Check us out in print (or digitally) in L.A. Parent!

A few weeks ago we met a super sweet mom in our shop in with her young daughter who was happily playing away with the trains on the train table.  Which isn't a surprise... this happens quite ofter as a matter of fact!  But we were surprised to find out that she's from L.A. Parent, a publication that has both an online and print version of their magazine available for parents to reference for tips and interesting tidbits about being a parent in Los Angeles.  And that's the story of how the lovely Erin Mahoney Harris came to Larchmont and chose to feature us in her article about great family-friendly spots in Larchmont Village.  So check out our mention, and don't forget to read the rest of the article to find out more about our awesome neighbors and why you should be visiting all of us next time you're in this part of town: http://www.laparent.com/article/step-back-from-the-bustle-in-larchmont-village.html

We're mentioned in Red Tricycle!

We love Red Tricycle, and not just because they featured us in their article, A Beach Town Filled With Family Fun, but because they are a genuinely great resource for Los Angeles parents to help them find out what they can do with their kids in the city.  They're fantastic at mentioning lesser-known attractions and activities around town, so if you haven't checked them out yet, well, here's one article that we're naturally going to recommend reading first ;)


http://redtri.com/los-angeles/manhattan-beach/

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

For naming us South Bay Magazine's Best Kids Store in the South Bay!!!  We can't believe it (and we're also really impressed that this man is juggling three kick balls), and we're just so honored to be a part of the South Bay community that to be so warmly embraced is a tremendous thrill.  Thanks to everyone who voted, and we hope to see you in either of our shops again soon. 

Again, thank you :)

You should escargot down to 140 N. Larchmont and join in our spectacular snail scavenger hunt!

Test your national flag knowledge with our first ever window scavenger hunt!  In our windows at 140 N. Larchmont, we have 14 snails proudly toting around 14 different flags from around the world.  Not to mention some pretty great puns to give you a hint about the flag's country.  If you can find all of the snails, and correctly identify the 14 countries they're representing, then you win a 'sweet' prize.  One prize will be awarded per entrant, on a one-time only basis (we want to give as many people a chance at glory as possible) for as long as supplies last, so stop by soon and have fun learning about the world! 

Happy Father's Day!

We just want to thank our fathers for always picking us up when we fall, teaching us new and interesting things everyday, remembering the goofy things we say when we're little (and repeating them years later at the most opportune moments for hilarity/embarrassment), and for lifting us up when we couldn't see what was on the top shelf.  It's great fun watching the dads that come into our shops carrying on these traditions, and we're thankful that you do!  So have a happy father's day, and if you need for us to get something down from the top shelf, we are more than happy to delay your visit to the chiropractor :)

Reminder to vote for us as your favorite Toy Shop!

Don't forget we're still in the running for the South Bay Locals' Choice Award for best Kids Store.  We would absolutely love it if you could take the time to visit https://surveyanyplace.com/app/s/exec/qid/lcsbretail/  and nominate us as your favorite (you don't have to give them your email unless you want to).  Times are tough for new and small businesses; Winning this award would mean a great deal to us.  In addition to bringing a smile to our faces, you can also enter to win for a $2000 shopping spree at Manhattan Village.  You have nothing to lose and everything to win by voting!  And even if you're a patron of our Larchmont shops, remember, what helps one shop helps the other so we would love your votes as well :)  You can vote daily until June 28th.

Thanks as always for your support!

The Totally Awesome Awards? We totally want to be nominated for that!

We have naturally already nominated ourselves, but the more people that nominate us, the more likely we are to actually be in the running for the Totally Awesome Awards from Red Tricycle!  So if you have a minute, please consider nominating us?  But before you do, we'll let Red Tricycle tell you, in their own words, what is this award all about?

Red Tricycle’s Totally Awesome Awards is the biggest and the most fun reader-driven choice awards where parents nominate and vote for their favorite family products, services and local businesses. Parents nominate their favorite products and businesses during the nomination period, which runs from June 3, 2013 through June 22, 2013. On July 1, 2013 the finalists in each category will be announced and then the real fun begins. Parents will vote for the nominated businesses in each category. Red Tricycle’s Totally Awesome Awards features 31 Local and 62 Baby & Kids Essential (National) categories.

So are you now psyched to nominate us?  If so, just click on this handy link: http://awards.redtri.com/  and fill out the info.  Easy, and since it covers the entire 
Los Angeles area, you don't have to fret over which shop to nominate.  Yay!!!!

Landis' Labyrinth Loyalty Card Time!

As many of you loyal shoppers know, we generally start off our summer by handing out paper loyalty cards to our customers.  The response is, as you can imagine, pretty positive.  I mean, does it get any better than having a card that rewards you for spending money at your local toy shop by giving you a discount?

Well, now it does.

We're excited to announce that we are working with Fivestars to bring our loyalty cards into the digital age!  All you have to do is give us your name and phone number (email optional if you want to get occasional emails from us regarding events, special member deals, etc.), and we load your card with that info (which does not get sold!), and you're good to go and start rewarding yourself. 

You get 1 point for every $10 you spend, and once you get 10 points you can either use it toward a 15% off coupon, or save up to 25 points and get a free pair of Shwings!  The points don't expire, and if you lose your card, we can look it up via phone number, email or name! :) So, two big bonuses with this new card system.  Another bonus is that you can use this card at other Fivestars participants and start saving there as well.  We're thrilled that we can offer this to our customers, and we hope you'll love these cards as much if not more than our previous paper ones.  Come into any one of our shops to get set up :)

It's time for the Daily Breeze Reader's Choice nominations!

And like all good award nominees say, it's an honor just to be nominated, so help us get nominated!  Please help us out by going to Daily Breeze Reader's Choice and putting in our name under the Toys category.  It only takes a few minutes, and we'd love to have your vote of confidence.  Then if all goes well and we get nominated, we'd love to have your vote of support!  Primary voting ends May 5th, and if we get the nomination, you can be sure we'll tell you all about it here :)

Thanks!

Surprise Sidewalk Sale on Larchmont

So if you're on Larchmont this weekend, stroll on by and see if there's something you just can't resist.

Also in great Larchmont news, the Barber Shop next door to us at 144 N. Larchmont has re-opened, and it looks spectacular!  We're glad to have a neighbor on that side again, so stop on by and say hi to them if you come by the Toy Shop :)

Sculpey in its greatest form... bunnies.

Ah Sculpey, the easier-to-mould-than-Fimo baking clay.  Whilst organizing the Sculpey display yesterday, we came across 5 packages of clay that were bitten into.  While we don't encourage our customers to bite our products (especially ones that you could in theory eat but really shouldn't because it isn't safe to eat), there was a silver lining.  After tossing out the bits with bites we used the rest of the clay to demonstrate just how wonderful Sculpey is.  And since it's almost the first day of spring, we felt behooved to create some delightful bunnies, flowers, and bunnies playing with butterflies out of the clay.  So here is the end, albeit unbaked, result.  And remember, always bake your creations in an oven, NOT your microwave!  And stop biting the Sculpey packages, please :)

Larchmont's annual Spring Sidewalk sale is ON!

Don't we all love spring cleaning?  We get to make room for more new products, and you get to benefit from the savings!  We have tables out at both 140 and 144 N. Larchmont Blvd. with items that are 65% off the regular price.  We are serious about our sales.  A lot of the items are toys that have damaged packaging but the actual product is perfectly fine, but naturally, a lot are leftover Valentine's Day goodies and items that we don't plan to reorder in the near future.  So take advantage of the deals we have and stop on by!  We'll probably have the tables out for a week or so, so make sure to come by soon before they are gone :)

Anyone want a Papo fixture?

That's right... we are anticipating the arrival of a larger one for the Larchmont shop, so that means we either need to find a new home for the current one, or toss it.  We'd much rather someone took it home with them to use as their own personal Papo figurine display (or whatever else you can think to use it for).  So here's the deal;  give our cashier your name and number if you're interested, and when we get our new fixture in, we will be calling interested people back in the order that they gave us their number.  The first person we call that says "YES!" gets it.  We can't provide transportation of the fixture, so only leave your name if you have a way of transporting it right away and are seriously interested.  If we don't have any takers then we'll have to toss it, unfortunately, so please, let us know now.  Thanks for playing "Who wants a Papo fixture?"!

Who likes a giveaway?

We do!  That's why we're doing one.  As mentioned in a previous post, we love product suggestions.  So much so that if you come into either one of our locations between now and February 11th, we have a suggestions sheet out right at our counter for you to write down what you'd like to see in the shop that we currently don't have.  Every customer who puts down a suggestion (or 2 or 3) gets a small gift from us as our way of saying "Thanks".  As supplies are limited we can only give out one gift per customer, not suggestion, so bring the kids with you when you come in... we want to know what they think, too!  So come on in and give us the benefit of your toy/game wisdom.  We can't make every suggestion a reality, but we'll do our best :)

Ready for the New Year?

We are!  We're sad to say good bye to 2011 (we had a most glorious year!), but we're excited to see what 2012 is going to bring.  And by this we don't mean the end of the world.  Based on how much our sales have increased year after year, we're going to be waaaaay too busy selling toys, wrapping toys, filling in toys, etc., to have the world end on us.  There's just no way we can fit that in during the holidays.  Which means we need to do some serious reordering so that we can continue to be a successful business.  So keeping this in mind, we're going to be doing the gift show circuit for the next two months or so, and we would love suggestions from you guys!  What did you love?  What did you not love (really, tell us... we can't test everything out, so we're relying on YOU to let us know what didn't meet your expectations)? And what awesome new toys/games would you recommend?  One of our customers last year recommended Rubbabu toys right before we went to the Los Angeles Gift Show.  We found it there, and it's been one of our biggest hits of the year.  And as fond as we are of telling the Rubbabu-suggestion story, it's almost a year old and needs to be replaced with a new suggestion story. 

As you can imagine, this means the next month we may be out of some of our regular items while we wait for reorders to come in, but we do still have a ton of stuff for all ages and interests.  As fate would have it, we got our Hexbug order in yesterday and NOT before Christmas like we had hoped, but that means we are well-stocked in Hexbugs now so come in and check them out.  We're also getting our Valentine's Day items in now.  Some items like our stuffed animals and jewelry are already out on the sales floor, but the rest like the Valentine's Day cards will be out the first week of January. 

The Twelve Days of Landis' Labyrinth

On the last day of Christmas my best friend gave to me:
Twelve Bop-Its bopping,
Eleven Squinkies squishing,
Ten Risks-a-playing,
Nine Beyblades spinning,
Eight sets-o'-Lego,
Seven Jacks-a-picking
Six Balls-a-bouncing
FIVE AAaaART KITS!
Four Thomas Trains
Three Green Toys
Two Blue Kazoos
And a Calico Critter Tree House!

And with that, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah!  Thank you for a most successful holiday season, for supporting a local independent store, and for letting us see what our walls actually look like without merchandise covering them.  But never fear, we will be hitting up the toy/gift fairs soon to bring your favorite toys and games back, and to find some really cool new ones, too.  We will be closed on Christmas Day, but back open again December 26th.  And don't worry, we still have a great selection of gifts for Chanukah, as well as a few dreidels and other goodies. 

Happy Holidays from all of us at Landis' Labyrinth!


P.S. Let us know what your favorite gifts were this year (we're nosy like that)!

Want to win a chance to get your favorite toy at the Larchmont Shop?

And have fun at the same time?  If the answer is yes to both of these questions, then stop by this Saturday and take part in our very first coloring exhibition.  Exhibition?  Yes, exhibition!  We're doing more than a contest... we want to see how creative our customers are and share their work with the neighborhood.  All you have to do is 1. Come by starting this Saturday (November 19th) and pick up a "Landis' Labyrinth Coloring Page", 2. Take it home, and write down on it what your favorite toy is and why, 3.  Draw your favorite toy in the wagon on the picture, 4. Color in as much of the picture as you want, 5. Write your name and age on it, and 6.  Bring the finished masterpiece back to us and we'll display it for all to see.  We'll be running this exhibition until December 3rd, and then we'll select our favorite entry!  Whoever is the lucky winner will be awarded a gift certificate to the Larchmont Village Landis' Labyrinth.  And keep in mind, we won't necessarily pick the drawing with the most "superior" art skills.  We're looking for creativity and expression, so surprise us.  If your favorite toy is a red play ball with yellow stars on it because it looks just like the one John used to have before his dog destroyed it on Groundhog Day, then please, tell us.  Even if you can't draw a star very well and they look more like spiders.  We still want it!  We're going to leave the age limit open, so all entries are welcome!

Our giraffe has a name and we have yet more new art kits!

So about the giraffe... you all remember Gerry, our very vigilant and tall guardian of the shop who spent countless hours greeting our customers as they stepped into the shop?  Well, earlier this year, he was given his due retirement and is now living happily with another giraffe and a very lucky little girl.  So naturally, the time came for us to hire a new giraffe to take over Gerry's duties.  We had many applicants, but we found our winner in General Rosie, a name suggested by one of our young customers for our new giraffe that won our poll this past week (Gus was a close second... maybe next year!).  As you might guess from the name, General Rosie is more than qualified to make sure that everyone has a great time when they come into Landis' Labyrinth, and will not tolerate anything but the best, at least until someone else comes in and offers her a chance to retire.  So rest assured, your next visit will be a good one, in no large part due to the ridiculous amount of art kits that we now have in stock.  In addition to the mountain of kits from Faber-Castell/Creativity for Kids, we also have a pretty awesome supply of kits in from Alex Toys, including a sewing machine and sticker maker!  These are always a big hit for the holidays, so we're happy they've come in so soon.  We also have a ton of bath toys from Alex, my favorite being the Dirty Dogs, which are dogs that are all covered with dirt stains that magically disappears when put in the bath.  IT'S MAGIC!  I also do love the Water Flutes, but I'm a sucker for any musical toys so that's just a given. 

Speaking of water, have we mentioned that's it's rained recently.  As in this past week?  As in probably many times in the next few months?  Never fear, Stephen Joseph is here!  Who is this Mr. Joseph, you may ask?  Only a great line of raincoats, rain boots, ponchos, umbrellas, wallets, and backpacks.  We have four styles of rain boots and jackets- owls, robots, pirates, and flowers, and some really fantastic Signature Collection Backpacks.  We also have the ever-popular wallets in from them, including a pirate octopus that I would beg my parents for if I was still 9. 

We've noticed this past week that people are already picking up gifts for children's charities for the holidays.  It's an absolutely selfless act of kindness that we applaud, not because it means sales for us, but because everyday we see children in tears because they can't get the toy they want.  The children benefiting from these charities aren't even afforded the opportunity to go into a toy store and yearn for a new toy, which makes it all the more important to recognize how special it is to help out whenever we can.  It can be quite difficult to figure out what a child you've never met, and will likely never meet, will want for a gift, but we'll do our best to show you things that we know children similar to them love.  So don't be shy about asking us for help!  We've talked to hundreds (thousands?) of kids and their parents, so we have a fairly good idea of what they like, and we're under no obligation to keep this info secret!