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Reviews

Make Jew­ellery Kit by Cre­ative Charlie

“The beads were made by woman’s coop­er­a­tive; the labels are biodegrad­able; the ship­ping pack­ag­ing recy­cled. If you’re look­ing for eth­i­cal stock­ing fillers then look no fur­ther. Just fabulous.”

Buy online at Cre­ative Char­lie
Price £4.99
*****

Ini­tial thoughts: I have to admit, I groaned a lit­tle bit at thought of ‘mak­ing jew­ellery’.  Thoughts of brightly coloured plas­tic beads filled my head -  imag­ine my sur­prise and relief when I opened up this lit­tle kit!

We liked: As a mum who is always on the look out for toys that are not branded and are ‘home made’ I was thrilled.  I loved so many things: the ethos of the com­pany and the fact that they have obvi­ously taken time to source qual­ity items being the two main ones.  The beads were made by woman’s coop­er­a­tive; the labels are biodegrad­able; the ship­ping pack­ag­ing recy­cled. If you’re look­ing for eth­i­cal stock­ing fillers then look no further.

This lit­tle box of recy­cled mag­a­zine beads was fab­u­lous.  Each one was dif­fer­ent and the result­ing bracelets were fan­tas­tic.  We man­aged to make two bracelets– one for me and one for my daugh­ter.  She got such a kick out of us hav­ing match­ing jew­ellery.  It was a plea­sure to wear and I am eter­nally grate­ful that I didn’t have to wear gaudy plas­tic beads!!

We weren’t keen: I’m only men­tion­ing this here because it might put some peo­ple off…  The pack­ag­ing was a bit home­spun.  I think it arrived packed in a small cereal box wrapped with old news­pa­pers.  This was not a prob­lem for me as it just brought home the fact that they take the ‘reuse reduce recy­cle’ phi­los­o­phy to heart and stick to it.  It would have been out of keep­ing to use brand spank­ing new packaging.

Over­all: Cre­ative and eth­i­cal.  Just the thing for those of us look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle different.

Aspace Christ­mas Nativ­ity Advent Calendar

“A bright, colour­ful, well made and imag­i­na­tive toy. This Nativ­ity Advent Cal­en­dar allows you to intro­duce the reli­gious story into your child’s Christ­mas while stim­u­lat­ing their imag­i­na­tive play”.

Buy online at Aspace

Price: £32.00

*****

Ini­tial thoughts: I’m a big fan of Aspace so I was chuffed to bits when I received their Nativ­ity Advent Cal­en­dar to review.  It’s soft with bright colours and very tac­tile.  I LOVE that the cast of char­ac­ters are also fin­ger puppets.

We liked: What’s not to like love? It’s large with a cast of char­ac­ters that allows you to start shar­ing the mean­ing of Christ­mas in a fun and imag­i­na­tive way.  I like that we can make up the story as we go along.  At the moment the con­cept of baby Jesus is not some­thing she under­stands but the good thing about this cal­en­dar is that it will grow with them.  Squidge is only 3 so I’m focus­ing on her get­ting to know the key play­ers, although I must admit she’s more focused on milk­ing the cow and rac­ing the camels — hey it’s a start! And I LOVE that it is a non-comercialised branded cal­en­dar, do I need to say more??! On a more prac­ti­cal side, it looks to be made of 100% cot­ton (can’t actu­ally find a mate­ri­als label), looks well made and the fin­ger pup­pets and thick and nicely dec­o­rated. At first I thought the pock­ets were a lit­tle small but the more I think about it they are just per­fectly sized for a lit­tle treat each day.  It comes in a thick plas­tic clear ‘enve­lope’ with a vel­cro clo­sure and can be safely stored away.

We weren’t keen: The only major draw­back to this cal­en­dar are the elas­tic bands on the back of the fin­ger pup­pets.  They’re way too small so you can’t actu­ally get your fin­ger in them.  We’ve solved this prob­lem by using pen­cils and con­tin­ued on with our lit­tle play but I don’t think this is ideal.  I did won­der it they made them tight to take into account some stretch­ing but if you can’t get a fin­ger in don’t know how you’ll man­age to stretch the elas­tic band in the first place!

Over­all: A bright, colour­ful, well made and imag­i­na­tive toy. This nativ­ity advent cal­en­dar allows you to intro­duce the reli­gious story into your child’s Christ­mas while stim­u­lat­ing their imag­i­na­tive play. I fully expect this cal­en­dar to become a part of our Christ­mas tra­di­tions for many years to come.

Kid­dy­ma­nia Medieval Princess Outfit

“I loved that it wasn’t yet another branded char­ac­ter Princess dress, so Squidge can wear this to par­ties know­ing that she won’t be one of 10 girls wear­ing iden­ti­cal dresses”.

Buy online at Kid­dy­ma­nia
Price £29.95
*****

Medieval Princess cos­tume
Ini­tial thoughts: Kid­dy­ma­nia is spot on with its pack­ag­ing! Con­sid­er­ing this is a cos­tume, it would have been easy to send the goods in an enve­lope but it was shipped in a box and wrapped in lovely tis­sue paper. Well done Kid­dy­ma­nia for mak­ing the sim­ple act of open­ing the pack­age pretty excit­ing for a three year old. I was also pleased to see the dress looked like it was well constructed.

We liked: This dress has great atten­tion to detail. It’s fes­tooned with pretty lace and gold rib­bon, and the flow­ing sleeves and a pet­ti­coat (!) really fin­ish it off beau­ti­fully. This is a PROPER dress­ing up dress, and wow, it shows. Per­son­ally, I loved that it wasn’t yet another branded char­ac­ter Princess dress, so Squidge can wear this to par­ties know­ing that she won’t be one of 10 girls wear­ing iden­ti­cal dresses.

We weren’t keen: The dress was a bit itchy after a while. As expected, it’s unlined, so where the lay­ers of fab­ric are stitched together, there are some seams that can rub. To get around this, Squidge put on her bal­let leo­tard and all was well with the world.

Over­all: Sure, it’s a lit­tle pricy, but the qual­ity shows. I think this is well worth the money. If you have a lit­tle one like mine, with an active imag­i­na­tion, then this cos­tume will be a big hit. I’m going to men­tion the qual­ity again because I think this dress is excep­tional – it looks like it will with­stand some pretty seri­ous Medieval play.

Toy: LeapFrog Tag

Retailer: On-line and any major toy store

Web Link: http://www.leapfrogshop.co.uk/

Price: £39.99

Score out of 5: 5

For Squidge’s birth­day her god­mother asked me what she wanted for a pressie.  At first I wasn’t sure what exactly but I knew some­thing from Leapfrog would be nice.  I did a bit of research on line and found that they had grad­u­ated from the “pad” w/ the pen attached (although they still have those) to some­thing called a Tag.  Intrigued I headed over to the local toy store and had a nice play with them. They have a tod­dler ver­sion TAG Junior as well as the the orig­i­nal TAG.  She got the orig­i­nal Tag because I thought she could grow into it as opposed to the junior (which she would out grow too quickly).  I’m bad about buy­ing things just a smidge too big for her and let­ting her grow into it.  The LeapFrog Tag reader is com­pact and easy to use. The sys­tem comes w/ the reader pen, CD, USB cord for down­loads and the Ozzie and Mack sto­ry­book.  It does require bat­ter­ies so don’t for­get those!   The ini­tial set up was fairly pain­less– just load the cd on your com­puter and fol­low the instruc­tions.  After set­ting up an account I just down­loaded the sto­ries we had and we were off to the races.

Although Squidge is only 3 (and the rec­om­mended age for the Tag reader is 4+) she was able to grasp the con­cept pretty quickly.  Squidge loves books so the abil­ity for her to make the book ‘talk’ was fas­ci­nat­ing for her.  As with most LeapFrog sto­ry­books you can click a pic­ture and it will read the story for you but Squidge was more inter­ested in click­ing on the pic­tures and have them say some­thing.  Squidge is also fas­ci­nated by the alpha­bet at the moment so it was great that the first Tag sto­ry­book had a few pages in the back w/ the alpha­bet and some key words.  Play­ing with the Tag and ‘read­ing’ the last few pages is one of her favorite things to do.  If you have a book mad kid this is a fan­tas­tic thing to have.  I espe­cially love that it will enter­tain her for a while so I can sit back and have a cup of tea and a lit­tle peace and quiet.  It’s com­pact­ness is a major plus for me.  I just grab a cou­ple of books and the pen, throw it in your hand­bag and off we go.  I also pur­chased some head­phones and she was able to lis­ten w/ both­er­ing any­one or being both­ered. At £40 the sys­tem isn’t cheap but I think it’s well worth the price  We also took this on our trip to the USA and it was a god­send.  We just plugged in the head­phones and she was occu­pied for a while.  Any­one who has been on a transat­lantic flight w/ a tod­dlers knows the impor­tance of a toy that will dis­cract the child for good chucks of the flight.

If there is any­thing I’m not impressed with is the mem­ory space.  We have Ozzie and Mack, National Geo­graphic ani­mal flash cards, The Cat in the Hat, Wal­ter the fart­ing dog and Olivia– so 5 books and it’s full.  If we want to down­load any more books we need to delete some­thing.  I bit incon­ve­nient espe­cially if your kid is like mine and will almost cer­tainly want the book you deleted as soon as it’s  been deleted!!

* This review was not paid for by any com­pany– I did not receive free mer­chan­dise nor did they give me money.  If free mer­chan­dise was to arrive on my doorstep by a kindly DHL man I would not turn him away. The same could be said for cash.  I did sub­mit this review to a fab new UK toy review web­site Great Toy Guide . In the next few weeks you will prob­a­bly see more reviews for GTG by me here and on the web­site.  I am beyond thrilled to be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a UK based toy review site.  I feel that although a lot of the toys can be pur­chased in the US it is nice to have one that is UK based and from what I can see some of the toys will/are by small toy com­pa­nies so YAY for independent/ organic/green toy companies.