More than 7000 new toys debuted at Toy Fair in New York last week, but two outdoor toys that stood out to me were true classics. The Bubble Thing and The Sno Baller are two old-school outdoor toys that were both invented by really nice guys.
The Sno Baller (compare prices) is a no-batteries-required snowball press that really works. The inventor even showed me his first wooden prototype. How cool is that? I took the Sno Baller outside and quickly made about a dozen snowballs (they say it can do one per second!) and had a blast throwing them at my husband. They fly really far but they disintegrate on contact because they're not packed hard like handmade snowballs. They've sold more than a million Sno Ballers so you might want to get one, if only to ensure that your kid can hold his own in a snowball fight!
The Bubble Thing (compare prices), invented in 1984, will really come in handy this spring. It's a pole with a long loop of fabric and a bottle of bubble mixture that's designed to make huge bubbles. In fact its inventor, David Stein set the first Guinness World Record for a 50-foot bubble, so he knows his bubbles! They've sold more than 3 million Bubble Things, and now for every two Bubble Things sold, the company plants a tree in India.
Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.