Back when I was a child, we don’t have fancy toys like kids today do. Instead, we entertained ourselves with figurines in plastic (green little soldier set, anyone?), wooden building blocks, climbing into all sorts of nooks and corners (we had to, in order to not be caught during hide and seek), and much to my neighbour’s dismay, her pots of flowers and shrubs would ended up as ingredients for masak-masak.

Each time I pass by Jouets Bass that sits between rue de l’Abbé-de-l’Épée and rue St Jacques, I get a little nostalgic. There are so many colourful traditional toys on display, making it oh so tempting to walk in, buy a few items and try to recapture the simple childhood that I had. Those were happy days.