Our story

In 1930, in the middle of the worst year to start anything, Herman Fisher, Irving Price and Helen Schelle started a toy company in East Aurora, New York. Their first catalog had sixteen wooden toys with names like Granny Doodle. The bet was simple: toys should have intrinsic play value, ingenuity, strong construction, value for the money and action. We still grade every product against that list.

Nearly a century later the wood is mostly plastic, the ducks mostly sing, and the play lab is a real place where real kids demolish our prototypes so yours do not have to. This site is our current catalog: every toy sorted onto thirteen shelves by what a kid does with it, marked with the age we actually tested it at.

We are toy makers, not a checkout. When you press a price button here, the listing opens with our retail partner, who handles the cart, the delivery and everything after. We handle the part before: helping you pick the right toy for the right kid.

Our play lab sits at 636 Girard Avenue, East Aurora, NY 14052. It is a workshop and an office, not a storefront: there is no showroom to visit and no returns window, just people arguing about how loud a xylophone should be.