Tag Archives: online toys

On display

Being primarily an online store, it’s not often we see our products collected together and on display. Last Saturday proved something of an exception as we presented a stall along with Scottish Fire and Rescue Service at the Glenurquhart Highland Games at Drumnadrochit.

Although we exhibited only a very limited selection of our range which focused especially on our Fire and Rescue Toys, the day was nevertheless a very good reminder of quite how many products there are now in stock at Comaco Toys Direct. Below is a picture of our items ready to go the games with some extra items added!

Comaco Toys Direct

Comaco Toys Direct

Lego Storage Bricks

Need somewhere stylish and convenient to store your Lego pieces? Or just need somewhere to put toys your are permanently tripping over?  Check out these Lego Storage Bricks at Comaco Toys Direct.

They are shaped like bigger versions of the classic Lego brick, with the really big ones having 8 buttons. These measure 50 cm by 25 cm by 18 cm and weigh over 2kg each. They come in a variety of colours with some produced exclusively as a tie-in to this year’s hit Lego Movie.

Check them out now!

On the hunt for a new website provider

I went in a couple of business courses earlier this about improving websites and SEO which I found extremely useful but also a little disconcerting, in that they highlighted how many issues we still wanted to resolve. Our ecommerce website – www.comacodirect.com has now been running for 5 years. At the time our choice of provider seemed an appropriate one but 5 years is a long time… Also if I’m being brutally honest it has never quite delivered the results we had hoped for. The majority of our sales still come via other online sales platforms.

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The Comaco Toys website as of early August 2014

So what do want a revamped site to do? Well we need fast download speeds for a start, our current provider is steady but slower than average. We would like the facility to export our listings to other sales platforms, currently this is all done manually and it is a time consuming task! We would like the facility to be able to write meta tags for all pages on the site; we need a responsive design which will adjust for mobiles and ipads; and we want an integrated blog so that this one can be quietly retired.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to find a provider who will give us the maximum confidence that the site will have improved SEO and better sales will follow. A tall order? Possibly. Obviously the content of the site is ours, but this can only get us so far if the design is not up to spec.

And where do we find this miraculous provider? I don’t know yet. Magento has certainly been mentioned to me more than once and I am hoping to get some further advice through the Highlands and Islands Digital Health Check for businesses, although they haven’t replied to me yet. Clearly though it is something that needs to be up and running by October for the run up to Christmas.

Watch this space!

 

 

Fisher-Price Wooden Toys at Comaco Direct

The last 6 months or so has seen Comaco begin to stock all kinds of branded toys which we had not considered previously. Hello Kitty, Lego Storage, Nerf and MegaBloks have all been doing well. However we are especially pleased to have a selection of great wooden learning toys from Fisher-Price.

All these toys are suitable for ages from 12 months or 24 months plus. They range from simple, fun, ergonomically designed pull along animal figures, to a selection of educational games which develop problem solving, memory and fine motor skills.

The toys have fun animal themes in bold attractive primary colours. In addition they come boxed to ensure that the gift of one of these toys will be a treat to be remembered! Check out the full range of Fisher-Price Toys at Comaco Toys Direct.

Fisher Price Wooden Zebra on Wheels Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Wooden Zebra on Wheels

Fisher Price Wooden Lion on Wheels Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Wooden Lion on Wheels

Fisher Price Wooden Crocodile on Wheels Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Wooden Crocodile on Wheels

Fisher Price Animal Tower Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Animal Tower: Have fun stacking the 6 colourful wooden animals.

Fisher Price Balance Stacker: Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Balance Stacker: Build up the two monkeys correctly to make them balance.

Fisher Price Animal Memory Game Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Animal Memory Game: Memory matching game puzzle which contains 6 cards and 24 blocks.

 

Fisher Price Animal Dominoes Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Animal Dominoes: My first animal dominoes have 28 pieces.

Fisher Price Wooden Pyramid Puzzle Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Wooden Pyramid Puzzle: Fit the four blocks together correctly and complete the colourful animal pictures on each side of the pyramid.

Fisher Price Shape Sorter Comaco Toys Direct

Fisher Price Shape Sorter: Each Block has several different sides featuring letters, numbers, shapes and colours. A great learning toy for toddlers!

Transformers: Age of Extinction Toys

With the new Transformers film now showing at your local multiplex, we thought it was high time to share a couple of great new Transformers toys we have in stock at Comaco Toys. Both toys are exclusive tie in products with Transformers: Age of Extinction. Both are car ramp racing sets suitable for ages 3+.  The first features one racing car, a super ramp with two loops and a Grimlock Transformer. Check out the great pictures below of the Transformers Grimlock Set

Transformers Grimlock Box

Transformers Grimlock Box

Transformers Grimlock

Transformers Grimlock Car Racing Ramp

Transformers Grimlock Detail

Transformers Grimlock Detail

The second set is the fantastic Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge Car Track. This jumbo boxed set features a car ramp concealed inside a Transformers Optimus Prime truck. Two racing cars are included – Bumblebee and Lockdown – plus two identity discs.

Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge Truck Open

Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge

Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge (Truck Closed)

Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge (View 2)

Bumblebee and Lockdown discs

Bumblebee and Lockdown discs from Transformers Optimus Prime Challenge Set

See also our new Transformers post

Customer Review Sites that try to Blackmail You

At Comaco Toys we pride ourselves on having excellent customer service. Very occasionally problems do occur; an item may fail to arrive in the expected time scale, it may arrive damaged in transit, or it might even prove to be defective. Whatever care you take with product sourcing, shipping methods and packaging all of these issues will inevitably occur at the some time or another. The trick is how well you work to resolve them.

Positive customer reviews at Comaco Toys

Around 6 months ago one customer in Australia had an issue with a toy gun we sent not arriving within the expected time scale. Following some correspondence we resent the item assuming the original had got lost in transit. This too took longer than expected and the customer left us a review on a website specialising in negative customer testimonials and offering reviewees the option of contesting the review at a considerable price. The first we learnt of the review was someone emailing us saying they would they would minimise its effects if we paid them lots of money. This was sent within a few hours of the review being published and we have had many similar emails since.

It so happens that the customer’s toy gun actually turned up very shortly afterwards and the situation was resolved very amicably. The customer however found it was impossible to retract the review, but he did leave a follow up comment saying they had acted hastily and the problem was now solved. Unfortunately this comment appears not very prominently beneath the main reputation damaging text of the original review.

Over the last few months this review has been steadily rising up the Google search results for our website. It is now appearing at the bottom of page 1 for some searches which is obviously a significant concern. However from what I can find out the only way of doing anything about this is too get a court action for defamation against  the reviewer upheld and then submit this to google so that they will remove the review from their index.

Currently I am not willing to go to this much trouble and expense, especially as I don’t really blame the customer. It is the “review” website they used I have a significant issue with. They are not interested in genuinely representative reviews of companies and products; positive, negative and indifferent. They court only the negative and their business is extortion pure and simple. Each defamatory attack is SEO ‘d for maximum effectiveness and then the victim is repeatedly pestered with emails offering to suppress it only if they pay through the nose.

I have chosen not to mention the name of the review site in question for obvious reasons, but any readers sufficiently interested will be able to find it by googling us. The situation is annoying and frustrating. Has anyone one else out there had similar issues?

Fun Time Toys at Comaco

Just a short post this week to tell you about some great toys for younger children new in stock at Comaco.

First there is the Push along Shape Sorter Bus. This comes with a selection of brightly coloured shapes to sort through the correct holes in the bus.

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Also we have Spinning Popping Pals. Just press gently down on the button and watch the colourful balls spin and pop.

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Both toys are suitable for children as young as 12 months, and are guaranteed to keep them entertained for hours!

 

Comaco Toys: The Movie

We originally made a You Tube video almost 5 years ago when our own website was launched. Having noticed that this was still showing up on Google we decided it was time for an upgrade. So here it is!

The new vid definitely shows the range of products we currently have in 2014. Give it a watch and let us know what you think!

The video was created using Windows Movie Maker and it is basically made up of product images from our website plus captions and a few extra graphics. It was interesting to compare the content between the old and new videos. Although some generic categories had not changed – Toy Guns, Knights, Cowboys, Army etc – almost all the individual products had. Perhaps not surprising after 5 years! Completely new however were most of the branded products so far discussed in this blog – Nerf, Megabloks, Hello Kitty, Monster High and Papo Figures.

We are quite pleased with the background music was downloaded from a royalty free site. There are also a few bonus sound effects for those who watch it through right to the end!

Mar sin leibh an-dràsda

Papo Wild Animals at Comaco Toys

We’ve told you previously about our fantastic Papo Knights and Dinosaurs at Comaco Toys, However we also have some fabulously detailed Wild Animal Figures.

Individual animals include White Crocodiles, Tigers with cubs, Brown Bears, Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Kudus, Galapagos Tortoises, Buffalo, Reindeer and Kudu. And all that doesn’t even cover the Sea Life!

However we also have several Wild Animal Gift Boxes available, each with 3 or 4 figures. Check them out:

50054 Papo Big Cats Gift Box

80000 Papo Chimps Gift Box

80001  Papo Hippos Gift Box

80002  Papo Elephants & Rhino Box

60503  Papo Jungle Play Mat

We want your suggestions!

Firstly many thanks to everyone who took advantage of our Easter promo last weekend at Comaco Toys. If you were a first time customer we hope to see you again very soon.

This week’s blog however is slightly different. We are always looking at ways to improve the services we offer as an online toy shop and we would value your feedback or suggestions on our website and the range of products available.

Please check out our shop at www.comacotoysdirect.com, if you are not already familiar with it, and have a browse. Then let us know what you think! This could be with regard to product range, pricing, shipping options, payment processing, site layout… anything, so long as it is constructive!

You can do this by filling out the contact form below or by going direct to our website Contact Us page. We look forward to hearing from you!

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