Novelty & Gag Toys

Sandpits offer no end of fun for kids during the summer months. They encourage outdoor play and exercise, while also helping develop your child's creativity skills, as they work at building sand castles and making shapes in the sand, try digging or simply let heir imaginations run wild playing with their toys on sunny days in the garden. Perfect for offering hours of enjoyment in the sunshine, with much of the novelty of a day out at the beach without any travelling necessary, a sandpit is sure to bring a huge smile to your child's face. To help you find the best children's sandpit for your outside space, we've pulled together some of the best buys around this summer. Many come with benches and covers to keep your child in the shade, while others boast creative and fun designs, including boats, cars and animals, which are sure to please. If you prefer something more classic, we've also found some more subtle and neutral-toned sandpits that should look chic and dis...

What: A fake ad for Quarantine Dream House Barbie that traces this year's unexpected plot twists. Who: Comedian Sara Schaefer and director Scott Moran. Why we care: By any metric, 2020 has been a weird one. Even before the onset of COVID-19, it was already a variety pack of nightmares whose only bright spot was the Parasite Oscar sweep. Then quarantine gave way to the backlash against quarantine, a topic that was just hitting fever pitch when America suddenly found itself gripped by the greatest racial reckoning since the 1960s. A new video by comedian Sara Schaefer perfectly captures the whiplash factor of trying to stay sane throughout this singularly chaotic year—especially for her particular demographic. Although a broad swath of Americans will be able to relate to the video—a triptych of fake ads for Quarantine Dream House—the core audience is millennial white women who grew up playing with Barbies. The first part of the fake ad finds Schaefer's side-pony'd toy-player ...

1. ESPN's The Last Dance has been the highlight of quarantine for many sports fans, but if you're a WWE fan, The Last Ride has been just as engrossing. The Last Dance worked for many reasons, with one of the biggest being that we haven't seen or heard much from Michael Jordan over the years. The No. 1 reason The Last Ride has worked is because we've never heard anything from The Undertaker's portrayer–Mark Calaway–ever. The Last Ride airs its fifth and final chapter on the WWE Network this Sunday. If you are or have ever been a WWE fan, I can't recommend enough that you binge the series over the weekend if you're looking for something to do. Just seeing Calaway pull back the curtain and talk about his character would make this a must-watch documentary, but what puts it over the top is seeing the relationship between Calaway and Vince McMahon. In one episode, Vince stops taping because he's overcome with emotion when asked about what Calaway means to him....

I'm taking a break this week, so I asked Kaitlyn Greenidge, an NYT Parenting contributor and the author of "We Love You, Charlie Freeman," to step in for me. Read her previous newsletter, about narrating the world for her daughter, here. — Jessica Grose, lead editor, NYT Parenting I bought the toddler-sized vacuum cleaner at 3 a.m. in early June. I felt slightly giddy when I pressed the button. I'd just spent the past four hours scrolling Twitter, watching as police officers injured protesters, reading the vitriol trolls spew, stopping every so often for the more beautiful images — the black cowboys in Texas and the ballroom dancers doing death drops in the middle of a march and the Amish carrying Black Lives Matter signs. I'd drunk in all the chaos, and I was jittery and sad and scared. My daughter was asleep beside me, and everyone in the house was asleep, too. I had no one to talk to about any of it at that moment. So I bought the toy vacuum cleaner for a littl...

'We are going to terrify you," declared the mayor of Middlesbrough, as he unveiled his grand plan for a trio of 20-storey towers earlier this year, billed as the tallest buildings between Leeds and Glasgow. "This is about us saying we are here to be taken seriously now." Not many buildings are promoted as threats, but then not many mayors operate like millionaire businessman Andy Preston. Sick of decades of inaction in his home town, Preston has cooked up a £250m vision for a "stunning digital skyscraper" aimed at attracting tech companies, along with two residential towers, which he hopes will send chills down the spines of rival northern cities. "We are not going to put up with second best, put up with mediocre stuff," he said at the launch in February. "We are going to suck some of your business out of your cities to us." 'No more second best' … the proposed residential towers, left, and the Boho X tech off...

For over 60 years, toy manufacturer Fisher-Price has brought joy to squealing children in thumb-sized plastic-figurine form through the Little People product line. Whether riding atop a fire engine, hanging around the barnyard, or filling a school bus for a field trip turned adventure, their limbless, peg-shaped bodies have grown into an icon synonymous with childhood and imagination. How outrageous, then, to contrast these totems of a more innocent time with such decidedly grownup material as boobs, butts, curse words, drugs, alcohol and full-frontal sexual activity! That's just about the full extent of the comedic subversion on offer in Crossing Swords, a show unabashed and proud of the sophomoric wit starting with its title. In a medieval setting still considered on-trend in a post-Game of Thrones world, diminutive playthings populate a feudal system of kings, queens, knights and peasants rendered with crude stop-motion animation. Their milieu forms another odd angle with ...