Our Sincere Apology

Greetings to all our beloved patrons & friends~

A month has passed since we announced that we're back in business. And during this period of time, we sincerely apologize to all for any mistakes or inconvenience caused by our inexperience new staffs.

We're working hard to re-organize our place and inventory to serve you better and hope to accomplish all tasks in time for the year end parties.

We welcome any suggestion and feedback about our service and area where we can improve on.

Hurray! We're now back to serve you!

Great news!

We're now re-organising our premises and working with a group of new staffs to provide our service to you.

As of 4th of October, the new opening hours of the Toy Rental Club are:

Morning: 9:30 - 13:00
Afternoon: 14:00 - 17:00

We're closed on every Wednesday and Public Holidays.
Operation for Sunday is only available via appointments only.
We're also resuming our door-to-door delivery services w.e.f 4th October 2010.

We would like to thank all our customers for supporting us in the past and hope that we can serve you again; now and in the future.

And, apologise for any inconvenience caused during our short absence.

Do bare with us while we make improvements to our services and feel free to email us of any areas that we can improve on.

Sad news: we're closing (at least for a while)

We regret that the toy rental club will close its rental services with effect from 1st June 2010. We sincerely regret the inconvenience, but family circumstances have made the closure necessary.

Rentals will still be accepted in May, provided that the return date is no later than June 26th, for self-collection and return by the customer.

Deliveries and pickups are still possible till May 30th.

For all items due for return in June, the opening hours from June 1st till 26th will be:

Tuesday and Thursday
9.00am - 12:00pm

Saturday
10.00am - 3.00pm

The last date for returns will be Saturday 26th June.

We would like to thank all of our customers for their support over the past 3 years. We have enjoyed serving you and still hope to do so again!

Oh boy (Oh girl) - another media feature

We don't know what has brought this on, but suddenly we're getting a lot of media attention. The 7th May edition of "My Paper" has a short piece about us in their Mother's Day feature. The Toy Rental Club segment is entitled "Toy Story".

You can click here (and then click twice on the image) to see a pdf version of the article. If you click on the first magnifying glass icon (in the top right hand corner) you will get a closer view of the article - and then you can zoom in.

Mum-preneurs (Singapore Women's Weekly)

Check out the May 2010 issue of the Singapore Women's Weekly. the toy rental club takes centre-stage in a feature on the theme of women who manage to run a business while raising children. The photographer chose the most chaotic corner of our warehouse unit for the shoot, but actually it makes an appealingly colourful backdrop for our double-page portrait in the magazine.

Learning to Ride a Bike - a New Approach

It's intriguing to read about a very successful New York City programme for teaching kids to ride a bike. What's unusual about this approach is that it does not involve the use of training wheels. Instead, the pedals are removed, the seat is lowered and the kids learn how to balance their machine before attempting to do full-blown cycling. Exactly the same principle lies behind the lovely LikeaBikes which you can rent from the toy rental club!

Watch the video below to see how it all works - and there's even a useful .pdf booklet of tips if you want to try it with your own child.

The Lost Art of Play

We just stumbled upon an article by psychologist Dr Jim Taylor at the University of San Francisco lamenting the reduction in American children's play time. The article, in the 13 Oct 2009 issue of "Psychology Today", emphasises the importance of unstructured play in fostering creativity, cognitive and social skills, and independence, among other things. Dr Taylor argues that TV and overly structured "play dates" have resulted in a huge decline in outdoor play especially.

"Children are just too busy to play these days," claims Taylor, pointing to the pressures of homework, organized sports, music and dance lessons, and other structured activities. It sounds like Singapore, does it not? You might get better results, he says, by simply giving the kids a break.

Incidentally, a 2004 article in the same magazine suggests that parental "hyperconcern" (over-protectiveness) may be responsible for the growing number of psychologically fragile college age kids.