Average Cost: $20
Official URL: intplay.com (US Distributors) or quercetti.com/
Age Range: 12mo and up
Rating:

Toddlers are obsessed with stacking, shape sorting, color matching and patterns. This toy from the Italian brand Quercetti satisfies all of those needs, with less frustration than other traditional stacking toys. It’s a great, colorful open-ended play toy.

QUALITY/CONSTRUCTION/DESIGN

The Mat: The flower-shaped peg mat is a lightweight flexible purple plastic that is smooth and soft to the touch. The center hole goes through to the other side, and the remaining 18 holes have rounded bottoms that fit the pegs.

The Pegs: The Geokid Daisy comes with 20 pegs. The pegs are made of a durable plastic that is hollow to make it lightweight (less than one ounce per chunky peg), but the pegs are still open for ease of cleaning. The hollow part has spokes that reinforce the piece against breakage, and that have successfully resisted breaking or bending when I’ve accidentally stepped on them. Each peg is about 2″ in diameter and 2 1/2″ tall making them the perfect size for toddler hands to easily grasp. There are four peg types: A rounded blue peg with curved edges, A square green peg, a flower shaped red peg, and a round yellow peg with straight edges. The pegs stack easily on top of one another by fitting into the hole that is at the center of each peg. Each peg has a drainage hole that makes them easy to clean and dry.

SAFETY

The materials used in this toy are PVC-free. This toy was manufactured in Italy and so it follows more stringent safety standards than those in effect in the USA.

The approximately 2″ in diameter and 2 1/2″ tall size of these pegs makes them impossible for a young child to fit into his mouth.

The peg mat is flexible but impossible to tear. The pegs resist breaking even when a full-grown woman steps on them in the middle of the night, so they are unlikely to fracture into small pieces.

The only possible safety concern is… Well.. Stepping on them in the middle of the night when you’re going to check on your sleeping child! Make sure you round up the parts before bedtime.

DURABILITY

The mat is very flexible, resists tearing and cracking. The pegs themselves are made of a heavier are more rigid plastic. All of the parts hold up very well to standard use and abuse, including being thrown, stepped on, rapped against furniture, and every other imaginable mis-use that a toddler can dream up. As long as you can keep track of all the pegs as they find their way under all of your furniture, this is a toy that should hold up to years of use by multiple children.

EASE OF CARE

Quercetti has ensured that this product is extremely easy to take care of. Each individual part has a drainage hole that makes it easy to clean. The parts are all made of smooth plastic. The most difficult part to clean is the inner sides of the pegs, as they are reinforced with ribs, however a q-tip can easily clean out these spaces if needed.

As with all toys that have multiple small-ish parts, you will find that parts of this toy end up pretty much everywhere. Fortunately it’s not a toy where all parts need to be present in order for a child to have fun with it.

EDUCATIONAL/ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

This toy has fascinated my son from the day that it came into our home. Younger children will enjoy playing with the shapes and looking at the colors. Then they can move on to practice their fine motor skills by stacking the shapes. As their fine motor skills increase they’ll find that they’re able to stack more and more shapes on top of one another. The pegs hold the different shapes together, making this game less frustrating for younger children than stacking blocks. As your child gets older they can learn about the colors, they can imitate patterns that you create, play memory games, and stack the shapes by color. This toy even opens up discussions about how different orders of things can increase the stability of the stack. Is it better to put all of the more stable shapes (such as the yellow pegs) on the  bottom, and the blue curved-circle shapes on the top? Is it better to alternate shapes? Are you as much of a geek as I am that you’ll actually try this out…? I hope so, because your child will enjoy this set just as much as you do.

BOTTOM LINE

This is a great open-ended play toy that meets all my requirements. Safe, rugged, colorful, and open-ended educational fun. Sure, it’s plastic instead of wood or metal. But that just means that it hurts less when my son lobs it at his best friend’s head.