TOS review: Schleich

 
Scene:  Mom is in the kitchen fixing dinner.  There is still about a half an hour before it will be ready.  The two precious kids (aptly named Precise Prince and Creative Princess) are milling around restless.

Mom: Why don't you guys go play?  Dinner isn't ready for awhile.
Child One (after all it could have been either of them): There isn't anything to do.
Mom: Go play with the new Schleich animals we just got in the mail.  They are in the box on the table upstairs.

Scene: Both children run upstairs discussing who gets to play with what animal.
Time passes and amazingly the children do not argue.

Mom, through the intercom system: Dinner's ready.

Scene: The children run down the stairs talking together.
Creative Princess, laughing: The animals were eating cookies with ketchup.

End scene.

This is an actual scene that happened at my house recently. My kids have pretty vivid imaginations.  I love toys that lend themselves to creativity and these animals do just that! 

Why do I like them so much?  First, they are high quality. These are toys that can be passed down from child to child-not broken after a day or two of playing with them.  They are beautifully hand painted and detailed.




The variety of animals you can purchase is something I've not seen elsewhere.  You have your basic animals, dogs and horses and zebras and such, but did you even know that there is an animal called an Okapi?  (Of course I'm not looking it up for you but here's a picture of our Schleich Okapi.  You have google too.)


Our shipment came with a collector's booklet that lists the animals.  Based on the booklet descriptions, here is what we received in our shipment:  a gnu, a gnu calf, a baby elephant, an okapi, a Przewalski's horse, a Swabian-Hall piglet, a donkey and a Dartmoor pony.  My children are already making a wish list on what animals they want to add. 

In addition to animals, there are other collections Schleich offers.  Most of the animals fall under the "World of Nature" collection.  Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are part of the "World of History" collection which also includes the "World of Knights" and "World of the American Indians."  Then there is the Bayala collection which has elves and other fictional creatures.  The last collection in the collectors book is the Smurfs.

Creative Princess loves animals and already had two of Schleich's dogs which she named Oslo, for the city in Norway and Bones (I don't know where this name came from).

Precise Prince actually started collecting the knights from Schleich a couple of years ago.  They are among a handful of toys that we will not be getting rid of and they are some of his favorite toys.

I took out the rice bucket for my great-niece to play with recently.  (She is in preschool and loves to "play rice".  Precise Prince and Creative Princess will usually sit with her and play too.)  The kids used the animals with the rice buckets.  They were feeding them, playing hide and seek with them and even made a rice pool for them to swim in.

I highly recommend these toys so head over to their website and check them out.  Click here to find your nearest retailer for Schleich.  Prices vary based on retailers.

To see what my fellow TOS crewmates have to say about Schleich click here.

(As part of the TOS crew, I recieved some animals for free in exchange for my honest opinion.  No other compensation was made.)