If the toys available to a child determine his or her interests, my kids will be Laura fans from the get-go. I’m always on a mission, it seems, to figure out how to create Little House related toys.
I’ve got a huge set of Lincoln logs that can be used to recreate Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie… complete with a train set and a tube of grasshoppers so Pa can get his job working on the railroad after the grasshoppers eat up all the crops and the story can continue on into De Smet. (Okay, just kidding about the tube of bugs. But hey, it might not be a bad idea!)
Little girls like dollhouses, right? So I’ve got one of those — a replica of the Wonderful House on Plum Creek (see, they really can act out ALL the stories!), with little Laura and Mary dolls to go with it. Had to buy modern dolls, braid the hair, and make their clothes myself, but it’ll do. What’s that? Laura and Mary didn’t wear pink and purple shoes? Pshaw, it will never be noticed from a trotting horse!
And dolls? Well, American Girl dolls are all the rage, of course, so I had to snatch up my very own Kirsten doll before she went extinct. After all, she’s the closest thing to Laura we’re gonna get.
And then there’s the old-fashioned toys that have been collected from various museum giftshops. It’s funny, as simple a concept as a Jacob’s ladder is, and yet my eight-year-old niece will play with it for hours and not get bored.
And we mustn’t forget the Radio Flyer wagon. With its canvas top to convert it into a prairie schooner, of course.
Yes, my kids are going to be set. But even I draw the line at this Little House converted toy I saw today:
Lego minifigure
I hope you all got as good a laugh out of that as I did. 
(In all honesty, if it actually LOOKED a little more like Manly, I’d be snapping it right up and would next be in search of a Laura. After all, then we could create Rocky Ridge out of Legos and finish the stories up right! Hmm, this could be my next quest after all!)
How about you? Any regular toys you’ve converted into a Laura-ish kind of toy? I’m always on the lookout for new ideas.
P.S. Okay, so I didn’t notice at first that there are actually six Little House minifigures in that set!! I’m impressed with Pa, though we’d need to paint on a beard! And Laura’s not too shabby!