Grasshopper Toys Ltd

General information

Grasshopper Toys Ltd was launched by Wendy Hamilton on March 1st 2010 after many happy months of background work researching and testing toys; a grueling job, which her sons Robbie and Jamie were drafted in to help with, these boys have a very tough childhood!

The business has grown rapidly over the past four years into a thriving online retail presence and a growing wholesale business. Our rapid and successful growth meant that we needed bigger premises, so in February 2012 we moved into our current address at 112 West Princes Street, Helensburgh, which just so happened to have the cutest olde worlde shop premises at the front of the much needed warehouses. We couldn't resist and opened our beautiful toy shop on August 27th 2012.

The Grasshopper Toys Toy Shop, which is one of the biggest independent toy shops in Scotland, quickly won our hearts and the hearts of our loyal customers, who we loved meeting, young and old (yes Dads, we know the Lego Technic kits are really for you!).

We experienced a minor blip on our charts on August 31st 2013 when our business was hit by a random, thoughtless, arson attack which devastated our shop and both warehouses. Sunday morning of September 1st was a tough, tough morning for the Grasshopper Toys Team as we began to take in the sheer scale of the damage; it was total. However, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, we pulled it together and within three days we were sending out our first online orders again. We're pretty proud of that!

As a scientist, my passion is science toys and I was fully aware of an amazing company out there called Curious Minds, which specialises in scientific toys and gifts. Curious Minds was founded by Lucy and Alan Richmond, who met whilst working on the Hubble Telescope (can you imagine!) and this was a company I coveted! So you can imagine my absolute amazement and delight when the opportunity arose for me to acquire Curious Minds from Lucy and Alan in May 2013. Sheer happiness. Curious Minds is now our specialist science shop, leaving Grasshopper Toys Ltd to focus more on the non science, Let's Pretend style play.

Today, as I write (February 2014), we are just on the cusp of re-opening our bricks and mortar toy shop at 112 West Princes Street, Helensburgh. It's been a longer haul than we would have liked, but I have learnt the art of patience (possibly) and whilst the shop has been out of action we have been very busy in the background working hard on all kinds of exciting new ideas and we are so very excited to have a new refurbished, better than ever toy shop to offer our loyal customers. We cannot wait!

We look forward to meeting you by email, phone or in person at our shop, either way please get in touch, we love to hear from our customers.