Parents and other family members often wonder about the best toys to give. Now there is a website that offers some valuable advice. It was set up by teachers and is called TRUCE--an acronym for Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Environment. The goal is to help adults make informed choices about toys--both inclusion (that is, by highlighting the ones that are most productive to play and thinking) and exclusion (that is, by eliminating those that encourage violence and overstimulation).
For more information, you can go to http://www.truceteachers.org/toyguides/T_Guide_web_07.pdf