The Little Toy Store That Could

June 1, 2005

Twenty-five years ago, Andrew and Kathleen Bultman opened their first Rocking Horse Toy Company store in Harbor Springs. Located across from The Pier restaurant on Bay Street, the fledgling toy store soon moved on up to Harbor Springs’ Main Street, and just a couple of years later, the Bultmans opened another location in downtown Petoskey. A business risk that they undertook for the fun of it became a lucrative venture that has paid off for the Bultmans in many ways.
Andrew and Kathleen were both teachers in the Grand Rapids area when they decided that a rocking horse would be a must-have for their newborn child. Skilled woodworker Andrew decided to make one himself - and it wasn’t long before friends and family came calling for their own versions of Andrew’s equine toy.
The rocking horses got so popular that the Bultmans opened a tiny store in Glen Arbor, with a workshop for Andrew right in the store, and spent their summer selling the talented teacher’s wooden toys and kites. When the summer was over, they headed back to Grand Rapids to resume teaching - but a teacher’s strike made them reassess their priorities.
“When the strike was finally settled, there was a new option being offered, called ‘career exploration leave,’ Kathleen Bultman explain. “We moved up to Harbor Springs, opened the toy store, and then just... well, kind of kept taking ‘career exploration leaves’ until we decided we really didn’t want to go back to teaching,” she laughs. “We were having so much fun, and as we started to add stores, it became obvious that we couldn’t do it all.”

FAVORITE FIXTURE
Classified as a “specialty toy store,” Rocking Horse Toy Company has become a favorite fixture in downtown Petoskey, especially with the fairly recent demise of Games Imported, another toy store that was only a block or so over, and that was more focused on games.
“Being in a small town, we all try to work together,” Bultman muses, “so when Games Imported ended up leaving, we then felt more free to add more games, to add some things we didn’t have before as we were trying to be considerate of them.” And there are certainly games a-plenty at Rocking Horse. Chess, several kinds of Rummy, Darts, pretty much every card game you could ever think of, and, of course, many of the newer board games. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Rocking Horse is the kind of toy store that both kids and adults can spend plenty of time in. For the kids, there are Brio and Thomas wooden trains, Legos, a large portion of the popular Playmobil line (“We’re just getting our 2005 things in from Playmobil, they’re really great,” Bultman says), Madame Alexander dolls, Corolle dolls (“They have such sweet faces,” Bultman enthuses), science experiment kits, puppets and puppet theaters, stickers, purses and plastic jewelry, play food sets, jack-in-the-boxes, stuffed animals, and toy cars and trucks.
There are lots of craft kits for the more creative kids - fabric looms, beads, rock tumblers, and more. And there are plenty of child-sized dress-up costumes for the performance-inclined, from plastic armor to cowboy outfits, viking hats to pirate gear. It would be nearly impossible for any kid to be bored with all of this to choose from.

CASTLE BUCKETS
For the older set, right on up to adult, there’s plenty to stave off boredom, too. In addition to the board and card games - there is an extensive range of great sandcastle-building items, including “castle buckets” that are good for any age.
“A husband of one of our employee’s makes the most intricate sand castles every year,” Bultman points out, “They’re so cool.”
There are also lots of “fidget toys,” as Bultman calls them. There are Chicken or Pig Catapults with miniature plastic chickens or pigs, brainteasers, bubble-blowing kits, puzzles, and other nifty gadgets. There’s a whole rack of magic tricks - from easy to more “tricky.”
Rocking Horse also offers plenty of outdoor toys, from child-safe balls to giant fabric frisbees and kites. The “Spinmallow” - a fairly new addition - makes campfires more fun by making sure your marshmallows or hot dogs are “heated evenly on all sides,” thanks to this quirky battery-powered device.
“The summer is really the busy season here, as everyone knows,” Bultman says, “but we still have great business all year long, and we’re open seven days a week, year-round, in all locations. It’s just so much fun,” she smiles.
Andrew Bultman doesn’t make rocking horses anymore - with the Rocking Horse Toy Company having expanded to four locations - Harbor Springs, Petoskey, Charlevoix, and their newest location, Bay Harbor - there’s simply not enough time. But the Bultmans’ origins are firmly entrenched in their company name, and in the playful spirit that they bring to all of their young-at-heart stores.

Rocking Horse Toy Company stores can be found at 326 E. Lake Street in Petoskey (telephone, 231-347-0306), 327 Bridge Street in Charlevoix, 154 E.
Main Street in Harbor Springs, on
Main Street in Bay Harbor, and online at www.rockinghorsetoy.com.