Tidlo Toys Have Stood the Test of Time

Tidlo is one of those toy brands that feels familiar, even if you haven't come across the name before. Wooden farms, play kitchens, dolls houses, trains, diggers and fire stations: the sorts of toys that have been around in one form or another for generations.

Even the name fits. Tidlo comes from the Danish tidløs, meaning timeless.

There are plenty of new ideas in children's toys, but children themselves haven't suddenly stopped wanting to push a digger around the floor or make everybody a pretend cup of tea. That's the territory Tidlo has stayed in, making traditional wooden toys for everyday play.

A farm is never just a farm

We think Tidlo is particularly good at small-world play, and the farm range is a good example.

There are animals, farmers, tractors, buildings and all the bits and pieces needed to make a farm interesting. Our Tidlo Life on the Farm bundle brings it together in one set, or a farm can be built up gradually with animals, figures and accessories.

What happens once it's on the floor is another matter. Animals wander off, tractors acquire unlikely jobs and pieces from completely unrelated toys find their way in.

The fire station, police station and construction toys work in much the same way. Put a few wooden figures and vehicles into the mix and before long they're all part of the same game.

Tidlo has clearly understood something quite simple here: children like having things to move around and stories to make up.

Then there are the play kitchens

Children already know exactly what to do with these because they've watched us doing it. The appeal is getting to do what the grown-ups do, only this time they're in charge. Food gets chopped, dinner gets made, things go in and out of the fridge and an extraordinary number of cups of tea are served.

Tidlo makes some lovely wooden kitchens, but we also like the fact that the range goes beyond the kitchen itself. There are pots and pans, wooden fruit and vegetables and crates of food, as well as a wooden cooker, sink, fridge, microwave and even a washing machine.

You don't need all of it. A few pieces of wooden food can be enough to start a game and more can be added later. They're also the sort of toys that tend to escape their intended purpose. Today's vegetables for dinner might be tomorrow's shop stock or cargo in the back of a truck.

For children who know their diggers

Some children go through a stage where every piece of construction machinery has to be identified correctly. Calling a front-end loader a digger simply won't do.

Tidlo caters rather well for them.

There are wooden diggers, bulldozers, loaders, road rollers, tipper trucks and cranes, along with builders and construction accessories. They're wonderfully engaging toys: wheels turn, loads get moved and building sites appear wherever there happens to be floor space.  

Not everything needs batteries

Tidlo has been making wooden toys for many years and is now part of Bigjigs Toys, a family-run British toy company. Wooden toys have an enduring place in childhood, and creating timeless toys from wood is what Tidlo does best.

That doesn't mean the toys feel old-fashioned. They're bright, colourful and full of recognisable details. They're also clearly designed with children in mind. A Tidlo kitchen looks fantastic in the playroom, but looking at it isn't the point. There are cupboards to fill, hungry teddies to feed and dinner to get on the table. So when Tidlo build, they build for years of play.

Room to grow

Another reason we like Tidlo is that you don't have to buy a whole play world at once.

A few farm animals can be played with on their own before a farm is ever added. A kitchen can start with a small collection of food and gain more pieces over time. Figures and vehicles can be added when a child's interests develop. That makes the larger Tidlo range useful too. Rather than replacing one toy with the next, you can often add something that gives an existing favourite more possibilities.

Tidlo isn't trying to reinvent the way children play. It takes the things children have always enjoyed, such as pretending, building, copying and imagining, and makes good toys for them to do it with.

Perhaps that's why timeless is such a fitting name.

Explore the Tidlo collection at Bebeco.