Like amateur magicians, childhood toys are full of old gimmicks and appear to wince when sawn in half. Enlist a dependable new plaything instead with today's Groupon: for $15, you get $30 worth of educational toys, books, games, and activities at Grenouille Verte (Green Frog).

Grenouille Verte keeps youthful spirits of all ages at play with an assortment of specialty toys, books, and games that foster the expansion of minds and imaginations along with the development of bilingual skills. A set of trilingual flashcards ($9.95) instills hands and mouths with linguistic dexterity as it teaches the alphabet in French, English, and American Sign Language, and readers flipping through a Les Animaux book ($13.95) learn how to address their favourite animals by their French names. Young craniums in need of an analogue lesson can spend hours in front of a wooden clock ($14.95), whose ligneous countenance silently doles out lessons about shapes, colours, and time. Mitts looking to scare away finger-nibbling velociraptors can assume the terrifying identity of a T. rex puppet ($23.95), and nascent Mozarts compose baroque-infused power ballads on a Kidi Pop & Rock ($29.99) equipped with an electronic piano, a sensor-equipped guitar, and a hologram Mick Jagger.