Toys Coloring Pages
I had a pet rock once, and for years it was my favorite toy. I'm still not sure what made it a pet, other than the fact that I liked it. It was just a rock I picked up on grandpa's farm. These days my granddaughter's favorite toy is an old cellphone case. Toys don't have to come from a toy shop, which is why this page covers a lot of ground, from kites and teddy bears to building bricks and robots.
ABC Blocks
Letter blocks are an old idea. People were already suggesting that kids could learn the alphabet by playing with lettered blocks more than 300 years ago. Early ones were wood, and a tower like this one looks great until somebody can't resist knocking it over.
Basketball
The first basketball hoops were peach baskets with the bottoms still on. Every time someone scored, a person had to climb up and fish the ball out before the game could go on...
Beach Toys
A pail and shovel might be the simplest toy ever, but it comes with a secret. Dry sand just slides away, while damp sand holds together, because the water between the grains works like glue. That's why a castle needs a trip to the water's edge first...
Board Games
Board games are some of the oldest games around. People in ancient Egypt were moving pieces along a board more than 4,000 years ago, and dice about that old have been dug up too. New games still work the same way, with a path to follow, a pair of dice and somebody across the table to beat.
Bubble Wands
Bubbles are always round, even when the wand isn't. The soap skin pulls itself tight, and a ball is the smallest shape it can make around the air inside. That's also why two bubbles that touch share a flat wall between them.
Christmas Toys and Gifts
Christmas is the biggest toy season of the year. Shops sell more toys in the weeks before it than at any other time, which is why the Christmas pages have a whole section just for gifts and toys...
Christmas toys and gifts coloring pages
Dollhouses
The first dollhouses weren't made for kids at all. In Europe in the 1600s, wealthy families built tiny, detailed copies of their homes to show off, and the children weren't allowed to touch them...
Football
Old footballs were made from an inflated pig bladder wrapped in leather, and that's why the ball is oval instead of round. A bladder blows up into a lumpy egg shape, and the pointy ends turned out to be handy for throwing a spiral...
Fridge Magnets
Magnets stick to a fridge door because there's a layer of steel under the paint. Some shiny stainless steel fridges don't have the right kind of steel, so a magnet just slides off, and that surprises a lot of kids.
GI Joe
The words "action figure" were invented for GI Joe. When he came out in 1964 the toy company worried that boys wouldn't play with anything called a doll, so they gave him a brand new name...
Hand Puppets
Puppets are thousands of years old, and the hand puppet is the simplest kind. Your hand is the whole body and your thumb works the mouth. A puppet can say things a shy kid wouldn't say out loud, which is one reason teachers like them.
Jump Rope
The story goes that double Dutch, where two ropes swing at once, got its name from Dutch settlers who brought the game to North America. Jump rope rhymes still get passed down from kid to kid on playgrounds.
Kites
People in China were flying kites more than 2,000 years ago, and the first ones were made from silk and bamboo. That makes a kite one of the oldest toys you can still find in a shop today...
Labubu
Labubu started out in picture books before it ever became a toy. The artist Kasing Lung drew the pointy-eared little monster for his stories, and now the plush versions come in sealed blind boxes so nobody knows which one they've got until it's open...
Lego
The name Lego comes from two Danish words, leg godt, which mean "play well." The bricks are made so carefully that one from decades ago still clicks onto one from a brand new set...
Marbles
Kids have been playing marbles for thousands of years. The first ones were little balls of clay or stone, long before glass ones with a swirl inside came along. In a lot of games you flick one marble to knock the others out of a ring drawn on the ground.
Mr. Potato Head
The very first Mr. Potato Head came with a strange instruction: go find your own potato. The box held only the ears, eyes, nose and moustache, and the potato itself had to come from the kitchen...
Mr. Potato Head coloring pages
Mochi Plushies
Mochi is a soft chewy rice cake from Japan. Mochi plushies borrow their name from that squishy round shape, with big smooth bodies and tiny faces that are hard not to squeeze...
Kawaii mochi plushie coloring pages
Plastic Dolls
Barbie wasn't the first plastic doll, but she's become one of the most popular. She first showed up in 1959 and she was named after her creator's daughter, Barbara.
Barbara loved playing pretend with paper dolls that looked like grown-ups, so her mom set out to make a doll that could be one too...
Play Dough
Play dough started out as wallpaper cleaner. It was made to rub soot off walls in houses heated with coal, and it only became a toy when someone noticed that kids loved to squish it.
Playing Cards
The first European decks had suits like cups, coins and swords. French card makers swapped those for hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs, because simple shapes were much faster to print, and that's the deck most of us still use today.
Rag Dolls
Rag dolls were the toy you made yourself, from scraps of cloth and old clothes. Lots of people still sew them by hand, right down to tiny knit hats like this one...
Robot Toys
Most of the robots on coloring.ws aren't toys at all. They're workers, explorers and made-up characters, and they have a whole section of their own. Toy robots have been clanking across floors since at least the 1950s, when tin wind-up ones were a big hit...
Rocking Horses
Rocking horses have been around for hundreds of years. Fancy old ones had manes and tails made from real horsehair, and some even had glass eyes.
Rubber Ducks
In 1992 a ship lost a crate of about 29,000 bath toys in the Pacific Ocean, and ducks, turtles and frogs kept washing up on beaches for years. Scientists used them to track ocean currents. Rubber ducks float because they're hollow, so the air inside holds them up.
Soccer
Almost everywhere else in the world, soccer is just called football. The word "soccer" began as an English nickname, short for "association football," and it stuck in North America after it faded out at home...
Sock Monkeys
A sock monkey is made from an ordinary pair of socks, and the mouth is the heel. Most of the classic ones used grey socks with a red heel, so the red heel became the big grin.
Spinning Tops
Spinning tops are some of the oldest toys in the world, and people have dug up ones that are thousands of years old. A top only stays upright while it's spinning fast. When it slows down it starts to wobble, and then it tips over.
Squishy Plush Toys
Lots of squishy plush toys skip the arms and legs. They're one smooth soft body with a face, so a cat, a dog and a donkey all start from the same egg shape and the ears do the rest...
Teddy Bears
The story goes that teddy bears are named after US president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. On a hunting trip in 1902 he refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree, a cartoon of it went around the newspapers, and toy makers started selling stuffed bears with his nickname...
Toy Cars
Tiny toy cars got a lot faster in the late 1960s, when toy makers gave them thin axles and wheels that barely rubbed. Suddenly a car no bigger than your hand could zoom down a plastic track, and kids could run real races on the living room floor.
Toy Trains
Toy trains have been around almost as long as real ones. The first were made of tin or wood in the 1800s, when railways were brand new, and kids pushed them across the floor by hand until wind-up and electric trains came along.
Transformers
Transformers started as toys and the stories came second. In 1984 a toy company took robot toys from Japan that folded into cars and planes, gave them names and a war to fight, and a cartoon followed...
Tricycles
A tricycle has three wheels so it stays up all by itself. That means a kid can learn to pedal and steer first, and save the balancing for a bike later.
Video Game Characters
The story goes that Pac-Man got his shape from a pizza with one slice missing. He started gobbling dots in 1980 and he's still one of the easiest game characters to spot...