Enter a world of toys ;-) No not the sort of toys you keep in the bedroom ! (TOYWORLD STORE)

Member Name: chele2002

Product:	TOYWORLD STORE
Date:	11/01/02 (494 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: See op

Disadvantages: See op

In my quest to never having to worry about getting birthday presents or Christmas present on time and not leave it to the last minute, a quick search on the net brought me to Toystoreworld.com. I am always on the look out for sites that offer good value for money and this one is no exception.


Brief history of the store
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The company who own Toystoreworld were created in 1977 and based in Leeds, but it was in 1980 they were able to obtain another toy shop that was already established in New York and then in 1981 the first Toystoreworld was opened in Bond Street Centre, which at the time was the main shopping centre. In the space of 15 years from 1982 they were able to open a further 10 stores across the North of England. 1994 saw a new direction when they decided to look into opening US style factory outlets, so between 1994 and 1998 saw the opening of 8 factory outlets and the growth of the company scaled with their newly formed company Toyworld Factory Outlet Ltd. Since then on some existing stores have been converted to factory outlets and a few more stores have opened. It was then in 1999 that Toyworldstore.com became live, offering people like you and I the opportunity to buy toys at a discount compared to what they were being offered for offline.

They have won several Toy Shop Of The Year Awards, and were also nominated for the prestigious British Association of Toy Retailers award of which they won.


Their web site
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My 1st impression when I arrived at the site was, well it is certainly colourful and lively looking. I was greeted with a little intro, to the sound of ani-maniacs, with all the busy little creatures of all shapes and sizes prancing around the world, which happens to be the entrance, which is provided you don't take advantage of skipping the intro. The other pages just didn't seem to quite match up to the intro page, but the bright and colou
rful theme remains throughout the site.

Navigation, well what can I say but a piece of cake, the is just no physical way you could get lost on this site, the only thing you may have trouble with is viewing my shopping basket, they like to call your shopping basket a toy box, which can be a little confusing but now you have been warned you should have no trouble.


Shopping
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You will find a few ways to hunt down your desired toys, either by going to the sections with their direct links at the top of the page of making your choice with the drop down menus below the direct link.

These go as follows:

Shop by brand: When you choose to shop by brand, you will be then faced with a selection of 26 brands, some well known brands such as; Little Tykes, Hasbro, Tomy, Fisher Price and so on, I did find for example that VTech products have not been set up as present but as I am a VTech fan I am hoping this is just for a short time. Along with the well known brands you will also come across a few like I did that I or you have never heard of, such as; TP Toys, Vivid Imaginations, ERTL, and Britains etc.


Shop by character: By choosing this you will then be able to select your desired choices from the 29 selections you have with in this category. Some but not many are yet to have products set up on their pages, a few had not many products in but the majority had at least 6 products, with some even managing to have 3 pages.


Shop by category: They have a total of 48 different categories; this was my desired way of looking for possible gifts when I 1st checked the site out. As with many categories you are bound to get some lacking in actual products, which can be a little frustrating especially if you are in a hurry, but this is no different to shopping in any other online shop. You may find that some of the products will be found in another category, but then some toys can be classed different, de
pending on what way you look at them, for example: a doll would for sure be found under the dolls section but at the same time in the girl?s toys section.


Payment
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Payment can be made using all the normal online methods i.e. debit cards, credit card and I have no doubt that there are any security worries, according to them they are 100% committed to protecting your privacy and use like many secure servers, a 128 bit encryption through out the site.

Are they good value?
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In a way yes and in a way no: you see some of their toys offer exceptional value, where on the other hand some toys did seem to be a fraction over what I would pay for the product. You simply have to shop around and allow for your own personal budget as you would doing a food shop, but I am sure you would find something you class as suitable both product wise and budget wise. For example I purchased an interactive 'Mew Pokemon' for just £5, I wasn't looking for this type of toy but came across it whilst browsing the sale section, and thought that it would make a good Christmas present for one of the children.


Gift ideas
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It is easy to become a little over whelmed by all the categories, making the choosing of a gift for what ever age a bit hard, they have so many nice gift ideas that sometimes it does get difficult to make your final choice. This is where the gift idea option becomes very handy; you simply make your choice of desired age group from the drop down menu where it says gift ideas.

The choices of ages are as follows:

0 -12 months
1 - 2 years
2 - 3 years
3 - 5 years
5 - 7 years
7 - 9 years
9 - 12 years
12 + years

Deciding to try this function, I was a little disappointed that the results that came back were a maximum of 4, which offered very little inspiration, but did give some kind of ideas, although limited. r>

Delivery
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Delivery for the UK mainland is a flat rate fee of just £3.50 no matter how little or how large the order is. Where as for example if you live in France it would mean a delivery charge of £14, which I feel is quite a chunk when you add this to you order, and the further you get away from the UK the greater the delivery charge is, but with a world wide service it will be. I personally found the delivery cost for the UK reasonable, provided your order was not too small, in the case of a smaller order I would probably opt to get something from town instead.

As for my experience of delivery, I can sum it up in one word 'Impressive'. Put it this way, I ordered the goods online on the 6th of January, and on the 9th of January my order arrived, all complete and securely packaged, but what I did like as well as the fast service is the fact that I had to sign for it, at least then if your order was to go missing then they can be sure you are not pulling a fast one.



Overall
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Delivery is spot on, they aim to deal with your order with in 48 hour and then have it dispatched to you soon after. Let's just say if your order has not arrived a maximum of 7 days then simply contact them, but I am sure you will have your order with in a few days of purchase.

Price is variable with the majority of goods being good value or reasonably priced and a few where you pay a little more than desired.

Products are quite varied, and there is quite a range to choose from, and overall I thought they had quite a good choice, all though some categories do lack a little overall they do boast many products to their name.

You never know, this may come in handy the next time a birthday springs up out of no where.