Review: Toydle Fort aka "The Coolest Christmas Gift Ever"

Sometimes, being a part of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew is just too much fun.  My kids got the most amazing Christmas present ever.  And wow, did they need something exciting this year...  check out these photos:

What in the world is this?

What is Toydle?  An amazing company, making one primary product right now... Forts.  In a couple different sizes.


The kids were a little mystified, initially, but quickly started piecing things together.  As you can see. 

Quickly became... hey, these fit together

And more "these fit together"

And then all the boy were in on the action

And this was the result of a few minutes' work

Let's look closer at what you get with this.

There are a whole bunch of pvc pipe looking things (the white "sticks") that connect into these amazing hand-crafted nearly works-of-art themselves blocks.  Blocks made of real honest-to-goodness wood.  Not some polymer thing.  Wood.  Did you know they still made wood?  I wasn't sure...

Once you assemble your structure, you can use the handy-dandy and quite durable clips:

And voila!  You've created a fort where you can hide...  I mean, um, where your kids can hide.  Because I'd never try to hide from my children... or, at least, not in something this cool-looking as I know they'd find me.

This product is amazing, durable, and just so stinkin' cool... 


I asked everyone to tell me the pros and cons to the Toydle fort, and the pro list mostly consisted of "it's cool" and "it's fun" types of statements.  Dale & I like that it requires some imagination and definitely cooperation, and, well... we love that it is just fun and cool too.

The long (not) list of cons:

• we're in pretty tight quarters, so the kids really need to think about where they are going to set this up, and it really can't STAY up long-term (at the moment) without really getting in the way.
• the pieces don't necessarily come apart easily, though it seems to be getting better with a bit more use.  
• And while I think the value is definitely there, the pricetag is steep for a lot of families I know... the regular fort is $149.99, and the Big Toydle Fort (that we received) is $229.99.  That makes it something to plan for.  And I'd recommend planning for it. 

This is the coolest toy ever. 

Check out this "factory tour" video:



You can read what other crew members had to say about Toydle here:

Disclaimer:  As part of the TOS Homeschool Review Crew, I did receive the Big Fort for the purpose of a review.  All opinions are my own.  For more about my take on reviews, visit my blog post here.