Seattle’s Top Ten Toys chooses crafts and creativity over computers

If you can’t take any more “Frozen” and you’re not a big fan of the mobs at the big-box toy stores, there’s always the quaint, neighborhood toy store. Especially if you’re into: “Less violent, more educational, more multicultural, less sexist, more environmental, all of that politically correct stuff,” says Top Ten Toys owner, Allen Rickert, who says that’s the shop’s motto.

It’s a place where old fashioned, hands-on creativity and imagination prevail and the only electronics they carry, he says, are for “Teaching children about electronics, wind power, and solar energy. We don’t carry computer games.”

Top Ten Toys was opened 27 years ago by a therapist who wanted a place to buy healthy toys for her kid. Now her brother, Allen, is the owner.

He used to be a real estate agent. “I went from wearing a suit one day, with a couple in an angry divorce transaction, to the next day helping some people buy a teddy bear, and that was much more pleasant.”

He shares the shop’s top selling holiday toys of the year, starting with the number one seller.

“The Spirograph – that’s an old, classic toy where you make these patterns. For some reason that’s huge this year. Number two is a Tangle Free Parachute. Just like a little parachute man with the parachute, throw it off the balcony. Number three, the classic Slinky. Number four, it’s a Space Needle wood puzzle. Number five is a Lego Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter. Number six is a coloring book about Seattle. Number seven is plain old Play-Doh.”

At 10:45am on Monday, the shop was packed with parents and kids grabbing last-minute gifts. One of them was 9-year-old Oscar. “I’m shopping for my brothers right now. It’s like a new thing, they both really enjoy knitting and sewing and stuff.”

His mom, Jackie, says her kids don’t play video games and she prefers to shop local and label free.

“Toys ‘R’ Us has a lot of branded things and so you can’t get a nice thing if it doesn’t have ‘Sponge Bob…Bob Spongepants’ on it, or something like that. Our kids get enough stimulation from the media and stuff that we don’t need to enhance it at home. I personally don’t want to see those logos at home. I don’t want to see Disney or “Frozen” or anything like that.”

Some of the most popular toys are the most simple.

“We sell a huge number of marbles. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing with them,” says Allen.

And it’s not just kids buying them up.

“We have so many seniors and adults that come in here and buy toys for themselves,” says Allen. “I actually like their reactions even more than the children. You can see a senior citizen in their 80’s and the woman comes in and she sees the marbles and she says, ‘I used to win all the boys marbles when I was a kid!’ You can see the spark of the child is still alive right now.”

Top Ten Toys is open Christmas Eve at both of its Seattle locations for all of your last minute “less violent, more educational, more multicultural, less sexist, more environmental” Seattle shopping needs.