At 528 Orange Street, a thick line of paint in blue, pink and orange dives and loops like the smoke trail of a stunt plane across the front windows. But it’s ‘actually’ the slime trail of a fictional snail—the whimsical mascot and namesake of new toy shop Pebbles Toys & Gifts.
Pebbles’s trail travels all around the store, past artful toy food trucks, packaged escape rooms, finger puppet books, tiara-decorating kits, softball-sized planets, flag football sets and so much more. Opened in May by owner Alex Kleiner and general manager Lauren Coleman, the store is a neighborhoody addition to a neighborhood already oozing (like Pebbles?) with neighborhoodiness.
“We’re a community-conscious, community-focused toy shop,” is how Coleman puts it. “So the first thing was to bring in local talent,” a.k.a. Connecticut toymakers, which has meant stocking the likes of giant puzzles from Madd Capp (West Hartford), constructable vehicles from Luke’s Toy Factory (Danbury) and dice/card games from Tenzi (Westport). Drawing on Coleman’s previous work as a buyer for RJ Julia, Pebbles also stocks books by locally rooted children’s authors including Brendan Wenzel, who was raised in Durham, and Hamden resident Deborah Freedman.
Coleman, meanwhile, has been getting a read on what shoppers like and want, in addition to trusting her own curatorial tastes and instincts. “I spend a lot of time listening to [them]… We have a lot of really smart conversations,” she says. One time, she recalls, a regular shopper attempted to summarize her and Pebbles’s unique curatorial approach, saying that the store “help[s] parents build their child’s mind.” Coleman agrees. Many of the shop’s toys—among them a “laptop” whose “screen” is a magnetic blackboard, where the “keys” of the “keyboard” can be endlessly rearranged and a pair of “styluses” (svelte slivers of low-mess chalk) can be used to write and draw—were chosen to foster “open-ended play” and organic creativity.
But Pebbles is not just for young kids, even if it was supposed to be. “Originally, we were thinking [of serving ages] zero to 10,” Coleman says, but then she and Kleiner noticed something unexpected: Many of their customers turned out to be adults buying toys for themselves, whether in service to their inner youth, nostalgic feelings or even mental sharpness. Now, she says, the store’s varied inventory—I counted at least 15 little signs denoting different sections—is meant to appeal to all ages, “right up to grandpa.”
A parallel focus on adults may explain why so many of the toys Pebbles offers are well-enough designed to be appealing as pure design objects. A tiny play tea set looks like it belongs in an omakase restaurant; a set of mix-and-matchable cupcakes and toppings might as well be Pop Art; artisan wooden puzzles imported from Germany could go on a coffee table and never leave it. Among Coleman’s favorite toys are wonderfully lifelike animal puppets by Folkmanis, a Massachusetts company; she picked up a bear cub and had him nodding and chewing before screwing the nose up into a cute grumpy face. These are the kinds of toys you can imagine finding while rummaging through your parents’ attic decades after you played with them—and appreciating, perhaps for the first time, how beautiful they really are.
Still, at the store, young kids remain first among equals. “This is a space for them,” Coleman says, gesturing around. Child-height shelving holds many toys that have been removed from the packaging so children can try them out. A corner at the back hosts a few more playable toys—when I visited, there was a “treehouse” stuffed with whirligigs and doodads—plus story times on Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. And as independent-minded as this indie store is, serving kids well has also meant incorporating some of the broader pop culture totems kids crave, like Harry Potter LEGO sets and Pokemon cards, though it isn’t lost on either me or Coleman that those IPs appeal to a couple of preceding generations as well.
Pebbles is a sincere and open-hearted place, but it’s also a savvy one. If you follow the trail inside, don’t be surprised to be surprised by what you find.
Pebbles Toys & Gifts
528 Orange St, New Haven (map)
Mon-Fri 11am-7pm, Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 10am-5pm
(203) 535-1904
www.pebblestoys.com
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
