Do you know the romantic story behind Melissa & Doug Toys? We love backstories about cool brands at Modern Kids Design, and this one is sweet. We invited Johanna back from Our Joyful Home this week. Like us, she loves Melissa & Doug’s wooden toys. Here is what she has to say about it in this week’s post:

I expect a lot out of the toys I give my kids. It’s just how it is in 2014: entertainment is now just one of many “musts” on the list of what makes an ideal toy. As the years go by we get a little more enlightened; we expect toys to educate, and even more importantly, to be safe. Our views also get a little more globalized as the years pass. Our natural resources are not infinite, and we know it.

As our culture starts making smarter, safer choices we as parents look for good companies that will deliver the quality we’re looking for, and let me tell you, I’ve found one. I’d love to introduce you to Melissa and Doug, a company known for their beautiful and engaging wooden toys for kids of all ages.

Why do I love Melissa and Doug so much? (And seriously, I love them. Whenever relatives ask what the twins want for their birthday or Christmas the answer is always the same: “Any of those Melissa and Doug wooden toys!”) There are quite a few reasons:

• They’ve got the cutest story ever. According to their website, Doug was too scared to ask Melissa to marry him, so he “asked her to start a business with him instead”. They did eventually get married, and have been making toys together for over 25 years. I love supporting families!
• Awesome value. Wooden toys in general (and these ones especially) are such good quality. They’re built to last, and boy do they ever. Alice and Charlotte will be playing with their favorite Melissa and Doug toys (like the cutting fruit set, which they seriously can’t get enough of) long after their plastic toys have broken.
• They foster imagination. Wooden toys tend to lean more heavily on the imagination of the child than plastic, battery-operated type contraptions. Since we started introducing more Melissa and Doug toys to the twins we’ve seen exponential growth in their imaginative play and also their attention spans. When you’re playing make-believe, a toy can be an infinite number of things used in a million different ways.
• Safety, for us and for the environment. Wooden toys means no off-gassing of chemicals, which is an obviously huge plus. Melissa and Doug are passionately committed to the safety of their products, and each and every toy is tested multiple times at each step of the production process. As for the environment, wooden toys leave a much smaller carbon footprint in production, and don’t just end up in a landfill somewhere when you’re done with them.

So the next time your child has a birthday, and especially with the holidays upon us (happy holidays!), I encourage you to consider more than “is it fun?” when choosing your gifts. But even if that is all you consider, Melissa and Doug still wins every time.

We hope that you enjoyed this guest post. Check out the Melissa & Doug Cutting Fruit Set and the other toys  that we carry by them in our Toy section and, as always, feel free to shoot us an email and let us know what you think. If there are toys you’d like us to carry, we’d love to hear that too. Feel free to reach out to Johanna as well. You can find her at Our Joyful Home. Thanks for reading!