Livingstone & Cavell Extraordinary Toys

This is an excellent specialty toy store. My daughter’s favourite toy came from here. It is a balancing eagle and it was under $ 10.00. You can not go wrong browsing in this place. You will be entertained and amused, regardless of whether you make a purchase. This is not the place to come if you are looking for mainstream toys (barbies etc.). But it is perfect if you are looking for something unique for a child, or a kid at heart. It is a smaller private business and not at all comparable to a huge place like toysrus — apples and oranges.

Wow, this is as good as it gets in London*, New York or Calgary!
Don R.
* OK, Hamleys is bigger but …

Cool store with lots of great finds. I buy most of my children’s gifts here. Wish they put a bit more effort into their website (like hours of operation).

Being a kid at heart I collect toys of sorts and often look for toys as gifts (for adults… not adult toys, that store is across the street). Livingston & Cavell has an awesome inventory of educational toys, reproduction vintange toys and just weird and obscure toys you wiill never find at the big box stores. These wonderful and creative folks also create the most intriguing window displays I have ever encountered and they add to my walk home quite frequently. My most recent favorite was for easter and I posted the photo on facebook. A friend in Winnipeg commented «what the heck, minature bunnies attack a carrot while a chorus line of rubber ducks look on» Who wouldn’t see the humour in this version of an Easter parade? This fills the hole in my heart that was left behind with Toad Hall Toys when I moved from Winnipeg. Nice to see there are other kids at heart who have kept these businesses going.

Breaking News: Santa’s workshop is in Calgary!
There’s a toy store out there so awesome, it actually make me wish I had kids just so I could shop here more. Fortunately, while I love Calgary’s incredible businesses like Livingstone & Cavell, I know my want to support them and have reason to buy really cool toys is a really terrible reason to have children. Lucky for me, I know enough child-​like adults that Livingstone & Cavell is still one of my first stops for the most unusual and fun small gifts and stocking stuffers.
From battery powered, cape wearing monkey slingshots that monkey-​scream when you shoot them across the room, to little moustache keychains that go «Well, Hello There.» (what else would a moustache say?), to fake vomit, plush microbes ranging from the common cold to the HIV virus, to Dill Pickle and Bacon mints. I’ve bought every immature-​adult-​friendly stocking stuffer/​gag gift I can find.
While it’s the hokey, fun things that I wind up buying, extraordinary toys is what they specialize in. Antique-​style, handmade toys of tin and carved wood. Hand-​crafted rocking horses and vintage tricycles — things so extraordinary I’d be scared to even let a child play with them if that wasn’t the very point of their existence.
This is the place to go when you want to find that one toy that will get handed down from generation to generation. I have no doubt that if you bought a child a gift from Livingston and Cavell, they would one day gift it to their own child.
They also have incredible items for the toy collectors out there. If there’s any store that would have a 14K Gold Slinky… this is it. *Spoiler Alert* at the time that I’m writing this review… they have one!

I adore this store. I could spend hours in it if it wasn’t odd for a grown man to do so. This is not your typical Toys r Us plastic shop, void of personality and wonder. You truly feel like a child when you walk in.
Everything from the selection of toys to how they’re organized and laid out fills you with a sense of adolescent wonderment. I’m just worried that in today’s world of Xbox and iPhone, a place like this could find itself ushered out.
Make sure you check out and support this business next time you’re in Kensington. This is a gem

You had me at «Magic Section».
Hollywood has it all wrong — in every typical tween/​teen/​college slapstick rom-​com there is inevitably that one awkward youth in a cape, with a figurine collection who is obsessed with magic. This character is depicted as the bottom rung of rom-​com society.
Nay. Nay I say.
Why? It’s very simple:
1. Figurines are an investment. That’s not childish obsession, that’s being ahead of the game and planning for the future before your peers even understand the term RRSP.
2. Superheroes wear capes. Nuff said.
3. Giving flowers is a dying art. If you can make those flowers appear as if out of nowhere? You’re basically a dating ninja.
So you, yes YOU, should visit Livingstone and Cavell and cool-​ify yourself.
From a blissfully large section of gag gifts (you are NEVER too old for a whoopee cushion), to funky custom chess boards & amusing bobble heads to stick on your dashboard — this place is chock full of things you don’t need but desperately want. Not to mention that four shelf wonderland that is the magic section, tucked in the back corner.
If you’re shopping for someone other then your completely cool and mature adult self, it also has stuff for kids! Surprise! From badass replicas to classic throw back wooden toys, so you too can utter the phrase — «When I was your age…» — this place is a one stop shop for all the «awesome» aunts/​uncles of the world.
It’s fun. Go visit.

Livingstone & Cavell Extraordinary Toys… Well, the name says it all; this store is extraordinary! It’s the kind of place that stirs child like wonder in you before you even pass through the door.
I parked outside to go to the coffee shop next door, but the front window and beautiful antique sign just called to me to go in and, well, play! And play I did. I saw toys from my childhood that I had completely forgotten about. Found new amazing toys as well. But perhaps the most extraordinary are the many, many hand carved wooden toys and the vintage tin ones as well. I can’t tell you how absolutely astonishing this store is — it is a place of sheer joy, filled with happiness that is sure to spread to whomever is lucky enough to receive a gift from you when you shop here.
So what are you still reading this for, hurry up, and go see for yourself!

A delight for children of all ages. Some cool retro toys as well.

I was pleased to make this toy-​rific store a part of my Unilocal Shops Local Pledge for Christmas. I was specifically after North-​American made, recycled plastics, ecco-​friendly, and/​or wooden toys depending on the selection for 12months+ toys. I was happy to find quite a selection. Not only this, but the toy I specifically went in for — a classic wooden Pound-​A-​Peg — was there! And for cheaper than I see it online at Indigo/​Chapters. Supporting local, getting quality toys at great prices — how can you go wrong! I now will be a loyal customer for those kidlins in my life. Thanks for being awesome Livingstone & Cavell’s!

The name of this store says it all: extraordinary.
Easily one of my most favourite stores in all of Calgary. It is the first store I go to whenever I need to buy a gift for a kid or a friend that acts like one.
I’ve never taken a kid to this store, but I can only imagine how their eyes would light up at the sheer collection of toys. And we aren’t talking Toy’s R Us kinda toys. These are quality toys that would invoke anyone’s imagination. They have everything from your childhood and more. You’ll laugh as you pick up toys that you’ve completely forgotten about and marvel at the ones you can’t figure out.
They also have a fantastic collection of wooden toys that always make for a wonderful and last present.
On my most recent visit to Livingstone & Cavell Extraordinary Toys, I remarked to my friend how every first date should take place in store. You can really tell what kind of person you are with by the kind of toy they pick up and play with. Do they play with the puppets or push the farting machine button? These are important things you should know before embarking on date #2.
This is a first class business that provide first class fun!

Livingstone and Cavell is a bustling toy store in Kensington with more newly minted old-​school toys than you could possibly fit into the little red Radio Flyer wagon, which they also conveniently stock. Their new/​old toy selection includes tin and clockwork toys, Marklin trains, collector dolls, Wilesco steam engines, toy soldiers, and old timey novelties (Whoopie cushions and the like). They also carry a wide array of games and educational toys sure to please all the little tykes on your shopping list.
For young and old alike, this charming toy store is proof positive that indeed everything old is new again!

This is an amazing store that even Willy Wonka would frequent simply because it has some of the most unique and amazing store selections I have seen in the city, upgraded slinky and Lego sets, drum machines for the three year old, modern easy back ovens and toys that would make me regress in a heartbeat.
The most interesting part of their selection for me is the huge reproduced antique wide up toys that they have. The toy companies have reproduced antique toys using of course a thinner tin material than original 20s wind ups but with the same beautiful illustrated colourful graphics on the toys themselves and the boxes; so simply putting these toy boxes on any shelf would be a very vintage decorative item.
The staffs here looks very joyful and fun and I saw children having a very hard time leaving the store. This is a definite visit when shopping for that hard to shop child.

If I was a kid, I’d roll around in shock on the floor of Livingstone and Cavell. This place has everything a kid would ever want and just being there makes you feel like a kid again. The gags are cool and I even picked up a few to humour myself at someone else’s expense. It’s a juvenile place for sure, the first thing we saw when we entered was your old fashioned «fart machine».
But they do have some classier items like the iconic toy soldiers, puppets and a theatre, large plush animals, train sets and a very authentic looking magic set. They also have newer stuff the kids are after like Jesus and Marie Antoinette action figures (sold separately) and bubblegum cigarettes (which I thought were illegal these days, but what the hell? Let the kids be just like Mommy and Daddy).
This place has way too many cool things to mention here. We were definitely satisfied with the toy shopping experience here. Check it out sometime…