The Toybox is closed

After the saddening departure posts from writers of Friending Facebook and Emerging Tech, you might not have the emotional wherewithal left to survive yet another goodbye.

But that's exactly what you are going to get.

ZDNet is refocusing its efforts on the enterprise and, as a result, is plucking from its ranks the blogs that don't quite fit with its new mission. The ToyBox is one of those blogs.

A brief history:

Over the last four years, the ToyBox contributed 4,398 posts of gadget goodness.

The first post came in January 2008 from former ZDNet contributor Josh Taylor, who flew solo until current ZDNet Associate Editor Andrew Nusca joined him two months later. Jennifer Bergen joined in March 2009, and was succeeded by Rachel King that October.

Gloria Sin and I joined in May 2011, taking the reins from Andrew and Rachel as they moved on to Between the Lines.

I wouldn't even know where to start listing some of the best ToyBox posts over the past four years, but for the sake of eulogy, here are a few of my own favorites:

• The six biggest things I learned during the HP TouchPad’s fire sale weekend
• iPad cases made of Bernie Madoff's clothing won't protect your iPad
• Fighting the Lion: Apple will have to pry Snow Leopard out of my cold, outdated hands
• A third of iPhone owners think they have 4G, obviously don't
• Chinese boy trades kidney in exchange for iPad 2, regrets it
• Finally: a USB mouse that doubles as a digital scale
• CES 2012: Or, please stop announcing smartphones and tablets
• The scariest thing about the Flashback trojan: I have no idea how to fight it
• The worst gadget in the world: The GoJo Hands Free headset
• A love letter to my smartphone
• Five minutes with Instagram for Android
• Beyond smartphones: is subsidization the future of everything?

As for the last pair of ToyBox writers, I'll be writing alongside Robin Harris at ZDNet's Storage Bits and Gloria Sin is moving on to some bigger, better, and currently secret things. Follow her on Twitter to see what she's up to.

Thanks, as always, for reading.