Though small in size, Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty and Cubebots are back in a big way.

We could hardly keep these bots in stock during the December holidays, and considering how ofter we ourselves play with these unique puzzles, we're not surprised.  Made of wood with some elastic joints, Cubebots are designed to unfold into a 'robot', and then challenge its owner to reconfigure it back into a perfect cube.  And we have to say, it's a good challenge for both kids and adults.  The small Micro Cubebots are the easiest of the bunch to solve, and are available in a wide range of colors, but they are still tricky!  Guthrie (the bot in the red box), is definitely a tough fellow to manage, but Julien, who has kindly consented to pose for us here in the upper right-hand corner, might even beat Guthrie in terms of difficulty.  We just got them in, so we can't say for certain who will win the battle of most-challenging Cubebot, but we have a feeling that we'll come to a conclusion soon enough since they are addictive to play with.  Be prepared to spend a good deal of time being entertained by these Cubebots!

If you want something less challenging, more creative, but just as engaging, then you'll be happy to know that we have restocked our Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty.  We're written about this before, but just to give you the highlights once again, Crazy Aaron's is a U.S. company who not only manufactures their putty in the U.S., but they also employ people with learning and/or physical disabilities, so that right there is a fantastic reason to choose this putty.  And just to make things even better, their products are awesome.  You can choose from small metal tins of color-changing or glow-in-the-dark putty, or go all out and get their magnetic putty (the putty itself is attracted to magnets, which they provide), or my personal favorite, the Thinking Putty Creatures.  The Creatures come with plastic eyeballs that look pretty realistic and you are encouraged to mould your putty into whatever creature your mind can conceive and use the eyeballs as, well, eyeballs.  The putty is firm, and will slowly "melt" back down over time, but it never dries out and you can use it over and over again.  We have a strong suspicion that there will be more than one Easter basket out there that will have either some Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty or a Cubebot (or both!) in it in a few weeks.  The Easter Bunny knows what's up...