Caroline Holden: Winner of the My Toy Wagon Challenge | Drewart Toys
At My Toy Wagon, we believe the best children's toys inspire little ones to tell stories, develop new ways of thinking, and explore emotions and connections. That said, in our first Instagram Challenge, we spotlighted Drewart Toys, a Polish brand that has been making heirloom wooden toys for over 40 years.
We want to thank all the participants of our challenge. We appreciated your support, enthusiasm, and creativity. We have spotlighted some entries on our shop's page (scroll to the bottom for our Instagram highlights). This was a tough competition.
That said, we are excited to announce Caroline Holden as the winner of our My Toy Wagon Challenge | Drewart Toys and a $250 e-gift card to our web-shop. We are certain you will love her entry and the story behind it as much as we did!
#mytoywagon #storytellingwithwoodentoys
Inspired by her son's imaginary adventures with his sword and dragons, Caroline spent a whopping 28 hours to produce a stop motion video (her first ever!) telling the story of the Dragons Attack, which she submitted as an entry to our challenge. The stop motion video was intended to be a birthday surprise for her son, who asked for a secondhand Drewart fortress he saw on consignment. When his grandparents got him the fortress and several new figures, Caroline spent a weekend making the video to surprise her son. She even solicited her son's help by having him listen to hundreds of musical samples with her for the best background music to the video. Of course, he didn't know what she was up to...
When asked, Caroline described the video as follows: "[My son] loves pretending to fight alongside or against dragons. When he saw the Holztiger boy in an orange shirt at the store, he immediately said, 'That’s me!' So the boy squire-turned-knight in my story is my son. Although he’s just a boy and not yet a knight, he bravely enters the battle by rappelling down the castle walls, coming to aid the knight and farmer who have lost their weapons to the dragons’ fire. And he also aided the riding knight in slaying the final and largest dragon. After proving his bravery and skill at battle, the king dubs the boy a knight (and kindly replaces the farmer’s horse who fell victim to the dragons). While watching the video for the first time, my son exclaimed, 'That’s me!' with such excitement and anticipation when he saw the orange shirted boy scaling down the fortress walls. And before the king entered the scene, my son triumphantly shouted, 'I killed TWO dragons!' He was absolutely delighted."
In addition to the wonderful creative elements featured in Caroline's video, we loved the fact that the process of making this video inspired creative play among mom and son, increasing opportunities for connection, and a renewed interest in playing with wooden toys together.
Twenty-eight hours and hundreds of pictures later, she came up with our winning entry:
The Dragons Attack: A Stop Motion Video by Caroline Holden