Attention fans of Mastermind! Our Holiday Gift Guide for 2009 is ALMOST here! Well, it actually IS here, and by "here" I mean "here in our warehouse"!!! We're in the process of sending all of the guides out to Canada Post, The Globe and Mail newspaper here in Toronto, and also some to our store locations in the GTA. It is always a relief when the guides start rolling into our warehouse; we have a team here that works on the guide tirelessly from the early spring until its launch in early November. We lock ourselves in a room filled with toys for months until we have chosen the absolute cream of the crop selection that we present in the guide as our best gift selections. OK, not entirely true, but close... we carry over 10,000 toys and books at Mastermind and we only feature less than 400 in our gift guide! Choosing the features is like choosing from among your children. OK, again, not entirely true, but we do get pretty emotionally attached to the toys. And THEN we have to be nervous until we have the finished product in our hands (what if there's an accident and the guides are lost? What if aliens commandeer the delivery truck? What if a dinosaur attacks the warehouse? Actually, we really don't have a dinosaur contingency plan and we should get on that.) Like I said, it's a relief when they show up.

On top of the printed copies, we are also putting the finishing touches on our DIGITAL version of the Mastermind Toys Gift Guide as well... this is actually really cool, it is exactly the same as the printed version, except that it is on your computer screen! You can flip the pages and browse the guide like normal, but there are some extra features as well; for example, you can zoom in to read the text better. You can also search the guide as well; if you were looking for wood toys, for example, you can search "wood" and anytime that text appears in the guide you'll be able to jump right to the spot! On top of that, each product image links through to our website, so you can shop right away (and find out even more about the product!), and we add video links to any product for which we have made a Mastermind Toys video (if you aren't familiar with our program, check out our YouTube page here!)

SO, if you are interested in our guide be sure to check back on our website next week (the week of November 2 2009) since we'll be posting a link to the digital guide!

-- Toy Buyin' Ryan