Thanks, GeoMamma. This would certainly be a quick and easy method. The down side is that a toilet roll is much bigger than the standard testing tube, ~1.6" vs ~1.25" diameter. Many common toddler toys such as Duplo figures would go through it easily.
The toilet roll is also open at both ends, so it rules out long and narrow items such as chunky dowels or twistable crayons. AFAIK, these are very unlikely to cause serious choking incidents. The standard test allows them, since the tube is about 2 - 2.5" long with a sloped bottom.
According to the official standards, one example of a toddler-safe game piece would be the 2 3/8" long
peg people that are used in wooden school bus toys. These would be handy for lots of activities. I'd love to find a place that sells them in different (non-toxic) colors.
Safety 1st sells the standard testing tubes for home use; you can sometimes find them at toy stores. Ours seems to have gone missing, but it seems to me that a 1" cube might be okay, since the diagonal measurement would be sqrt(2), which is more than 1.25. But I'm not sure about this. I'm kind of spatially challenged.
