This weekend we got my Playmobil Victorian mansion down from the attic. My son and I built it and he's loved putting the rooms together.
Check out these really cool versions that people have modified, starting with the basic mansion kit.
We've been building train track set ups today. We are lucky to have boxes and boxes of second hand Brio track to play with.
Did you have any of these sets yourself?
You could even have a Brio birthday party in the eighties!
I ordered the cheapest sushi train toy on eBay last week for my son, and it just so happened to be a Japanese eraser set. Wonderfully, it fits the scale of his Playmobil hotel perfectly, look how cool!
I just have to decide what my next purchase will be, from the tempting little catalogue that came with the set.
The second wave of Little Live Pets have hit toy shops for spring 2015. http://www.character-online.com/products/Little-Live-Pets/Birds/
We were sent the mother and baby owl in neutral white & purple. The birds are also available in pink or blue, but refreshingly this slightly more 'girl orientated' toy is being marketed for both boys AND girls age 5+
Michael loves this sort of toy, and thought it was very cute as the mother and baby tweeted to each other. The mummy owl also has a repeat back feature where you can record your voice. Of course kids being kids the owl was soon chirping about bums and poos, but that was always going to happen!
The birds sing together and have dozens of different tunes. You may notice our baby owl looks a little bit worse for wear. It seems that my parents' wire fox terrier dog took a fancy to baby owl too, and he got a little chewed!
The mother and baby owl Little Live Pets set retails around £17.99, so it's a little bit too pricey for a birthday gift for someone else's child. However if you have an animal lover at home, most boys & girls would love to receive this as a present.
Mari Kasurinen is a pop artist from Finland who sculpts very impressive custom My Little Ponies. Which is your favourite?
These WWE Stackdown construction sets (let's just say it, Lego, isn't it?) are perfectly priced to stockpile for birthday presents for class friends' this year. Smyths' Toys have the sets in their mix and match, two for £15 range, which is even better than their £9.99 RRP.
Michael is almost seven and a Lego novice, but found the set easy to build by himself with the instructions at hand. He's never caught the wrestling on tv, but it still caught his imagination. So much so that when I flicked through the Christmas toy catalogue this morning, I found he has each of the other sets circled heavily in black Biro!
We were disappointed however that the snake doesn't 'leap' out of the cage at the wrestler, like it seems to suggest on the packaging. Still, a thumbs up for this toy.
Here are the other options.
Check out this cool new product currently launching on Kickstarter. The Tidy Freaks are 3 really adorable characters that “eat” the rubbish in your car.
The Tidy Freaks have been designed to excite the imagination of children so that they feed their rubbish into the characters mouths. The rubbish is then held in a wipe clean liner until it is ready to be emptied.
To find out how you can help launch this brilliant project and be one of the first to receive a Tidy Freak of your very own, visit the Tidy Freak Kickstarter Page.
or simply search for “Tidy Freaks” on www.kickstarter.com
I've hired my very own vlogger to undertake toy & kid product reviews on The World of Kitsch. He's a good looking chap, very chatty and I'm not at all biased. Yep, my son Michael has been inspired by 'Whoops, I Missed the Bus', a CBBC show featuring two quick witted teenage vloggers, and even better he works in return for getting to keep the product and a little dash of pocket money.
He is not to blame for the rookie mistake of filming in portrait instead of landscape, but we will improve the vlogs as we review toys leading up to Christmas 2014.
If your brand has anything you think would suit Michael to review for you, send me an email. We will review all sorts of toys, as I don't strictly follow the pink-is-for-girls-blue-is-for-boys rules of the toy shop. Videos will be posted on my YouTube channel, in a blog post on here, and is free for your brand to use in any way you wish. I look forward to hearing from you all.
As heard on BBC Radio 6's Lauren Laverne Show.
