The classic of classic kids toys has to be wooden blocks! Wouldn’t you agree? I certainly can’t think of a more classic toy for kids than wooden blocks and that’s why I purchased a set of them from Melissa and Doug. Melissa and Doug toys seem to be everywhere these days, and they did themselves a favor by including toy wood blocks amongst the toys they sell. But what’s good about Melissa and Doug Toy Wooden Blocks and what’s bad about them?
What’s Good About Melissa & Doug Toy Wooden Blocks
Now it may be that when you’re small everything seems large to you until you get big, but I’m almost sure the toy wooden blocks I had as a toddler were a little larger than the toy wooden blocks from Melissa & Doug. However, I’m finding that the slightly smaller size of Melissa & Doug Toy Wooden Blocks are advantageous. My toddler has an easier time grasping them and therefore, I’m sure, uses them more than if they had been larger.
They’re also much lighter in weight, more than likely owing to how wood is harvested these days compared to how plentiful and old wood was back when I was a toddler. The set we bought came with a lightweight Melissa & Doug branded cotton bag that has a nifty Velcro strap for closing that’s sewed onto it. Both the lightweight bag and lightweight blocks makes it easy for our toddler to return the blocks to the bag after using them, close the bag, and then carry the bag of blocks back to where they are stored.
Each six-sided block has two differently colored opposing sides, alternating between either green and red or blue and yellow, for a total of four colors used throughout the set of 50 blocks. For sure, using these four basic colors aids toddlers in color identification. Furthermore, Melissa and Doug say the toy wooden blocks are coated with non-toxic coatings.
Each side of each block has either a letter, number or a simple picture, such as a dog or an apple. Again, doing so only aids toddlers in letter, number and object identification.
The aforementioned are only a few of the good things about Melissa and Doug Toy Wooden Blocks.
What’s Bad About Melissa & Doug Toy Wooden Blocks
With all of the negative reports about Chinese-made products in the past couple of years, especially relative to products for toddlers and children, I can’t help but wonder how sure both the U.S. Government and myself can be that the coatings are non-toxic that are used on Melissa and Doug Toy Wooden Blocks, since Melissa & Doug Toy Wooden Blocks are made in China.
My wife made a good point a few weeks ago: Why don’t they round the edges on the blocks, since stepping on them, both adults and children, makes for a somewhat painful experience. My half-hearted response, since I tended to agree with what she said, was probably the edges on toy wooden blocks are still hard edges because they wouldn’t stack as well if the edges were rounded.
Those are the only two things I can see that are bad or what could be better about Melissa and Doug Toy Wooden Blocks.
