I have to admit, I love the concept behind Amazon’s new Frustration Free Packaging. When you’re buying online you certainly don’t need the box that lets you look through plastic to see what’s inside. And I detest trying to open most toys these days.

I just hope they get a better selection in there soon.

Only a very few toys and electronics are available so far in plain boxes. Some of course use less plastic than others, but all the toys involved so far do appear to be plastic themselves. And of course some will save more packaging than others.

They do hope to get more toys into this kind of packaging. I hope so too. It takes some effort to get manufacturers to go along with this, but Amazon certainly has the clout.

I hope to see wooden toys and such in better packaging too. I’ve seen that sometimes, although it wasn’t marketed as such. When I bought my kids a wooden train set last year, the tracks came in plain brown boxes. It was really nice, even if it took a moment for the kids to get excited.

Another great search I’ve found on Amazon is to search under “made in USA“. There are a lot of wooden and organic toys listed there. Some plastic too, but mostly not, at least in the pages I checked.

With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, now is a great time to start thinking about what kinds of toys you’re going to pick for your kids. If you can consider both their wants and the environment, why not? It might be the slight improvement from Frustration Free Packaging, or a more deliberate selection of environmentally friendly, creative toys, but you have a lot of options.