The Ark's Toytastic Year In Review

As another year of toys, smiles, and giggles come to a close here at The Ark, we wanted to look back at some of this year's best memories.  From our week-long customer appreciation festivities to visits from Santa Claus himself, it has surely been a busy year for us.  And it's not over yet!  There's still a few more hours left of 2014 to go and even more to talk about in our year-end blog post.

Trending Toys of 2014

Last year's Rainbow Loom craze helped usher in excitement for one of this year's most talked about toys, The Loopdedoo.  Winning awards left and right, the Loopdedo introduced kids to a fresh new way to design their accessories.  Proving itself a popular next step up from the rainbow loom, the LoopDeDoo became one of the most in-demand birthday party gifts in 2014.  Soon thereafter we started to carry the Loopdeloom, an even more fashion-forward looming toy that included trendy colors and modern patterns.

Switching to the world of kids decor, our extremely popular A-Cup Sailboats mobile held strong as our #1 selling baby mobile.  The USA's recent America's Cup win helped put this sophisticated kids decor item back on the map, pushing it to become our biggest online seller to date.  But this isn't your everyday, run of the mill sailboat mobile.  What makes the Authentic Model's A-Cup mobile special is that is was modeled after REAL America's Cup racing yachts from the 1930s!  Swing by your local Ark location to get a true up-close view of this intricate mobile made from solid wood and real cotton sails. 

Just in time for the holiday season!  We were so excited to start carrying award-winning toys by Build & Imagine.  Featuring such popular products as "Day At The Beach" and "Malia's Beach House", these special building toys can be described as a fusion of Magna-Tiles, classic dollhouse play, magnetic dress-up dolls, and fashion design toys.  We've found that toys like these inspire an interest in a wide range of subjects and activities, like art and design, storytelling, and architecture. 

Memorable Store Events

We're definitely party people here.  So we love to find ways to get both customers and our staff involved throughout the year.  We threw a lot of cool events this year, with our first annual Halloween Contest being one of our most successful events!  We had well over a 100 entries and gave out prizes for categories like Best Overall Costume, Frozen Inspired Costume, Most Creative and Dynamic Duo.  

Later on in the year we partnered with American Express and locally-owned businesses across the country to celebrate the importance of shopping small.  Using the hashtag, #ShopSmall, we used our social networks to connect with fellow small toy stores as well as getting the word out about shopping local in the Bay Area.  Our lovely sales associate Laura even took the time to create this awesome #ShopSmall photo for our Facebook page.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for us!  Stay tuned for even more tid bits about our most favorite memories and toys of the year.