Container Park’s Kappa Toys Is a Unicorn of a Store —

Container Park’s Kappa Toys Is a Unicorn of a Store —

By Amber Sampson

Lizzy Newsome
The store appears straight out of a neon jungle with oddities of every color, for every age. This play emporium draws its inspiration from the classic design you’d find in a Japanese toy store. In Kappa Toys in Container Park, you’ll find a nostalgic blend of favorites like the Slinky and Etch A Sketch, while rare collections of Japanese imported items like Monchhichi monkeys and Ultraman action figures crowd the displays. Oh, and make sure to pop in a sitting session on the Italian-made Rodys lining the floor. Don’t judge these tiny, inflatable horses by their size. They can hold up to 400 pounds, and they’re great for teaching balance to smaller children. And yes, they’re super fun to rock on.
Toy curator Lizzy Newsome gave in to the gravitational pull of Downtown in July when she and her husband packed up their lives in Austin, Texas and moved out west to start Kappa Toys.
“It definitely felt like Downtown needed a good toy store that really sold toys for kids and adults, but focused on the customer. Rather than on necessarily just collecting toys,” she says.
One unique brand tailored to toddlers and smaller children is Green Toys. These eco-friendly toys are created in California and made of food-safe recycled plastic.
“They make one of the only food-safe tea sets on the market, so you could actually have Kool-Aid and cookies and not be worried about what’s leeching onto it,” she says.

“And they make toys that are tested all the way down to six months.”
Kappa Toys
Older kids, ages 10 and up, will truly enjoy the store’s science section. In so many words, it’s experiment kit galore. Wire up your very own potato clock or dust off clues with the Detective Science Fingerprint kit. If your kid possesses a flair for the creative, venture over to the art area and pick up a 3-D art kit. For the melodic mavens, a well-stocked music section is only a foot away and full of harmonic novelties.
“We have classic, really standard metal harmonicas from Hohner,” Newsome says.

“But we also have Hohner’s new bamboo line, so it’s all bamboo instruments and a lot of those are tested for really young kids.”
Kappa Toys welcomes the little ones who yank their parents indoors after a long play session at the Treehouse in Container Park, but as Newsome said, this store’s for everyone.

“While everything’s appropriate for kids, more than half of our customers are adults buying for adults,” she says.
See? Now unzip your grownup suits and let the child inside run free.

Article originally appeared here.