Birthday Season Approaches!

Well, Christmas has barely ended and already it seems like every weekend one of my daughters has a birthday party to attend.

Statistically speaking I guess the summer is supposed to be peak birthday time, but compared to the lack of birthdays in December and especially January, the uptick in birthdays feels like a real influx. If past experience is any guide, we'll be very ready for the birthday party calendar to mellow out by the time the school year ends.

It's all good fun, and we love celebrating with our friends and showing them we care. Showing them we care leads to the topic of this post: birthday presents.

What are you getting your child's friends? What are the kids in your world requesting for presents? Do you have any special tips or tricks for preparing for a flood birthday parties? Do you buy the same presents for all the kids in your children's circle, or do you try to find that perfect gift for each child?

I hate to say it, but our family is more last minute than we wish. I've often thought about taking a special trip to the toy store or maybe making a special online mail order to stock up on presents, but as good as these ideas are, I've never quite had that level of follow through.

We'll return to this topic as birthday season gets into full gear, but for now you'll have to excuse me - I have to order some birthday presents for an upcoming party!

Look Out, Velociraptor!

Not many dinosaurs have the name recognition and instant notoriety that Velociraptor has. Thanks to Jurassic Park, a whole generation of kids have come up terrorized by idea of the speedy carnivore.

If you're someone, or you know someone, with Velociraptors on the brain, then you might be interested in this plastic Velociraptor dinosaur figure made by Safari Ltd. It's a great dinosaur figurine, sculpted in a dynamic hunting pose and hand painted in colors that are quite possibly realistic for how the terrible lizard might have actually looked. Pair this one up with the Safari Triceratops dinosaur toy that we mentioned last week, and  you have the makings for some dramatic dinosaur combat!

Available at a low price from the Wild Animal Store, a great source for animal figures, animal replicas, and animal toys.

Ripoffs in Toyland

Not to be a downer, but I had a few thoughts today about how too many toys are mostly about ripping off parents, and not so much about delighting children.

These thoughts were inspired by cleaning up, believe it or not. I was organizing one of the kid's toy shelves, and I wanted to move some books from one shelf to another, including a new boxed set of books the girls received last Christmas. You know, one of those book series that are sold as a group, usually in a nicely packaged box that the books are kept in. So I reached for the box, barely touched it, and the whole thing sort of fell over, the books fell out, knocking over other toys and books in the process.



I barely touched the box! Putting everything away, I realized that what had happened is that I had reached for the box assuming that it would be a sturdy paperboard box, the way most boxes for books USED to be. Instead, this particular box was very flimsy and barely held the books it contained upright. So when my hand sort of clumsily, oafishly (I admit I'm a clumsy oaf) brushed against it, the box couldn't contain the books inside and they fell out all over.

To put it another way, the box for the books was cheaply made, thinner than usual paper stock, somewhere between paper board and a heavy card stock. Why was it made this way? To save money for the publisher and increase the profit made on the boxed set.

Don't we see a lot of this these days?

Here's another example. During a shopping trip to Target last Christmas, I went to check out different playsets that my 5 year old daughter might enjoy, My Little Pony playsets in particular. I was hoping to find a boxed set of all the main characters. I was prepared to pay around $20 or $30 for such a set, if I could find one.

I was disappointed to find only one set that frankly, felt like a big ripoff that I couldn't buy. For about $25, all I could find was a set of tiny little "sparkly rainbow" versions of the main MLP characters. If it wasn't this set shown here, it closely resembled it:

Now, I'm no fool. I've been around the block a few times and I've bought toys like this. Sure, kids are small, their hands are small, and perhaps their love of MLP is so strong that they will be perfectly content to play with these teeny tiny representations of their favorite MLP characters. 

I want to emphasize again that these toy ponies are tiny. Very small. Like an inch and a half high. They're not much to play with and needless to say they're begging to get lost. And we parents are asked to pay around $20 or $25 for this unsubstantial package.

And that's the point, isn't it? We know, and the toy makers know, that our children really really want these toys, no matter how small or overpriced they are. In fact, our kids are mostly oblivious to things like size and price.

This kind of miniaturization is a trend. It is based on the idea that the smaller the toys are made - without lowering the price of the toy - the more money can be made. And parents can be trusted to keep paying, because they want to get kids toys that they love, no matter the quality.

/Rant off for now, but I gotta say, I find this trend annoying.

A Look at a Few Frozen-related Toys

There's a whole world of Frozen-related toys out there. Dolls, figurines, and playsets. For this post I'm going to take a look at some of the playsets and figurines I've noticed, plus a review of a figurine set that I bought. This obviously isn't a review of all the many Frozen-related toys out on the market.

I haven't seen any of the Frozen castle playsets in person, but here's one that I seem to see photos of most often:

I have to admit Elsa's castle is looking a little Liberace to me, but then I thought that during the movie too, so I suppose it's just being true to the movie.

This next set below is much cooler looking. It's the sisters' inherited castle at Arendelle in all its glory. Again, I haven't seen this one in the flesh, but it looks quite big compared to the figures, and it's wonderfully detailed in a way that should capture the imagination.

Moving on from castles, here are some figurine-oriented playsets: This one below seems to be quite common. Right off the bat, the packaging itself makes a great impression - the way the figures are positioned and posed is like movie advertising key art come to life. I don't own this set nor have I seen it in person so I can't speak towards its quality, but the figures look nicely detailed with rich colors and textures.

And then there's this baby. This is the set I got for my youngest. Again the packaging is really nice and tempting.

Also, kudos to Disney for not making the figures next to impossible to get out of the packaging even once the box is open. I'm sure some of you know what I'm talking about - packaging where the toys are so twist tied and affixed to the packaging that you need heavy duty shears to get them out, not to mention incredible patience to do it while a kid is hopping up and down next to you dying to get their hands on the toy. No, in this case, open up the box, slide out the molded plastic insert that the figures are encased in, and the figures pop out and are ready to go.


And what nice figures they are. Sven, Christoph, Hans, Olaf, Anna, and Elsa are all here, ready to go re-enact whatever scenes you want or go on whatever adventures you can imagine. They're well made visually. The female figures get real fabric clothes. The menfolk get molded plastic get ups.

Elsa looks beautiful as always, but I have to give best design credits to Anna's outfit and overall appearance. Her dress falls below her knees and is patterned with traditional Scandinavian-looking markings. To keep her warm is a lovely dark magenta cloak. Completing her look are some cool-looking big black boots!

Most of the figures move in various ways, though not in the same ways. Some can sit, some can't. Sven doesn't move at all. My biggest criticism of the set - and it's a big criticism - is that me and my youngest discovered very quickly is that not all of these figures stay standing! This is bad, bad, bad! Elsa is the worst offender - it's almost impossible to get her to stay standing. All the other figures you can kind of get get them to stand after some messing around. It's a major flaw in the design of these figures in my opinion, and I would have thought twice about buying this set if I'd known.


Like these particular toy sets or not, the way Disney releases its movie-related toys in dribs and drabs over the course of many years means that we will be seeing different versions of Frozen toys for years to come. For toy lovers, and especially toy lovers who are fans of Frozen, this will be interesting to watch.

Toys R Us Sale

Newsletter News: Toys R Us is having a two day sale on selected items like some Melissa & Doug toys, Skylanders, etc. 40% off plus free shipping is a very good deal.

Triceratops Plastic Animal Toy by Safari

Hey look, it's everyone's favorite Cretaceous herbivore - the fierce, sturdy, but kindly Triceratops.

Actually, we know very little about Triceratops, but I imagine them as gentle giants browsing forests and plains and raising their young in herds, only to be occasionally hassled by carnivores like Tyrannosaurus Rex. Herbivorous underdogs of the Cretaceous? It's a pleasing idea even if it's all fiction.

At any rate, Safari Ltd. has got us covered when it comes to providing us with a great animal toy version of the Triceratops. Wonderfully detailed in a lifelike pose, hand painted with realistic colors, this guy can sit on your desk or on your shelves as a conversation starter or he can be added to your child's toy collection where he will launch all sorts of creative and imaginative play.

Sold by The Wild Animal Toy Store, a great source of plastic animal toys and animal figurines.

Review of "Frozen"

I don't intend for movie reviews to be a big part of this blog, but now and then, as I run across something noteworthy, sure I'll write a review. Why not?

So, I took the kids to see Frozen a couple of weekends ago. The verdict? Thumbs up - we all liked it a lot.

Frozen fits nicely into the Disney canon of Princess Movies. The setting is some vague, unspecified Scandinavian country during some vague, unspecified Napoleanic-ish era. Against this sort of generic Northern European backdrop a simple tale of family - namely, sisterly - love unfolds.

It's a pretty straightforward storyline. It goes from A to B to C with not much in the way of twists, turns, or surprises. The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Brave are all more complex in comparison, but what Frozen may be lacking in terms of a complex storyline it most surely has in extraordinary visuals and in great musical numbers.

That's right, Frozen has songs - and great songs too! Me and my kids found ourselves going on YouTube to hear the tunes over again, and then, having the songs lodged in our heads, spontaneously breaking out into song, singing them over and over together throughout the day. Several of them are quite catchy, and as you would expect from Disney, the lyrics are irresistibly and relentlessly positive and uplifiting.

As I also mentioned, the visuals are wonderful. So many films aren't worth the ticket price of seeing them in theaters, especially when so many movies can be found online for free, but Frozen is an example of a flick worth seeing in its natural habitat - the theater. We did the whole thing up properly - going to a nice theater with reserved seating, splurging on snacks, and then taking the whole thing happily and with wide eyes. I've never seen snow and winter rendered so beautifully. No detail was neglected, and the entire visual experience was rich and deligthful to take in.

Criticisms? Well, as I said before, the story is quite simple with not much in the way of complexity or surprises. Brave and Tangled feel more developed in comparison, and they're not exactly complicated stories either.

But I obviously liked the movie and I recommend it. In fact, I liked it enough to go out and buy my youngest a Frozen figurine playset - a topic definitely under the purview of this site!