Looking to buy a toy box for your child? This blog post is the first in a four part series highlighting the most important safety features to look for when you’re shopping.

Most toy box safety features are aimed at two potential accidents:

• the lid dropping on little fingers
• a toddler crawling inside the box and then not being able to get back out

Our first tip is primarily focused on the first case.

U.S. and international safety regulations mandate that a toy box lid will NOT close unless purposely forced to do so. In other words, the lid needs to stay in place at any point in its open-to-shut arc.

Take a look at this video and you will see how consistently our toy lid stays put, at any angle. Although you might imagine that the hinge is the key, we accomplish this crucial safety feature through a state-of-the-art lid support.

At Little Colorado, we use the best lid support in the industry for our toddler furniture. Like all our products, it is made in the USA. Because the weight of each toy box model is slightly different, we use three different spring tensions. The lid support itself remains the same, but we choose one of these three different springs based on their differing strengths.

As you can imagine, inferior lid supports can cause real problems. Be especially concerned with any lid support that is not equipped with a spring but uses nitrogen instead. You may find a warning label indicating that this chemical has been used in manufacturing the product.