Before term starts

The Spider-Man lunchbox has four compartments, which is either a triumph of engineering or an admission that no child can be trusted to keep the crackers away from the sandwich. It is also dishwasher-safe, which matters more than anyone tells you in September and stops mattering entirely by December. Pair it with a Rugzak and the morning routine is at least logistically solved, even if nothing else about it is.

Elsewhere the NOMAD rain trousers carry a waterproof rating specific enough to suggest someone tested them properly, in weather nobody enjoys standing in. And the Skullcandy earbuds mix noise cancelling with a battery life long enough to survive a commute, a school run, and whatever happens after both.

Not everything here is about term time. The RC car that flips into a robot and the KlikAanKlikUit starter set belong to a different kind of list, the one where the house itself gets slightly smarter or slightly louder, depending on who's holding the remote.