Well,  here at Sprogs,  Christmas is now a dim and distant memory and Easter is on  the horizon.  It’s so nice to see t-shirts appearing and lots of Spring ideas for gifts.  We have all been wrapped up and feeling the cold for long enough now!

Our most favourite new toy is pictured above.  Perfect for those little ones who pester Mum and Dad for a pet, only to be told “No, because I will end up doing all the cleaning out”!  This is a cute little life-like  rabbit hutch, complete with pretend water bottle, piece of lettuce and carrot and a brush and a cute little fluffy rabbit. It’s so realistic that there is a possibility that the children may be able to prove how well they look after this pet, so there will be no getting out of buying the real thing!! Anyway, we think it’s just a brilliant idea!

We have gone all eco friendly with our latest range of kid’s clothes and are just glad to have found some that are nice to look at, affordable and have been produced in a thoroughly ethical way.   We have discovered that the producers of this range in India are so much more environmentally aware than we are in the Uk.   To give you an example, they use coconut shells to fire the boilers that they use and they recycle all of the water used in the dying processes.  They then produce a real lovely garment at a good price. So, if they can do it why on earth can’t we here in the UK?!

Here are a couple of pics of the t-shirts!

It’s been just  like Jurassic park here lately, the Dinosaur craze is in full swing, and Bob and I can nearly spell the word Diplodocus without looking! Of course, we can’t yet pronounce  it

From dinosaur fossil kits, puppets, model kits, you name it we can’t get enough of them!! and it’s not just the boys, the girls are getting in on  the act too! And why not? sometimes  you can have just a bit too much of that pink, princessy stuff lol

Anyway, it’s rant time now, so here goes – It’s children’s names!! As suppliers of lots of personalised items we are constantly amazed by the weird spellings of kid’s names nowadays. Now, I have no problem with originality, as it happens I had a good friend who named their child Merlin and I managed to visit lots of times without collapsing in hysterical laughter  ) but the real problem is when someone takes a standard name and just spells it differently. That’s not original! it’s just silly! For example Alex = Aleks or

Rebecca =Rebekka. The poor child will have to go through life constantly having to correct people when they spell  the name wrong! Parents – think about it before you name your child!!

Anyway that’s it for now, have to go and check all the toys are still working:-)

Carol & Bob

So here we are at Sprogs, nicely into the Autumn season and counting down to Christmas! We know it’s too early for all that festive malarky, but people are already shopping for Christmas, so we may as well come out of the closet and admit that we are joining in!

What about the credit crunch then? If you really want to wallow in it, watch all the news progarmmes you can, read all the papers and then get out the valium and hibernate. That’s what the media would love! But in the true fighting spirit of the Brits, we won’t let it get us down!! The kids will still get pressies, the new babies will be showered with gifts and here at Sprogs we are carrying on as normal.

Our rag dolls are really  happy as they have lots of new clothes to wear!

and the toys on the shelves have all had to move up to make room for new toys such as our lovely traditional Jack In The Box!

The thing about running a toy shop is that even the most straight faced customers leave the shop in fits of giggles. You just can’t fail to be cheered up by our toys and when Bob gets going with the puppet show, well there’s not a spare seat in the house as they say!

How can anyone fail to smile when they see this chap of mature years (well, it begins with a 6 and ends with a 0 if you want to work his age out) draping a large hairy gorilla around his neck and then starting a conversation with it??!! So many customers are now asking if Bob comes with the puppet that we are giving it some serious thought:-)

Please note the picture is the gorilla and not Bob.

I did promise a rant on every Blog when I first started (I did also plan to update the blog every 2 weeks, but heyho) so here is  the rant for Autumn;

The weather.  What is it playing at?  We move all the summer clothes into the stock room to make way for Autumn/Winter and so far it’s been warmer in October than all summer! Grrr – all the winter hats and gloves are here and last week we sold 3 sunhats!  Nice warm jumpers are here and what do people ask for? – t-shirts!!  What can you do? Absolutely nothing really – so we will carry on selling wellies (no one trusts the weather enough to be without those) and if all else fails I shall cut off all the sleeves of the jumpers and make them into summer ones.

Until next time………

Carol & Bob

It’s June 3rd today and it’s bucketing down!! No doubt though, by the time I finish writing this, it will be blazing sunshine! The effect that the weather has on trade is amazing. Here we are with all these summer clothes and all anybody wants is wellies!

Bob is a very happy bunny now, due to the fact that his most favourite hand puppet, Rabbit In a Lettuce is back after being out of stock for ages.  And the excitement is mounting as we have just returned from a trade show where we were tantalised with a view of several new hand puppets, one of which is a monkey in a palm tree, complete with baby monkeys and bananas! These are not going to be ready for about three months, so Bob will just have to contain himself until then!

We had fun last week building pirate ships. One was to display the ones that we sell and one was for the new window display. The one in the window will be auctioned when the window is changed and we will give all the proceeds to our favourite charity, Winston’s Wish.  We have already had a nice big bid on it, which we are really pleased with.  Also, as a bonus the lady who put the bid on, told us this joke “Why are they called Pirates?” answer “Because they aaaarg”" (has to be said in a pirate voice for full effect, even better if you stand on one leg!)

Great excitement on the rag doll shelf this month, with the arrival of our new ethnic ballerina flower girl doll. Beautiful little doll dressed in her white tutu, perfect for bridesmaids and flower girls. We have so many rag dolls now, we may have to get a new shelf!

Tom, our boy rag doll is proving very popular. One nice little story is of a little boy who is expecting his baby sister to arrive shortly. Mum has bought a Francesca rag doll ready for the new baby and he has been taking the doll to bed each night to “get her warm ready for the new baby”! aaaah. Well, you will be glad to know that this little boy now has Tom to look after, which is great, because I have a feeling he may not have wanted to part with Francesca when  the time came:-)

Now I did say that I would have a rant each month.  So, just so no-one is disappointed, here goes:-

Spiderman. He was great – to start with.  He  climbs up buildings, plays the hero and  generally saves the world,  but why does he need to be plastered all over pyjamas, lunchboxes,  umbrellas, wellies and any other item you can think of?  Just in case we should forget him? It’s just not going to happen is it? My son is 24 now and I can remember when he was 4, he spent about 6 months dressed as spiderman most days. So, this just proves that we don’t need reminding, Spiderman is NEVER GOING AWAY. Yes, we have Spiderman T-shirts and pyjamas here in the shop, and at Christmas we had dressing gowns. I blame the grandparents. I’ve lost count of the number coming in asking for anything with Spiderman on for their grandsons. I have this vision of all these little boys, opening yet another pressie from Grannie and stifling a yawn when  Spiderman underpants pop out:-)

Bring back Buzz Lightyear I say – now he really was a Hero:-)

Carol & Bob

Summer is finally here! We are very pleased here at Sprogs because we have lots of lovely summer clothes and it’s finally warm enough to wear them!!

Following my last post, I have to report that so far there have been no problems with the demonstrating of our Baby Slings. Bob has managed to put one on and take it off without getting stuck! Admittedly, a baby would have fallen out of it, but the mum watching didn’t seem put off by this, as I think she was just humouring Bob! Anyway, they are selling well and people are impressed by the fact that they are the only baby carrier like that, made in the UK.

Our Ragdoll family are happy as they have some new additions. We have Tom, our first boy ragdoll (and very handsome he is too!), Bonnie, the Scottish lass, and  two larger ragdolls, Betsy and Rosanne who measure 22 inches tall. Rosanne is fairly famous now, due to her role in the Coronation Street trailer. I may have to start charging if people want autographs! Yes, I know it’s unlikely, but some people take their soaps very seriously!

Bob is becoming a bit of a local celebrity, with his puppet mastery. He is constantly demonstrating our hand puppets, although I think it may have been a mistake to get the little mouse finger puppets, as he spends a lots of time making ladies jump on chairs as he can make the mouse “run” over their shoulders. Trouble is, none of these ladies have any children to buy for, so I think that Bob is the attraction for them coming into the shop. A single man would use that to his advantage I think:-)

We also have a new addition to the puppet family. She is a lovely Mummy kangeroo, with two little baby finger puppets in her pouch. Soo cute!

I have decided to include a rant in my blog each time, as I wouldn’t want anyone to think that running a shop is all plain sailing! Also, everyone loves to read a rant, don’t they?

My rant this time is about Health & Safety. Britain has gone safety MAD!! One of our new traditional tin toys is a lovely carousel, made to the standards that toys were made to years ago. It catches everyone’s eye when they come into the shop. Trouble is you have to be Age 14 and over to play with it! For a start, most 14 year olds wouldn’t look twice at it, as you can’t tune it into MSN or Facebook and also, how did children ever survive playing with toys like these with no safety warnings? I haven’t heard of many people being maimed or damaged for life after playing with them! We all blame these regulations on America as litigation is king there, but we have found out that over there, this same toys only has a recommendation of Age 8 and over. So, we must be more stupid here! Maybe we should all live in a padded cell until we are old enough to be allowed out safely on our own. Yes, there are some grown ups who should be in a padded cell, but that’s another story and no, i don’t mean any of our customers:-))

Rant over, till next time.

Carol & Bob

April 2008

Its now 1 year since we opened “Sprogs” – a children’s toy and clothes shop in the heart of the Cotswolds.

We still think we were mad to do it! After all, neither of us is on the right side of 40. In fact, one of us is nearly on the wrong side of 60! Having said that, we could have just retired gracefully and been bored and broke. Instead, we chose to take on a completely new challenge – we,re still broke but never bored!

I’m Carol and my husband is Bob. We run “Sprogs,” a little shop selling children’s toys and clothes in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, which is a small town in the Cotswolds. We sell traditional, wooden, tin and fairtrade toys and clothes from baby to age 8.

Neither of us had ever run a shop before and although we have 5 children between us we had no idea what it would be like to do this MAD thing!

So, how did we start? Well, Bob bought a book called “How To Run Your Own Shop,” read it from cover to cover and then said “OK, lets do it!”

A year on, it has been “interesting” to say the least. Hard work? Yes – bloody hard work! Rewarding? Yes, very. Has it turned Bob into the oldest 5 year old? YES! (oops, given away which one of us is the wrong side of 60 now!)

The day starts with a general tidy up and testing of all the toys. Bob says this is vital and that he needs to check that they all work. Mmm, funny how he always spends longer checking the puppets though? Well, anyway, I usually indulge him in this and get on with checking the emails for orders through our website – www.sprogs.org.uk.

Our bestselling toys have been our lovely Rag Dolls. All ethically produced and beautifully made. They all have their own names and they look so cute just sitting there on their own shelf. The puppets that we do have really inspired Bob and he spends most of the day demonstrating them all to children and parents. He’s become so good now that last week a parent asked if he came free with the puppet!! I regularly thank parents for bringing their children in to play with him!

The picture at the top is our latest puppet – Mummy Tawny Owl and her Babies – irrisistable!

The idea of this blog is to tell our story really. It’s quite unusual for two people at our time of life to change their working life so drastically, and we hope others will find it interesting as well as entertaining. Hopefully we will update every couple of weeks. It would be really nice to hear from anyone who has thoughts on anything that we post on here.

Our new product this month is “The Baby Sling”. We have just got stock of these and I predict fun and games ahead. I have created a small display of these in the baby section and have foolishly printed a sign saying “Please ask for a demonstration”. Now, this is where it will be interesting. Neither Bob nor I had a baby sling when our children were small. Yes we had baby carriers but these slings are another ball game altogether. The ones we have chosen to stock are ring slings, very simple to use, no fussy fastenings etc and all made in the UK (we really get happy when we find such a product – made in the UK is so rare we have discovered). Having said that they are simple to use, I fully expect to get a phone call on one of my rare days away from the shop, saying that Bob has put on a sling to demonstrate and is unable to extricate himself from it. I think we may have to have some practise runs! The thought of my almost 6ft hubby encased in a baby sling does appeal to my sense of humour though!

Almost as funny as when a mum asked if we sold “GroBags” the other day, and Bob directed her to the garden centre. I had to do a quick bit of training with him on the new fangled idea of a sleeping bag for babies that for some reason are called gro bags sometimes. Oh dear , never mind he’ll learn – soon.

Thats it for now, thanks for listening!

Carol & Bob

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