Felt Food Sandwich Set

Sandwich Success Into Your Play Kitchen

• What: Melissa & Doug Felt Food Sandwich Play Food Set
• When: 18 months and up
• Why: Quiet, affordable, durable
• Where: Amazon

My kids got this Felt Food Sandwich Set as a gift many moons ago. It comes with so many pieces I’ve no idea if we still have them all, much less corralled in their play kitchen. But the biggest reason to love it? The silence.

Unlike their cookie making set, which they also adore, felt food makes no noise. They can drop it on the floor or in the kitchen sink with nary a sound. In a small household with three kids close in age, anything I can do to reduce the noise level makes a tremendous difference.

The sandwich set includes a pita pocket, subway sandwich bread, two slices of white bread, and two slices of brown bread, so no matter how you prefer your sandwich delivery, they’ve got your sandwich covered. It also has an egg, slices of bacon, slices of cucumber, pickle slices, ketchup, mayo, mustard, jelly, peanut butter, onions, tomatoes, Swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, salami and some unidentified pink deli meat.

Each felt piece magically sticks to the other pieces without the need for Velcro or any other device. That means that while it can do double duty as a cleaning cloth if your kids also decide to use the pieces as skates on wooden floors, they will still stick together. They do collect dust bunnies and fuzz regularly, but in a household without a regular housekeeper, I find that hard to complain about.

I liked the cardboard tray the set came packed inside so much I kept that, too. I use it to store all the felt pieces in my kids’ kitchen, so it pulls out like a drawer for access. I stuck the included paper with a list of all the parts inside with some packing tape. My kids can carry the cardboard box like a tray to collect all the pieces they used in their picnics and camping and for pretend school lunches when clean up time rolls around.

Despite years of ownership and lots of munches both pretend and otherwise, these pieces remain in great shape. Not a single one has torn despite multiple trips riding around and around on the brushes of the robotic vacuum. If needed, you can wipe the pieces clean with a damp cloth. But full disclosure: in more than four or five years of ownership, I’ve never done more than pick off a few pieces of fluff.

The manufacturer doesn’t recommend this set for kids under 36 months, but with no small pieces and none that even appear they could break off to become small pieces, I’ve no idea why. Maybe some toddlers might munch on the cardboard box or other packaging?

Don’t get me wrong. We still have all our plastic and wooden play food sets. But when they drop a pot on the floor, in the seconds before impact, I always hope it’s filled with felt food.