Quality products from Melissa & Doug have my appreciation and that of others, even in a less-than-booming economy. The educational toys are fun and designed to last, the puppets are wonderful, and the imaginary play items keep my daughter occupied for hours.

Melissa and Doug have hundreds of toys, but most of their toys can be put into easy-to-remember categories. To help you navigate their vast toy empire, here is a breakdown of my favorite toy categories from Melissa and Doug:

Arts & crafts: While a necessity for any household, arts and craft items can be annoyingly difficult and messy. With the M&D items I have found the instructions on the craft items easily understandable and the options include stamps, beads, and painting. My favorite: an art easel that adjusts as my kid grows (plus, it keeps her from coloring on the dining room table).

Classic toys: These are wooden toys such as blocks, or that hammer and peg workbench you had as a kid, as well as lacing items (great for quiet car rides). The items withstand the poundings of a three year old easily and still manage to look good after a beating.

Puzzles: I LOVE these puzzles. Once we moved beyond their wooden puzzles I was equally impressed with the floor puzzles, both the designs offered as well as the quality. The variety in the number of puzzle pieces is also a great thing since the increased challenge keeps the kids occupied.

Puppets: The variety offered from hand puppets to ...

Fact: Yo-yos are awesome.

One of the first toys a kid used to get was a yo-yo. Everyone has played with a yo-yo, correct? Two pieces of wood, plastic, or metal connected by an axle and suspended with string made for a habit-forming toy if ever there was one.

Did you ever find yourself just yo-yoing for the heck of it every now and then? I know I’d just sit in my room playing with a yo-yo and never even doing any spectacular tricks. Just yo-ing. Up and down, up and down… Excuse me, I’ll be right back.

Okay, I had to get that out of my system. I’m actually sad while I write this as I’ve lost my favorite yo-yo. It was a yellow Duncan yo-yo with a spiral design and it was flawless. Nothing allowed me to perform a Sleeper like that yellow Duncan yo-yo. But let’s hear some history of the yo-yo, not just my memories boiling over.

From Turtle Shells to Your Grandpa’s Yo-yo

The yo-yo first appeared somewhere around 500 BC. Yeah, this is a toy with staying power. Anyway, the actual word “yo-yo” comes from (well Webster’s has a hunch it comes from), the Philippine Ilokano word “yoyo,” which meant “come-come” or “return.”

Fact: Yo-yos are cooler than butterflies.

In 1928 a Filipino American named Pedro Flores opened the first yo-yo company named (you ready for this?), the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company. Catchy. Along comes Donald Duncan between 1929 and 1932 to buy the company and name of the product from Flores, spending a fortune during the Depression era at $250,000.

Sadly, the company went under and no one ever heard of the yo-yo again.

Duncan Reigns Supreme

Psych! Duncan is synonymous with the word yo-yo for a reason: Because the best yo-yos were made by Duncan’s toy company and arguably still are. Just head down to the official website and take a look at some of the models they’ve got available.

I’m sure you experienced at some point a group of “professional” yo-yoers coming to your elementary school at some point. I know it happened to me and my wife and pretty much everyone I know. Some radical (we used to use the word “radical” all the time), dudes showed up and demonstrated tricks with their yo-yos that by all logic were entirely impossible. The very next day everyone at school had a yo-yo and a few tricks to show off, such as “Walk the Dog,” “The Four-Leaf Clover,&#...