monocular. I bought one and now use it for kitchen-sink-window-birding daily.
A rushed, last-minute pic 😬
We've been rotating toys in-and-out of the Playcade. Two new games of note are Battle Box and Volley Shot. I don't wanna get into the mechanics here, so come in and play a game against one of us.
Right-to-left: Battle Box, Volley Shot, and Super Stadium Baseball
Funky Planet is hosting Riichi Mahjong tomorrow night. We're gonna be at the Nerd Market @ Old Bakery on August 17th. And we're doing another Funky Game Night @ Old Bakery on August 27th from 5-8pm. Hope to see you at at least one of those events!
~David