Oogi is an abstract doll with suckers for head, hands and feet. It is made of high quality silicone, thus you can bend and twist and stretch your Oogi with measurable enthusiasm. You can stick it onto things and itself and other Oogis. You can throw your Oogi at windows and refrigerators and bathroom tiles and it will stick just often enough and long to make you feel like a Ninja. You can stretch your Oogi and use to isotone your personal six-pack. You can further use your Oogi’s stretchiness to assist in the flinging process.

It’s just abstract enough to invite the imagination, just flexible enough accommodate your fantasies, and its stuck-to-it–iveness is just unpredictable enough to make you laugh.

Oogi is, at heart, a social creature, and is more than twice as fun when it has another Oogi to play with. There are two sizes of Oogi. The large Oogi and the other one that’s about half the size and price.

If you have one of each, a large and a small, the small can become the baby and hang from the mommy’s neck or ride the daddy’s back. Depending on the player’s mood, they can be endearingly loving, or startlingly pugilistic. Both of them, after all, are equally adept at throwing sucker punches.

Oogi is made by the Swiss label MOLUK, the same people who brought us the Major Fun award-winning Bilibo. It’s available in the U.S. from Kid O. Oogi is fun of the Major kind.

Tobbles is probably one of the best stacking toys we’ve seen so far. There’s no post to fit them on to. One piece fits into the other so easily that there’s no need to take extra care to make sure the piece is in exactly the right position (and need more dexterity than you have). They feel solid, sturdy. They have the kind of heft that feels good in your hand. They each have different properties to explore (each is a different size, a different weight and has a unique wobble when spinned, or rolled, or rocked). So, when your child is ready, there is yet more to discover, more to learn, more reasons to play.

There are two kinds of Tobbles: the standard set depicted above and Tobbles Neo. Tobbles Neo is recommended for children as young as 6 months. The original Tobbles for children 2 and older. The openings on the original Tobbles are smooth. On the Neo, they’re crenelated. Apparently, some babies were especially attracted to putting their mouths into the opening and seeing if they can suck the things onto their faces. You can see where that’d be a fun, innovative way to play. You can also see where there’d be a slight, very slight, but not slight enough chance that someone might choke.

The crenelations on the Neo also give little fingers another sensation to play with. We’d have no trouble recommending Tobbles as an investment in major baby fun. If your baby is younger than 2, probably the Neo is the better investment. Even a two- or three-year-old would enjoy sliding their fingers along the bumps.

Tobbles come in what looks like one of those awful, almost impossible to open blister packs. We are especially delighted to let you know that it isn’t one of those awful, almost impossible to open blister pack. It’s an easy to open, and close and open again plastic pack that works so well that older kids will actually enjoy putting the toy back. O, Fatbrain, you are a gift to all playkind.

If you want to get a better understanding of the connection between play and learning, spend about 15 minutes watching a kid play with KEVA Stunt Derby.

But first, let me explain how it works.

There’s a Stunt Car. It’s made of wood, of course, as is the entire set. It has two big wheels on the back (like a drag racer). On the front, there’s a hook. And there’s the Launcher. It’s a little more than twice as long as the Stunt Car. There’s an elastic on the front, and a wheel-like handle on the back. You take your Stunt Car, put the rear wheels so they straddle the Launcher, connect the hook onto the elastic, hold on to the Launcher handle, s-t-r-e-t-c-h the elastic, aim, and release.

As to what you release the Stunt Car into, here, my lovelies, is the very stuff of what some might call “boyish joy” (as illustrated), but I believe will firmly anchor itself to the heart and mind of any child, regardless of gender and age: 50 wooden KEVA™ Planks. Yes, the same KEVA™ Planks that endeared themselves so deeply into our constructive psyches when we first were exposed to the Major Fun award-winning KEVA™ Contraptions. These simple planks are just thick enough to stand on any of their edges, wide enough to be easily knocked over, tall enough to fall spectacularly.

There’s a Course Mat, marked with invitingly cryptic lines, intriguing labels, and of generous size upon which to build your stunts. There’s paint, decals, and a stunt building guide, and the eternal question: what’s the best way to make the most Planks fall, or not?

Build the planks too solidly, and they barely move. Build them too high, and they fall noisily down even when you barely nudge the Course Mat. Make the run too challenging and it becomes impossible. Too easy, and it becomes boring. So very much to learn: about engineering stable and unstable structures, about how forcefully to launch the Stunt Car, about controlling the direction of the launch, and, most of all, about yourself. So much more to learn as you try to finesse the design of each stunt. And you build and destroy and build again and learn to build better and learn to build even more stuntly stunts, so much physics, so much experimentation, so much creativity – all because it’s so darn much fun.

Yes, there’s paint and stickers, and yes, you can paint the car and use the stickers to indicate points and things, and yes, you can stick the wrong sticker and use the wrong color, and no, it doesn’t matter at all, because the toy itself is so major fun. And the sturdy box it comes so carefully packed in? Throw out the packing and everything fits perfectly, probably for as long as you’ll own the set.

KEVA™ Stunt Derby, all-wood, splinterlessly finished, recommended for kids who are older than six, and comes to us from Mindware, bless them.

Arx is an abstract building toy. You probably have never thought that a building toy could be abstract. That’s because you, in all likelihood, were thinking of a building-something toy. Like a toy that you could use to build a house or car or, you know, something. Arx, on the other hand, is abstract. You play with it. And then you say to yourself, “hey, doesn’t that look cool.” And then you play some more. It’s more about fascination than about fantasy.

One of the secrets of Arx that makes the whole thing so fascinating is the little floating magnets that are housed in each piece, making the  pieces are just magnetic enough to allow you to build structures that seem slightly impossible.

You don’t have to build up. You can lie them all down and connect them hither and yon. You can make things that look like flowers and things that don’t look like anything at all – except kind of beautiful. You can pay close attention to color and pattern.

You get 24 crescent pieces and two bases. Each contains a floating magnet to add to the general attraction of the whole set. Because of the graceful shape, the four different bright colors, and the odd complexities of their properties; the 24 pieces prove more than enough pieces to hold your attention for hours. Which is also unusual for a building toy. You aren’t left feeling that you will need to buy the expansion sets before you really have fun. Instead, you’ll find endless hours of gentle wonder and discovery at your fingertips.

Don’t put them in your kids’ toy box. Put them on your coffee table for the whole family to play with.

Arx is available from Fat Brain Toys.