Are you too old to play with toys? A visit to Little Voice might change your mind. This is one of Hastings best kept secrets, but it needn’t be – there’s plenty of fun to go round!

Little Voice has been on Claremont for two years, so if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of discovering it, it’s definitely time you did. Opposite the library, it’s only a stone’s throw from the town centre. When I paid a visit to find out what seasonal delights are in stock, I ended up spending a jolly hour down memory lane. Customers are greeted at the door with the apt message ‘Happy things for happy people’. The shelves here are overflowing with toys to make you nostalgic for Christmases long-past: clockwork toys, space hoppers, finger monsters, fortune-telling fish that curl in the palm of your hand, fancy-shaped rubbers, toy soldiers, humming tops, rubber ducks that change colour in the bath and hundreds more toys guaranteed to make you smile. This is pocket-money territory: you can pick up a new toy for less than £1! Perfect for table gifts at Christmas lunch or home-made crackers. There are also lots of fun products for grown-ups: pretty glasses, mugs, gorgeous sparkly jewellery, bath products and a very wide range of unusual cards.

Owners Ed and Rosie are really putting their hearts into the business. I ask Ed how the shop came to be ‘Little Voice’. “When we opened, we intended to sell just cards and our own design t-shirts for babies and children with messages on the front, like our ‘Save the planet’ design. Hence ‘Little Voice’. As it happened we started getting into toys, one thing led to another, and now we stock so many lines we’re running out of space!” The variety is staggering. There are unusual fairy lights shaped like elephants and flowers, beautiful night lights for children in the shapes of a goose, a hen and a toadstool, the list goes on.

I ask Ed to show me some of their best ideas for Christmas presents. We’re spoilt for choice. “I’d probably say wooden toys first: castles, dolls houses, cowboy forts, a ladybird rocking horse, ride-on fire engine, trains...” There are also wooden toys at very reasonable prices made from the wood of expended rubber trees, including a flat-packed castle for just £35. Now this really is territory for happy shopping.