For local-first shoppers, let’s take a look at 2025’s best wooden toy brands — Made in New York State, for New Yorkers by New Yorkers.
But first a quick fact! New York’s state tree is the sugar maple (acer saccharum). Also — Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin are other states which have elected the sugar maple as their official state tree.
The global toy company named Fisher-Price is not well known for wooden toys, but Fisher-Price was founded in East Aurora, NY with a collection of 16 wooden toys. Just a year later in 1931, Fisher-Price showcased their wooden toys to the American International Toy Fair, which still takes place today.
Today, the Fisher-Price Montessori Collection rekindles the brand’s wooden toy legacy with a brand new line of educational stackers and puzzles.
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New York’s Top 5 Wooden Toy Companies
- (01) Community Playthings – Chester, NY
- (02) Kubiya Games – Brooklyn, NY
- (03) The Square Nail – Sherburne, NY
- (04) Brooklyn Neutral – Brooklyn, NY
- (05) Bloom Owl – Norwich, NY
(01) Community Playthings
Beautiful, durable, and simple — Community Playthings designs an extensive selection of solid wooden furniture for classrooms and play pieces for families with growing kids. Respected and adored by educational experts and parents alike — Community Playthings creates spaces where children can explore, discover, and learn.
Their classroom collection includes child-sized tables, seating, shelving, cubbies, and storage designed to foster well-organized and comfortable learning environments. Their play collection features wooden blocks, play kitchens, housekeeping sets, and ride-on rocking toys to encourage children’s independence through proactive play.
Visit Community Playthings official website.
(02) Kubiya Games
Kubiya Games is one of America’s best brands for contemporary and vintage-looking 3D wooden puzzles, brain teasers, and family games — that’s pure-wood geometric shapes, patterned boxes with metal trinkets, and escape room pieces that look pretty steampunk.
Intricately designed and curiously puzzling in Brooklyn, NY not only for adults — they also produce a line of Montessori-inspired sorting fostering problem-solving skills before leveling up to more challenging Kubiya Games.
Visit the Kubiya Games official website.
(03) The Square Nail
For premium quality hardwood barn toys for kids made in New York USA, this Sherburne, NY maker read the American novel Animal Farm at least twice over then got to work. (That’s in good humor.)
The Square Nail wooden farm toys are made of birch board. The bard doors and rooves open up for easy-access inside the structure with which to adjust the position of crafted farm figurines included with each set — housed down yonder inside the barn — a whittled pinnacle of American farm play.
(04) Brooklyn Neutral
Placing aesthetics at the forefront of their all-original toy collection, Brooklyn Neutral incorporates wood, silicone, and other child-safe materials to craft toys both beautiful and functional.
Top sellers include a wood-framed alphabet learning board — with magnetic silicone letters for extra ergonomics on a white-erase board you can write on — and a travel-friendly, coffee-table ready wooden “four in a row game” resembling Connect Four without plastic parts and harsh contrasting colors.
See Brooklyn Neutral on Amazon.
Visit the Brooklyn Neutral official website.
(05) Bloom Owl
Rectangular wooden name puzzles and cubic wooden piggy banks are Bloom Owl’s bread and butter, but over the years they’ve added all sorts of beautiful, simple, and educational wooden toys for the youngsters — most items personalizable with the letters of your name.
With nearly 10 years in the making, owned and operated by a professional mom in Norwich, NY with a keen eye for eclectic design, Bloom Owl has fulfilled orders for personalized items to thousands of customers across the country.
(06) My First Steps
The aptly titled My First Steps brand makes doll strollers and baby walkers to encourage baby’s first steps. Primary colors at this pretty boutique include baby blue carriages and pretty pink push buggies.
A crafty momma from Long Island, NY left her fashion industry corporate job to raise a family and start a business — building and personalizing each piece by hand.
(07) Little Miss Workbench
Founded by an education expert in New York, Little Miss Workbench invites children to be curious, think deeply, work together, and solve problems — through modern minimal wooden toymaking workshops in Bellport, NY.
In 2025, they no longer give you wooden camera toys at purchase price, and instead teach you how to build your own wooden camera toys at service price.
Visit the Little Miss Workbench official website.
(08) Wordy Toys
Founded by an NYC university professor, second-generation Haitian immigrant, and father — Wordy Toys makes hands-on bilingual wooden toys to boost your little one’s language immersion through the power of play.
A New York State Toy Making Time Capsule
- Out On A Limb — Until some time before 2025, the Out On A Limb brand specialized in wooden military vehicle toys to (pretend) strike the enemy by land, sea, and air. War has never been my cup of tea — these Barneville, NY toys were spectacular — and I have deep respect for American veterans. I’ve noticed a trend where veterans make great toys, and with knowledge of Out On A Limbs closure, we hope others can pick up to reestablish such a flag.
- Noli Noli — Until some time before 2025, Noli Noli was a designer of wooden toys made to order by one artist, father, and husband in Long Island City, NY. Using locally-sourced and recycled wood — Noli Noli blurred the lines between art and toy.
- Cash Stash Banks — Until prior to 2025, Cash Stash Banks (previously known as Last Piece Of The Puzzle) crafted personalized wooden piggy banks and name puzzles. They offered all sorts of customization for your wooden creation — popular shaped banks to start and name-engraving to finish — to teach financial responsibility to withstand the test of time.
- Wild Apples (Arks & Animals) — Until late 2024, Wild Apples (a.k.a. Arks & Animals) was an Ithaca, NY wooden toy brand of biblical proportions. From folksy Christian nativity sets and Noah’s ark sets to common puzzles and push toys with spherical wooden wheels. Wild Apple’s traditional story of a trade passed down through generations — now, a historic relic of Americana to remember.
