Yoshimoto Nara, born in 1959 in Hirosaki, Japan, is a contemporary Japanese Pop artist that first came to the fore of the art world during Japan’s Pop art movement in the 1990s.

Vilac, a French toy company, has been making wooden toys in classic, old-world style with contemporary colors and designs since 1911. Vilac toys are unique, never go out of fashion and have lasting appeal for all generations.

What happens when Nara and Vilac comes together? The creation of Yoshimoto Nara Sweet Dog.

We certainly think it’s pretty cool!

The newsletter announcing this Black Friday deal was sent out at midnight on Wed 21st. You can read the newsletter here. Happy shopping!

Julia at the Nursery section of Apartment Therapy wrote a wonderful piece about KangarooBoo today. It highlighted several products within our store and mentioned about our commitment to charities in making a difference in children’s lives.

Thanks Julia!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. We at KangarooBoo have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Holiday.

Liz at coolmompicks wrote a very lovely post about KangarooBoo today. It was so well written, and it nearly made me cry.

You can find it here: The Real Meaning of Christmas (And Also Toys).

Thank you Liz and Kristen at coolmompicks.com!!

A couple of weeks ago (a mere three days after we launched), we got an email from a visitor:

Earlier this year, (after the second recall notice of the toys made in China) my wife and I decided that we will not buy any products made in China and thus are looking for toys manufactured in the USA or other countries.

We had planned on deploying a release later in the week that would allow a user to browse toys by “country made”. When we got this email we felt that we needed to release the feature that very day. So after I put the kids to bed in the evening, I started working on it. In addition to browse by “country made” I also made a custom page just for this visitor, a way to browse for toys NOT made in China.

Within 12 hours of receiving said email, we were able to produce a solution to this visitor’s inquiry. We hope that it helps others as well in finding toys not manufactured in China.

When Jennic received an email from a reporter writing a story for the local papers about safe toys, we were both very excited. Jennic was interviewed and towards the end of the interview she was asked to provide suggestions of some products we carry on KangarooBoo, including hi-res pictures. She put together descriptions for 5 selections and I uploaded the images onto our server for the reporter. Little did we know that all 5 suggestions by Jennic was to be featured. We were both pleasantly surprised on Monday morning when we read the article. Jennic was quoted many times in the article:

We want to thank Jennifer Merriman of DMmoms.com for forwarding our story to the right people at Des Moines Register. And of course Erin Crawford who interviewed Jennic and wrote the article.

Users with public profiles have been able to post reviews of products ever since we launched. Until now there hasn’t been a way to see the most recently reviewed products. On Halloween night we deployed a new home page layout that included the five most recently reviewed products. This list is displayed right next to the “New Arrivals” block. Then, last night we deployed the RSS feed for recently reviewed products.

With this new feature we hope to bring products that parents/customers review into the lime light. Here’s a screenshot:

To add your review on products, create a profile and go!

This is SO exciting! StartUp Princess featured KangarooBoo (and me) on their website.

Check it out here: Featured Interview: Meet Jennic Law, Co-Founder of KangarooBoo!

A big Thank You to Kelly King Anderson! I really enjoyed it.