Play with your food: Kitchen gear star of Tokyo Toy Show.

Play with your food: Kitchen gear star of Tokyo Toy Show

Tom Baker / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Yomiuri

"Cooking toys are very trendy now, and girls and their mothers cook together using them," Mei Kudo, a corporate communications representative for major toymaker Tomy Co., said at the International Tokyo Toy Show 2009 earlier this month.

One Tomy cooking toy, Nama Caramel Pot, won the top prize in the Trendy Toy category of this year's Japan Toy Awards. It's a simple plastic device in which users combine milk, sugar and cream to create bite-size caramels in a variety of shapes.

The company also displayed a bread-making toy consisting …