Play Merrily Blog

As the UK distributors of Rubens Barn Original, Cosmos, Little Rubens, Rainbow and Linne Dolls, we are delighted to add the exception Ethnic clothes rage for the original sized dolls to our range.

These beautiful outfits come in boy and girl styles in Chinese, Muslim, Indian and African styles and retail at £19.95.

As an introductory offer, you can purchase your choice of Rubens Barn Original Doll (RRP £49.95) and any outfit for a discounted price of £59.95, a saving of £10.

See our full Rubens Barn Empathy Doll range ,plus all the clothing for Original and Little Rubens sizes, for more details.

If you would like more information on stocking the Rubens Barn doll range in your shop or on your website, please get in touch with us via the contact page on the main PlayMerrily Toys website.

Your budding Einsteins will be thrilled with our latest range of EIN-O Science Kits for kids. Perfect for the school holidays, these kits contain everything you need (with perhaps the odd occasional thing such as water or a seed to add in) to do science at home with the children.

From the pocket money sized kits to the large boxed sets with included DVD, there is something for every topic.

See what a customer thought of one kit by reading the review of the Colour Mixing Kit.

In the first in a new series of articles, we have produced a page with all of the dolls available for sale at PlayMerrily summarised by brand. We hope it wil be helpful. We have 11 different doll suppliers all with very different features and strengths and over 100 individual styles of doll. Definitely something for everyone!

We’re delighted to introduce two new soft baby toy ranges at PlayMerrily Toys. Forming the core of our Baby &Nursery Section, both Kaloo and Moulin Roty are premier brands with quality and originality at their core. The two French baby product brands have been an immediate success with our customers.

Kaloo Baby Comforters

Kaloo focuses on super soft premium quality baby comforters and first toys with matching nursery accessories; with the wonderful Pink Lilirose range for baby girls, the blue ranges for boys, the Pure & Dragee ranges for neutral pre-birth purchases or Christening gifts and the colourful Kaloo 1-2-3 citrus range, there is something for every baby and nursery. The Plume range is a snuggly, cuddly furry range in unusual deep colours and super soft (pictured above). Each range has doudou comfort blankets, chubby teddies, musical cot toys and activity spirals and most items come packed in exquisite hat box style gift boxes with secured ribbons to tie around them. The boxes are very much part of the gift and will make wonderful keepsakes, a perfect place to store all those important first memory items.

Moulin Roty Malo Comforter

Moulin Roty are a very different by equally desirable set of toys. Also suitable from birth, their baby range includes a wide selection of characters and styles. Some of the most popular are La Grande Famille, including Julius the Dog, Amedee the Duck and Sylvain the Rabbit. These come in several sizes and also as hand puppets. Beautifully crafted, super doft and full of character, they make great pets. Lila the Mouse and Malo the rabbit have unique comforter styles in pink and blue, plus rattles and dolls to match the range, while Eduardo the Duck is a strong, scarlet and cream range with a musical cot toy, pram doll, comforter and rattle.

Mary Meyer Baby Gifts

Our choice of these two brands is complimented by the delightful and highly original Mary Meyer range. A long standing popular baby gift range, Mary Meyer combines attractive an unusual designs with great value, hard wearing, matching toy and nursery sets. This years addition of the Cutsie Caterpillar and Mango Monkey sets have added colour and fun to an already great collection. From nursery and cot accessories to pram toys, clip on rattles, booties, christening gifts and more, they have something for every taste.

W hope you’ll take some time to have a look at our baby toys section. We’ve tried to include something for everyone, from traditional soft comforters, to wooden dummy chains to first learning toys. We think it is a great mix of hundreds of products and we hope you’ll agree!

Our first day at Bonkers About Babies was fantastically successful! We were really pleased with the stand, which looked colourful and inviting and got lots of compliments.

I can’t remember the last time i saw so many bumps and babies about but everyone who went past seemed to find something they liked with us. Particularly successful were the wooden Heimess Dummy Chains, which practically flew off the shelf. People also loved the Crocodile Creek Bibs and placemats and the Mary Meyer baby comforters were popular all day.

We’re looking forward to going back tomorrow and seeing more people; it was a great buzz to be talking to customers face to face for a change!

We’re off to exhibit at the great Bonkers About Babies show tomorrow, a bit of a first for us as up until now there has never quite been time in the diary for making extra work for ourselves.

We’re very excited to be taking some of our great new brands to the show; Kaloo, Moulin Roty, Orange Tree Toys, Kidorable, Crocodile Creek and more. The stand looks great, really colourful and all i wish is that i’d got one twice the size!

If you are coming along, please pop by and say hello; we’ve got some lovely offers and giveaways and Cuckoo Lts, who have sponsored our stand, have brought some lovely specialss to dip into - plenty of bargains to be had!

We are so pleased with our new PlayMerrily website that we have added some special gifts as a thank you for shopping with us.

If you spend £25 or more you will be offered the option to place this Baby Bath Colour Tint Submarine in your basket at checkout.

Free Baby Bath Submarine when you spend £25

If you spend £50 or more, you can add a free 20cm Calin doll to your basket.

Free Mini Calin Doll when you spend £50

Don’t forget, standard UK p&p is free when you spend £100 or more.

Introducing our Soft Doll Collection

We are very proud of Soft Doll collection here at PlayMerrily, which forms the core of our toy shop. Dolls are important toys to children, allowing them to explore role playing games and learn family values through play.

Traditional Soft Bodied Baby Dolls

Our two French brands Corolle Dolls and Moulin Roty have a wide range of exceptional quality dolls. From the simplest first dolls such as Miss Rose, through to the  Tidoo Bath Doll which are a perfect 30cm size and ideal for a young child. Tidoo and the similar size Corolle Calin Dolls range have a variety of dolls clothes to suit their size and are delightful vanilla scented, soft bodied babies for any little girl or boy.

Rag Dolls

Launching our new site we are delighted to add 3 ranges of rag dolls to our shop. Both Imajo Dolls and Lanka Kade raggy dolls are made in Sri Lanka; both are heavily involved in the factories which manufacture their goods and Lanka Kade are certified as Fair Trade dolls and the Imajo soft dolly range are also made using fair trade principles. Using handwoven fabrics, these dolls are always slightly unique and change from one batch to the next. Imajo also make beautiful ballerina dolls and flower girls, an ideal gift for a bridesmaid. Alongside these two ranges we also have dolls from Orange Tree Toys, colourful ragdolls with a cheeky charm all of their own.

Fashion Dolls

Two more ever popular doll ranges are the Groovy Girls and Fashion Angels, perfect for the older girl who is beginning to take an interest in fashion and teenage living but are still young at heart and love to play. Both ranges have a wide variety of dolls clothes and fashion accessories; in addition the Fashion Angels have a complete set of fashion design craft kits to accompany them while the Groovy Girls RSVP party girls all come with a code to access a special website just for them.

Dolls for Young Children

Manhattan Toy have produced a very special set of little dollies for younger children. Their Snuggle Pod set of 4 dolls, inspired by nature and each with their own little sleeping bag, are just perfect friends for toddlers upwards. They also make two basic dressing skills dolls, a Pirate and a Princess, which combine play value and educational skills in one cute bundle.

Whimsical Dolls

There is always room for something unusual at PlayMerrily and Rubens Barn are exactly that. Quirky, whimsical and effortlessly friendly, these soft Empathy Dolls are full of character. Whether at home as an armful of love or within a school or group setting, they make great toys and fabulous educational tools. They come in 3 sizes from 50cm down to 24cm and the larger dolls also have outfits that can be purchased separately. Made in a similar style, but with slim French Chic, the Ting Ting range from Moulin Roty are exquisite gifts and beautifully presented in keepsake boxes.

18 months ago we set up PlayMerrily as a sister site to our established, 5 year old, BeadMerrily site, long regarded as THE home of our first ever product, the Hama Bead range. PlayMerrily was such a runaway success that we’ve now given it a brand new look, with fabulous new features and a far better customer experience. Coupled with the fact that we now run the business full time for a unit, a far cry from the far off days when BeadMerrily began in 3 folding crates in our kitchen cupboard, we’ve been able to ditch the full time job that used to bring in the essential money. My husband took redundancy at the end of January and it has been a very positive thing for our business; with his flair for organisation, we’re cooking on gas now!

We’ve added some beautiful new brands to the shop and very much hope you will enjoy shopping here; we try to couple good value, speed and great customer service together to produce the perfect customer experience - we very much hope you will think that is what you get