Hasta La Gadget!

There are probably two arguments to make about the Ratata. One is that kids shouldn’t play with guns, not even gun-shaped toys. The other is that kids are going to pretend to shoot each other anyway, and it’s better to do it with a rather lovely set of wooden blocks, out in the sun, than with an XBox controller locked away in a dark musty bedroom.

Ratata, by Tomm Velthuis, comes as a playset; eleven chunks of precision-cut wood in a box. These slot together to make a “full-sized machine gun”. I would have loved this as a kid. As it was I was always disappointed that my toy guns didn’t come apart so I could copy the guys in movies and “strip my piece” in the jungle. In the end, I always did manage to break the toys into pieces, but they would never go back together quite the same way. Available soon.

Product page [By Tomm via Oh Gizmo!]