A wide variety of children’s toys and mooncakes are being on sale across Da Nang in the buildup to the Mid-autumn Festival, which this year falls on 13 September.

A local shopper buying a lantern

The majority of the toys for children on sale at shops across the city are ‘made-in-Viet Nam’ products. They include lanterns made of plastic paper, drums, and handmade lion heads.

On the spotlight at stores along such major downtown streets as Trung Nu Vuong, Hung Vuong, and Hoang Dieu are all kinds of star-shaped lanterns whose prices now hover at 15,000 VND - 50,000 VND per piece, depending on the size and quality.

Besides, handmade lion heads of all kinds are currently offered at 80,000 VND - 800,000 VND per unit, depending on the size and such ready-attached accessories as feather and blinking lights.

The prices of eye-catching, colourful drums are set at 30,000 VND - 250,000 VND per piece, whist decorative masks range 35,000 VND - 150,000 VND.

In addition to toys, all kinds of mooncakes produced by such Vietnamese renowned brands as Kinh Do, Huu Nghi, Bibica and Dong Khanh, which boast a unique, sweet flavour and are diverse in shapes, sizes and fillings, are on sale along major streets.

Ms Nguyen Thi Nga, the owner of a Kinh Do mooncake stall on Nguyen Tri Phuong Street, said, there have been no fluctuations of mooncake prices in comparison with last year.

She added the best-sellers were baked and snow-skin mooncakes, and their prices were now ranging between 40,000 VND and 80,000 VND each.

Apart from to affordably-priced mooncakes, there are numerous high-grade, well-designed mooncake boxes served as gifts to relatives, friends, and colleagues, ranging from 470,000 VND to 4 million VND each.

Mooncakes’ fillings now feature new ingredients, ranging from expensive ones such as fish fins to fruit, jelly, and ice cream, in addition to the traditional mung bean paste, salted eggs, Chinese sausage, lotus seeds, and jam.

In particular, various types of home-made mooncakes, made by small-scale producers and households using traditional wooden molds, are also on sale at some local markets at prices ranging from several tens of thousands of VND to hundreds of thousands of VND apiece.

A number of housewives have chosen to buy molds and make their own homemade mooncakes to ensure food hygiene and suit the tastes of not only their family and friends, but also their customers.

A variety of foreign mooncakes are attracting a great deal of attention from young buyers. Although they are advertised to be imported from Taiwan, Japan, and China, they are on sale at low cost. This is also a challenge for relevant local agencies in checking and monitoring the quality of mooncakes in local markets.