Our timeless classics: toys that stay
There are toys that do something really quiet: they stay. They become familiar objects in homes, they are taken on journeys, passed between siblings, rediscovered years later, and somehow continue to feel completely relevant.
We often talk about timelessness as if it were only a matter of design: something beautiful enough, simple enough or well-made enough to resist the passing of trends. But when we think about a timeless toy, we think about something slightly different. A timeless toy is one that can enter different childhoods and become something different in each of them. It doesn’t depend on a specific character, a predetermined story or a single way of using it. It can adapt to the child rather than asking the child to adapt to it. Perhaps that is why the simplest objects can sometimes become the most enduring ones. A wooden piece doesn’t tell them what it is supposed to be, so their imagination gets to decide. Today it can be a person; tomorrow, a tree; the next day, a tiny house, a treasure, an animal or something that doesn’t even have a name. The material remains the same, but the experience changes completely. And when a toy can keep changing without needing to change itself, perhaps that is when it becomes timeless.
At Grapat, we love creating toys that are made to stay with you — and, of course, with us — for many, many years. Toys that can grow alongside childhood, be discovered again and again, and find new meanings as time goes by. But today, we wanted to take a little trip down memory lane and bring back four sets that have been part of our journey for quite some time. Four pieces that have become true Grapat classics, each with its own story and a special place in our collection. We thought it would be lovely to revisit them, remember where they came from and celebrate why, after all these years, they still feel just as relevant.
So, here are four of our timeless favourites…
After all these years it continues to be one of our favourites. It’s a small set with a surprisingly big life: Six Nins, six Mates and six coins, arranged in the colours of the rainbow, accompanied by a small textile bag made with GOT-certified fabric. The Mates can become houses or containers, the coins can become food or treasures, and the Nins can become whoever is needed in the story. What makes this material special is not the number of things it can do, but the fact that the child gets to decide what those things are.
Bowls & Balls was also created in 2015, and it is especially wonderful for discovering basic concepts through hands-on play: filling and emptying, covering and uncovering, hiding and finding, matching colours and exploring quantities. And, of course, the bowls rarely remain bowls for long. They can become nests, beds, boats, hats or little homes. A classic example of how everyday actions can turn into meaningful discoveries. We love that these pieces can meet a child exactly where they are, offering something different at different moments of childhood without ever needing to be redesigned.
A year later, in 2016, Nins Carla joined the family, bringing twelve Nins, 72 rings and 36 coins in the colours of the rainbow. It is a material that can invite children into classification, grouping, matching and other forms of logical-mathematical thinking, but reducing it to those possibilities would be missing much of what makes it interesting. The rings can be threaded, piled up, counted or transformed into elements of a game; the coins can be sorted, collected, exchanged or scattered; and the Nins can become characters with their own personalities, families and stories. What begins as a sensory exploration of colour, shape and movement can gradually become a more complex game of relationships, symbols and storytelling. A child may first discover how many rings fit around a Nin and, months or years later, use those same rings to build a home for an entire community. The objects haven’t changed. The child has, and the possibilities have grown with them. That adaptability is part of what allows a material to remain relevant over time.
And then there are Sticks, created in 2018, perhaps one of the most beautifully ambiguous materials in our collection. Eighteen wooden pieces in six colours, arranged in three tonal ranges, with no obvious character or function to tell the child what they are. One day they might form a forest; the next, a small town; another day, they might simply be arranged by colour and then left behind for a completely different game to emerge. When we don’t tell children what something is, they have the opportunity to decide for themselves. The less defined the object, the more space there can be for the imagination to define it.
Built to last, made to evolve
Perhaps this is what connects these four materials, despite their differences. They are not timeless because they have remained untouched by time; they are timeless because they have been able to travel through time without losing their possibilities. A toy created in 2015 can still make sense to a child born years later because it doesn’t belong to a particular trend, a particular screen, a particular story or a particular moment. It belongs to the child who is playing with it. And maybe this is also why we don’t think of these toys as finished products. They are more like starting points. They give children a handful of elements and allow them to decide what happens next.
A little piece of Grapat history
When we look back at the years since these toys were created, we don’t just see products that have remained in a catalogue. We see thousands of hands that have held them, pockets that have carried them, shelves where they have lived, floors where they have been scattered and worlds that have been built around them. We see siblings playing together, children discovering them for the first time and adults recognising a familiar piece from their own childhood memories. That, for us, is what makes a classic. Not simply being old, popular or recognisable, but having the ability to become part of people’s lives in a way that feels personal. A timeless toy doesn’t tell the same story again and again; it gives every child the possibility of writing a completely different one.
And perhaps that is why, after all these years, we still feel a little something when we see a group of Nins standing together, a pile of rings waiting to be threaded, a bowl hiding a colourful ball underneath it, or a few Sticks becoming a forest in the middle of a living-room floor. They are small and apparently simple wooden pieces. We know exactly how they were made, where they came from and how long they have been part of Grapat. But we will never know what they will become next. And maybe that is the most beautiful thing about a classic: it stays, while everything around it keeps changing.
2026
