When we first heard about PlainTales we were intrigued. PlainTales is an independent publisher of kid audio books based right here, locally in Des Moines, Iowa!

Audio books for kids is something that’s new to us. It’s also a category that we hadn’t plan on adding to our store. But after meeting with Brian Keairns, the owner of PlainTales, we decided to give it a try.

Our kids loved it! When we played Selected Just So Stories on our drive home from the mall one day, they listened intently. The whining and the crankiness went away immediately. When we got home, they insisted on finishing the story. So we sat in the van parked in the driveway and waited for the story to finish.

On a recent trip to the Omaha Zoo we played the Gingerbread Boy & Other First Tales. It’s a 2 hour drive. To entertain the kids we typically sing, play “I spy” or the “animal guessing game,” but that can only last so long. So, we were glad to be able to play an audio book for them when they got bored.

Our oldest just turned 6 and our little girl will be turning 4 soon. Their favorite titles:

• Selected Just So Stories – Both like The Elephant’s Child
• The Gingerbread Boy & Other First Tales – These are classic children’s tales. Stories they’ve read and heard before and are familiar with.
• Animal Tales – In the words of our 6 year old: “When I listen to this, I think about the animals, the baby raccoon that’s looking for ants and fish to eat.”

We decided to add PlainTales. Not only did we add PlainTales audio books to our selection at KangarooBoo, we also added features to our website to offer MP3 versions of these audio books.

Try it out. Download Animal Tales for FREE. And get 40% OFF PlainTales audio book CDs with the code TALES during checkout. This offer expires on September 6, 2009.

Plus, for a limited time all MP3 versions of the audio books are 41% off! It doesn’t get any better than this.

Shop PlainTales now!

We have a bunch of great new playsets from PlanToys, and we’re working on getting some more detail photos to go with them.

When you see the whole set, it’s hard to see all the fun pieces included, so I’m zooming in on different parts to show some of these details.

Do these detail photos help you make decisions about what to order? Is there anything on the site you’d like to see more closely? Let us know!

The ability to get notification when an out of stock item becomes available is a very common one for an e-commerce site. In an effort to launch in time for the holiday season, we had to put this feature off. We didn’t think that we would need such a feature so soon. To our pleasant surprise we had real trouble keeping a lot of our merchandise in-stock. We’ve already had to replenish our inventory several times. It’s hard to believe that it’s only about 2.5 months since we launched!

So in the last couple of days I spent some time and whipped together our “in-stock” notification feature. In an event that an item becomes out of stock, there is now a way to add your email to be notified when it becomes available again. This feature was released early this morning.

When Jennifer at Des Moines Moms asked if we offer gift cards or certificates, we immediately decided to make it our top priority to offer gift certificates. That was about a month ago. We’re glad we did that because it took us a lot longer to implement than expected (isn’t that always the case?). So after a few weeks of coding it’s finally ready.

Late last night, we deployed a new version of KangarooBoo with the ability to purchase gift certificates. For those who don’t really know what gifts to get, how about the KangarooBoo Gift Certificate?

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.

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!