The fine folks at the LEGO Group have stealthily released this years Lego Advent Calendar, with a small amount showing up at one online location already in the middle of August.  If you’re VERY lucky, they might still have them in stock here.

So you think it’s too early to be worrying about getting your own 2011 Lego advent calendar this Christmas season?  For the past few years LEGO has put out two holiday calender sets here in the US, one generic City one and one special one.  And each year, the special one sells out quickly way before the holiday season.  The City one is typically sold out by mid day on Black Friday.  Don’t believe me?  Check out this post from two years ago at the height of the recession:  Lego Advent Calenders Sold Out – Told You So!

Seriously, if they have one in stock here for under $45, buy it today or regret it later.  There is an excellent chance the Star Wars Advent Calendar will be gone by October.

And you know what?  They never come back.  Lego makes a limited advent calendar run every year, since there is only a demand for these during the holiday season.  There are eBay sellers that stock up on them each year and sell them at a hefty profit for $60-$100 a pop.

Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar

This year Lego has put their powerhouse Star Wars brand on the calendar and included a couple of great minifigs.  Pretty much the only place to get a Yoda minifig in a set was to buy the $85 Assault Tank set, and Chewbaca wasn’t easy to come by either.  Not only are both of them are in this set, but Yoda is dressed as Santa Claus!  You also get a mini X-Wing, a mini Millennium Falcon, a mini Slave One (that’s Boba Fett’s ship for the non-Star Wars geeks out there), a Tie Fighter, an Imperial Shuttle and more.   If you have a 5-10 year old boy, don’t miss this one this Christmas.

You can find more details on what’s in the Star Wars set here.

City Lego Advent Calendar

Yeah, there is also the City version of the Lego Advent Calendar.  Sorry, but I’m so darn excited about giving the boys the Star Wars version that I just can’t even get interested in the City one.   It has a tree, it has Santa, it has a guy ice fishing.  Honestly, it’s a really good christmas calendar, just like Lego puts out every year.  Your kids will likely love it.  BUT DOES IT HAVE YODA?  HECK NO!  It’s not even available yet, but you can pre-order it for September 1st.

You can see more details on the City version here.

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We’ve had our Mini Kick scooters over 5 years now, and have been huge fans ever since.   Mrs. TR first bought two of them for the boys for their third birthday back in 2005!  There was only one color you could get back then, the blue one, and the boys took to them with surprising speed and agility.  Actually, that has nothing to do with them being amazing three year olds, but rather the design of the Mini Kick making it super easy to ride.

This toddler scooter has two wheels in the front and a leaning steering mechanism that make them easy to steer without overcompensating like you can with traditional turn steering.

In fact, you can see our inaugural scooter run on the boys 3rd birthday back in 2005 right below in this YouTube video.  I was a little shocked when I checked it the other day and it’s received over 11,000 views!

The scooters have racked up the miles over the last five years, both out on the bike trail, out in the yard, and just tearing around the kitchen island.  The boys, now 8, are too big for them and have moved on to their Maxi Kick Scooters, but the Princess just turned 4 and has the choice of not one but two Mini Kick scooters to pick from.

For anyone considering buying one, they’re a great investment!  If you want to wait a few more years, maybe you can have one of ours when the Princess is too big for it.

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There is a giant selection of nighttime lights out there, and everyone seems to have a different opinion on which are the best kids night lights. Well, that’s what you come to your friends here at The Toy Report for right?  Let’s shed a little “light” on the subject, shall we? There are three main types of kids nite lights worth talking about out there:

1. Plug In Night Lights – Lights that plug directly into a wall socket.  New LED models use barely any electricity.
2. Projector night lights – Throw a lit image on a wall or ceiling to act as a night light.
3. Rechargable & Mobile – The magic of LEDs strikes again.  Low power and ultra cool night lights your kids can take anywhere, even in bed with them.

Here are some of our favorites.

Plug-In Night Lights

If you don’t mind that they’re not cute or kids themed, these Maxxima LED lights are just awesome.  Four to a pack of only $15, the have a light sensor and only turn on at night and cost around 25 CENTS a YEAR in electricity.

If something a little more decorative is needed, this butterfly fiber optic night light is a great choice.  The entire butterfly lights up in a dazzling array of different colors.



For the ULTIMATE in kids night lights, there is the Blue Canary night light.   If you aren’t familiar with the awesome 80′s/90′s cult superstars They Might Be Giants, you should become a fan of their great recent kids albums ASAP!   This is literally the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you, and only costs $0.25 a year to operate.

Of course, there are also a plethora of Disney Princess, Cars, Spongebob, SpiderMan and other kids pop culture icon night lights to choose from as well.  Click here for a full list.

Projector Night Lights

This is technically a plug-in night light too, but it’s also a projector!  These Projectables line of kids night lights throws a picture on the ceiling or wall.  There is a solar system version, a tropical fish version and a princess version.

Generally considered the cream of the kids night light crop, the Cloud-B Twilight Turtle star projection light is probably your best bet for a projection night light.  It has more 5 star ratings and reviews than any other kids light I’ve ever seen.  Simple, cordless, and with an automatic shutoff, the Twilight line throws  stars and a moon in a wide swath across your child’s room.

Portable Night Lights

The Mobi Glowmate is one of the most popular kids night lights due to their recharge ability where you just need to put them on the base.  They can also be set to glow in multiple colors or just cycle through all of them.  These are actually my favorites, and our older kids favorites as well.  The ability to move them around the room, put them in bed next to you, and take them to the bathroom make them the most versatile.     At $15, it’s a complete steal.

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Earlier this year, Mrs TR wrote about a homemade LEGO storage solution using plastic shoe boxes to store each LEGO set, complete with picture cut out from the box. In a perfect world we be able to keep each individual LEGO set separated from the others.

In reality our many Lego masterpieces are now scattered to the four winds of our house.  Spaceships crash, castles are destroyed by Lego catapults, you get the idea. Then all the bricks get shoved in bins or boxes or whatever is hand. Sound familiar?

We call the 6 week period between the boys birthday in November through school break as “Lego Season” here at Chez Toy Report. And in honor of “Lego Season”, I’ve been investigating a better Lego storage system than our current random bucket method.

Here are the best Lego storage solutions that we’ve found:

Low Cost Lego Storage – The Clear Shoebox

If budget is an issue and you want a quick and clean way to get those Legos off the floor, then this is the solution for you.  For around $21, you can get 12 of these 6 quart see through plastic boxes. They’re about the size of a traditional shoebox and will hold the vast majority of Lego kits in their disassembled state.  For those really large Lego kits, you can get the 16 quart versions for about $10 more.

You’ll need to stack them or put them on shelves and deal with the inevitable issues when you knock over a stack of them and a lid comes off, but it’s a darn lot of storage for only $20.

Click here for more details on the clear Lego plastic boxes

Better Lego Storage – Isis LEGO Line

Want something that would match your Lego themed decor a little better that still won’t break the bank?

Isis makes a line of storage bins specifically for LEGO that includes multiple bright colors and LEGO designs.  These storage bins range in size from project boxes like the ones pictured at the left, to much larger 21 quart stackable versions.

All of them are translucent so you can see what’s in them without having to open the boxes.

These are great for storing individual LEGO projects, but if you want to sort your LEGOs by color or type, this isn’t the solution for you.  But read on…

Click here for more details on the Isis LEGO storage line

The Best Lego Storage

Ok, say for a minute you take your bricks seriously as we do in our house.  Say you have a TON of Legos.  Come on, say it.  You know you do.

Or if you don’t yet, think about the future.  If you think you’re six year old is going to get bored with Legos when they’re eight, or ten, or even twelve, you’re sadly mistaken.  You will collect more than will likely fit in two of the Isis storage containers above.  Trust me.

What to do?  I give you the Seville Classics Commercial 7-Shelf Bin Rack System. Behold!

Imagine how many LEGOs you could fit in this puppy? You could sort them by color, then put the little dividers in the bins and sub sort the colors into various sizes. Think about the possibilities!

Now, this set of storage racks isn’t cheap, but when you think about what you’re getting, it’s a pretty good price.  Think of it as an investment in the future. Unlike most kids toy storage that will be worthless when you’re kids get older, this storage unit can easily transform into non-toy storage.

Click here for more details on the Seville Bin Rack System

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Happy Thanksgiving from the Toy Report and welcome to the start of Lego Season, as it is known around these parts.

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It’s that time of year again, when our children begin to get schoolitis, that affliction that sets in mid-August when almost three months of summer vacation have worn out their welcome and it’s time for back to school planning!

Lunch boxes are weighing heavily on our minds right now. The soft sided insulated lunch boxes the boys have been using for the past year are starting to look pretty gnarly, both inside and out. Spilled yogurt, leftover banana peels, and general abuse have left them functional but not pretty in the least. The outsides are stained and worn, and the insides have some grey gunk in the corners that seem impossible to fully remove.

It’s time for new lunchboxes, and this year we’ve found some great ones to help you break out of the mold so to speak.

The Goodbyn

Imagine for a minute that you could eliminate all the plastic containers, lids, and disposable plastic bags that you waste every day, yet still keep foods separated and a lunchbox clean and fresh every day?  Sound too good to be true?  Mrs TR clued me into the Goodbyn, a plastic segmented lunchbox with a cover that keeps each portion separated from all the others.  They come in two different styles, with ears on the style for the younger kids making it easier to open the box, and ones without ears for the older kids who might not want their lunchbox to look like it’s shaped like an animal.

Each lunchbox comes with three pages of hundreds stickers to decorate it with, and the stickers are dishwasher safe as well!  Place your child’s name and any allergy information directly on their lunchbox, then let them decorate the rest!

The lunchbox is dishwasher safe, although many people recommend only putting the bottom portion in the dishwasher, as the top is flexible and needs to maintain it’s shape to close all the individual portions.  It does take a little more planning to make sure a sandwich placed in the center compartment doesn’t become a mess when it’s carried upright, but it’s worth the extra effort.

Note that the Goodbyn is not insulated and each compartment is fairly small.  If you live in a warm climate (we don’t) you might need to invest in some small ice packs to keep the cold foods from getting too warm.

Some users state that it’s difficult for younger kids to close and open a Goodbyn correctly.  For those of you sending young kids to daycare, a three year old not being able to open their own lunchbox without help is probably a good thing, but for those with a five year old it might be frustrating.  Keep the Goodbyn for kids under 4 and older than 6.

This gem of a lunchbox is BPA and Phthalate free and made out of #5 and #2 plastic so it can be recycled when your child grows out of it.

The Goodbyn lunchbox is available in multiple colors.  See all the color choices and more details by clicking HERE.

Kotobuki Bento Box

While not as compartmentalized or easy to carry as the Goodbyn, the Kotobuki Bento Box certainly is cute.  There are two main styles, one shaped like a panda and one shaped like a frog.  Each boasts two compartments for keeping two different dishes separated and comes with a strap to make sure it doesn’t pop open in your little one’s backpack.  Both compartments are dishwasher safe and touted as microwave safe, but putting anything plastic into a microwave is never a good idea.

The band is especially cute, acting as a sort of headband for the panda or frog, with eyebrow accents painted on it for the panda, or tears under the eyes of the frog.  Not sure why the frog is crying (it’s smiling and seems happy otherwise), but maybe it’s just got something in it’s eyes.  Click here to see the Frog Bento Box.

Sachi Fashion Insulated Lunch Bag

Have a young woman that is simply too fashionable to be bothered with a traditional lunch box?  Maybe she’s reached that age between elementary school and high school where a Hello Kitty lunchbox is no longer something she wants to be seen with (don’t throw it out, she’ll want it again someday).  The Sachi line of insulated lunch bags is just the thing.

Good sized without being huge, these purse like lunch bags can hold a drink, a meal, and an ice pack no problem.  They come in a wide variety of designer styles, all for under $20.  If carrying the same bag to school everyday is a worry, a couple of nights of babysitting could cover a full weeks worth of lunch bag styles.

Click here to see all the different styles of Sachi Lunch Bags

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LEGO Storage is a problem for all of us with LEGO Loving Loved ones. Well, I have an example of an amazing LEGO storing system. I was reading The Blue Blog, one of my favorite knitting blogs, the author of which also has LEGO obsessed twin boys. Behold, the wonders of her Lego organization system:

A container store shoe box (I have container store shoe boxes!) for each individual set, with a picture of the set taped to the box. The directions are all in binders. Binders! It is genius! The show boxes in a bookcase take up so much less room than the IKEA drawers where our LEGOs live.

I am worried that it is too late for us. so many of our sets have been mixed together. Every six months or so Remo and the boys make a day of it and sort through all the LEGOs. Maybe the next one can involve sorting back into sets (is that even possible?). Or maybe we just begin now as we mean to go on and keep all future sets in their separate boxes. Hmmm. I will have to ponder. thank you Alison for your example and inspiration!

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About a week before Christmas we received quite a big dumping of snow here on the East Coast.  We live near the ocean and it’s fairly unusual to get more than a foot of snow in one storm.   But last week we had close to a foot and a half of great packing snow hit the ground in less than 12 hours, and so we set out on Sunday afternoon to build an igloo in the front yard.

Mrs TR had the good sense to stay inside the house during this one, so the boys, the Princess, our good friend Heather, and I took care of the snow construction.

It took about 4 hours total, but mostly because of missteps and the learning curve involved in building an igloo for the first time.

Lesson #1: Those little kids toy snow block makers are useless.

Bad Igloo Maker

No matter how we tried, we could not pack the snow hard enough into those traditional cheap plastic snow block makers to make a decent snow brick.   Instead, we used storage buckets like these to make large blocks, which turned out to be the perfect solution.  We had to pack them down quite a bit to make solid block forms, as without enough pressure, they would tend to fall apart.  The top layer of snow was too powdery, but the lower three quarters were great slightly wet packable snow.  Once we learned these tricks, the igloo building really took off.  Of course, another thing we discovered was that translucent white buckets are not all that easy to find in a snow storm, but since we had three of them, we could generally find at least one at any given point.

Lesson #2: Make a circle

Looking back on it now, I’m a bit shocked that the igloo stayed up as long as it did in this form.  But we learned at about the three hour mark that once you start building inward to close off your igloo, the blocks are going to fall unless they have other blocks to support them.  We started out thinking we would leave a hole for the door, but then as the igloo climbed higher, it became far more difficult to keep the pieces up and to close off the hole.  We tore off the doorway section and started building it completely closed with me inside it.

Lesson #3: Build someone inside the igloo, then dig out

Do not attempt to get in or out of the igloo or build a doorway until the igloo is complete.  One person stays inside to place the blocks, the other makes the blocks.

Knowing what we know now, I think next time we could build a better igloo than this one in about two hours.  Having a third adult would certainly have sped up the process.  It was helpful to have Mrs TR inside the house to dry off the kids and provide them with critical hot chocolate breaks, thus allowing Heather and I to work with more efficiency.

Below is a selection of images from the igloo building process, as well as a video we took from the inside after the igloo was completed.  Enjoy!

For more information on building your own igloo, I’d strongly suggest reading this first

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Ok, Mrs TR is probably going to kill me for even suggesting this, but I really want to pick up a set of these Lazer Tag guns for the boys this holiday season.  You see, Mrs TR is new school in the sense that playing with guns cannot lead to anything good and thus has a no toy guns in the house rule.  Now Mrs TR is a very reasonable person, one of the most reasonable I have ever known, and she does not subject the kids to many rules, but the few she has she feels very strongly about.  Hand weapons in general are tolerated, and the boys love fighting with their wooden swords and light sabers.  But guns are a big no no.  We do not own a single one.

On the other hand, I am old school.  I inherited my Fathers BB air rifle as a kid, was taught to shoot a real (if you can call a .22 real that is) rifle at summer camp at age 8, watched Red Dawn one too many times at age 13, and really enjoying playing paintball and Lasertag at the local arcade arena with friends in high school and college.

I recall fondly being bought many of those Zebra little yellow pellet guns by my Mom to shut me up on one shopping trip or another. Guns are dangerous but useful items as far as I am concerned, similar to matches, knives, fireworks, and ones genitals.  They will come across situations involving them someday no matter how hard we as parents try otherwise.  An early education in gun use and safety is a good idea in my opinion.

So now the boys just turned 7 and exhibit all the signs of being seven year old boys.  They attempt to turn pretty much anything with a handle into a “shooter” and often run around the house pretending to have Star Wars style blaster fights.

I remember having a Lazer tag home set as a young teenager, but it was pretty primitive gear, requiring a sensor vest with a large battery pack that also connected to the gun with a cable.  There was no official keeping score, and the equipment was fairly unreliable in reading a hit.

So I am tempted.  So very tempted.  I know that the boys would absolutely love to play Lazer Tag and this new Hasbro Nerf Lazer Tag System for 2009 is really darn cool, a huge leap from the systems I played with even at the commercial Lasertag arenas.   Complete with recoil, hit sensors built into the guns themselves, rumble packs to let you know when you are hit, tremendous range (300 feet or more!), indoor vs outdoor modes to reduce “splash” effect from walls, and optional accessories for a shotgun attachment and a green dot laser sight.  It’s on sale right now here for only $45 for two Lazer tag guns.

Think I can use “it’s good exercise!” as an excuse?

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Well folks, we’re fed up.  One of the kids was looking over my shoulder while I was editing out post on the Lego Advent Calendar for 2009 and of course had to know what it was and if they could get one for their birthday.  And they were NOT referring to the boring old City version that is available in the US, no no.  They wanted the Pirate version and no other.

But as we said before, they are not available in the US unless you have one imported from the international Lego black market!

We were thinking about starting a petition, but really, what good is a petition to a manufacturer when the likelyhood of them ever seeing it is slim.

A far better and more effective method is to start a letter writing campaign!  If we can get them a few thousand emails in the next month or so, maybe they’ll listen!

The easiest method to ask the good folks at Lego to provide some Lego Advent Calendars for the US market is by emailing them.  You can follow this link to the Lego website and send Customer Service a quick message.  Keep it polite and courteous please of course!  There is a checkbox for “complaint” on their form that is probably the right type of thing here.  Just ask why the Pirate Lego Advent Calendar is not for sale in the US and to please make some available to some online retailers so we don’t need to be

Obviously, if you are so inclined, it would be far better to write an actual physical letter!  Have the kids write some heartfelt messages about how this will be the worst Christmas ever without the Piratetastic version of the advent calendar.  Stuff like this always plays better in a little kids handwriting, don’t you agree?  You can write to Lego Headquarters USA at the following address:

LEGO Systems, Inc.
555 Taylor Road
P.O. Box 1138
Enfield, CT 06083-1138
USA

Good luck folks!  Together we can hopefully make a difference and have a happy Pirate Christmas this year!

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Late last year we embarked on a journey that we thought would be much much shorter than it turned out to be.  You see, Mrs TR decided that she had finally had enough of both the mass of toys we had acquired and thrown into he Toy Room as well as the old boring wallpaper that looks like it had been put up in the 70s.

You can see some pictures of the old Toy Room in our Toy Room Purge – Introduction and Toy Room Purge – Denial articles.

Well, what turned into a month long project to clean out the room, tear down the old wallpaper and put up new wallpaper turned into a 10 month long adventure of old decaying plaster wall, ripped particle board replacement, spackle, uneven trim and a myriad of other setbacks.

However, the Toy Room has finally been reborn!  Check out the pics below.  Despite the long time it took, the change is enormous, and the kids are loving it.  Note, that the room is ORANGE.  You’ll see what I mean by ORANGE when you look at the photos.  But the color does capture the afternoon light extremely well and make the room sort of glow in a way.

No, that isn’t one of those sticky toys that you throw against the wall and it sticks.  That’s Rainbow showing off his doorway climbing skills:

The Princess sports her post-beach attire below:

The art corner gets a lot of use:

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Baby Ewok Costume

Well, it’s that time of year again folks.  Time to break out either the kids halloween costume catalog or time to head to the fabric store and spend every night between now and Halloween sitting at the sewing machine sewing the kids costumes like Mrs TR has done in years past.

This year despite our best efforts, both Rainbow and Speedy have requested halloween costumes “From a store!  Not homemade”

So we did some research into the top Halloween costume sites and did a comparison.  Lets review our choices.  The two biggest and highest rated kid costume sites are BuyCostumes and CostumeExpress.  Unlike some of the fly by night Halloween only costume sites, they are year round costume shops and have the web site ranking to prove it.  The sites both link to each other, making me think that they share the same costume and party based parent company.

I think they must be related as you will find the same prices on costumes at each and the only major difference we could find was in their shipping prices.  The breakdown:

At CostumeExpress, normal shipping is $7.95.  At BuyCostumes, normal shipping is $4.95.  So your best bet is BuyCostumes!

We’ve also found a great coupon that gives you 20% off at BuyCostumes for a limited time only!  Here is what to do:

1. Copy the following coupon code: scary20
2. Click here to go to BuyCostumes to use the coupon when you checkout.

Seriously, you can save on shipping and get a full 20% off on kids halloween costumes all in one fell swoop!  Happy Early Halloween everyone!

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We have fairies in need of a house, apparently. The boys read this book, Fairy Houses by Tracy Kane and then couldn’t rest until we built our own fairy house. There are rules, you can’t use anything that isn’t from nature (so no doll house furniture) and you can’t damage anything living. So, a stick or leaf found on the ground is fair game, but the fairies won’t live in it if you pick a flower or pull a leaf off a tree. We did leave a couple of raspberries, but we thought they wouldn’t mind since it doesn’t hurt the bush to pick the berries. After much searching the yard for materials this is our fairy house.

Notice the bark bed with a leaf for a blanket. There is also a rock table with a raspberry for dinner.

I especialy like the flag. (The holes were already there, no leaf was punctured in the making of this fairy house).

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An adorable Manhattan Toy nursing nana dog (and cat and piggie) in honor of all mothers everywhere!

I hope you all enjoyed your breakfast in bed as much as I did: Hello Kitty toast and a doughnut shared 4 ways.

Have a happy day, I hope you all got a little quiet time!

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We try not to watch much TV around here, but it creeps in and while some weeks are virtually TV free and others include more television than I would like. I have some shows I like (I think I have already mentioned my love for Charlie and Lola), but there are also shows I really do not like. For example, I hate Super Why. It is slightly creepy computer animation and the characters talk is such simple language it is practically baby talk. It is all about how great reading is and reminds me of books that tell you all about how fun reading is rather than actually being fun to read (I’m looking at you Laura and Jenna). The characters in this show take classic stories (little miss muffet, the shoemaker and the elves, the boy who cried wolf, etc.) and change the endings so that the story book characters are all friends and play nicely. So, instead of frightening Miss Muffet, the spider smiles at her and they can be friends and play. Not only is it annoying, but the lesson in revisionist history borders on fascist.

I also don’t like Sid the Science Kid. The animation is especially creepy and I get that they wanted to make them all different colors, but did they ave to choose that particularly ugly mustard yellow? Also, it was apparently too expensive to animate background characters, so they seem to live in a post-apocalyptic world where there are empty buildings for miles but no other people to be seen. The kids go to school in a huge building, but we never see any other people in it besides their teacher and the four kids (that’s a student teacher ratio not to be seen in even the priciest of private schools, let alone the suburban public school the building looks like). Every time we watch that show all I can do is imagine the pandemic that killed all the other people in their town and wonder what they did with all the bodies (yes, I watched the Made for TV version of The Stand in the 90′s -Molly Ringwald! – and it made an impression on me).

Tomorrow I will try to have a more positive take on kids’ TV. What shows do you hate the most?

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Well, apparently, they still exist, and they are a lot more complicated than they were back in the mid-nineties. Remo had one back then, (yes he was abut 15 years older than the typical tamagotchi owner, but even then had a love of gadgety toys).  Well, said tamagotchi was fun for a couple of weeks, and then got left in a drawer or something and what with one thing and another 12 years pass…

Well, last summer, the boys found tamagotchi who had somehow made his way into a box of kitchen implements that remained packed after moving in 2004 and contained several items I had been looking for in the intervening years. They found tamagotchi, asked what it was and when explained they were delighted, enthralled, and a wee bit obsessed. Remo found the right size battery (which we actually had, the first sign that tamagotchi was meant to be with us), put it in and lo and behold it actually still worked (the second sign). He was a fun pet like inanimate object last summer, we took him to the beach in a plastic bag, he went on walks in the woods and trips to the playground and generally lived life along with us.

Then came the sad day that tamagotchi, in spite of being looked after most conscientiously, died a natural death and became an angel, or possibly a fairy, there has been much debate about that and the matter is still not officially put to rest. Well, the subsequent tamagotchi reincarnations have not been as successful. Whenever he is rediscovered and reset he is generally neglected until he turns up an angel (or possible a fairy) after only a few days of life after being left sleeping in several piles of tamagotchi poo. He has most recently spent several months under couch cushions, only to be found the weekend and given yet another chance at life. So far the boys’ attention to him has been at nearly the level of last summer with them remembering to not only feed and clean him, but to play with him too. I don’t know how long it will last, but I have higher hopes for his chances than I have had in a long time.

Oh, and have you seen how fancy the tamagotchis are now?

The can play games and talk to each other and have more than one creature inside them. There is even a celebrity family tamagotchi where if you don’t raise them right they turn into paparazzi. Let me tell you, by the time my children know what paparazzi are I want them to be much to old to be playing with tamagotchis.

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I think I saw this on the Craft magazine blog first, but I have been thinking about it ever since.

It is a play stove top made from a plastic box and some construction paper swirlies. You can keep all your kitchen toys in the box and take them out to cook.

Brilliant! You can find detailed instructions at the Croc Zine blog. I am so doing this for the next 2 or three year old birthday party we are invited to. I will fill it with some great enameled cookware from Schilling

and some Plan Toys wooden slicing fruit.

Perfect for kids who want to cook but don’t have space for a big kitchen set.

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April fools! Here at chez Toy Report that is our standard April fools joke. Not terrible exciting, but you would be surprised how many times a 5 year old will laugh at it. For those of you who are similarly April fools challenged and would like to spice up your pranking, you may be interested in this handy dandy prank kit.

It comes with 12 pranks including classics like the hand buzzer, snake in a can and fake vomit. Well, it says is contains pet vomit, I am just going to go and assume that it is fake. And how does one differentiate pet vomit from human?  I’m going to stop thinking about that for now.

For grown-ups in offices who are looking for more interesting ways to celebrate this most jokey holiday I suggest the book Cubicle Warfare.  It includes instructions for putting your coworker’s staple in jell-o.  There is nothing funnier than a stapler in jell-o.

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The boys have been invited to a Pirate birthday party this weekend and I, with the Princess asleep on my lap, have just purchased the following presents (have I mentioned lately how much I heart Amazon?).

Our favorite Pirate themed book.

How does anyone live without Pirate Snap?

And pirate Legos. I actually got three of these since I think Rainbow and Speedy won’t be able to live without them once they see them.

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We’ve been big fans of the Mini Kick scooter for kids since Mrs TR first went on a kids scooter search for the boys when they were turning 3 years old back in 2005.  After much research into reviews, looking at all the kick scooter options, the standout winner was obvious.

You can read our review about how she did some research and found the best toddler scooter was the Micro Kicks from Kickboard USA.  It’s stable three wheel design, size, craftsmanship, and slow precise turning ability make it the superior scooter for toddlers.  That bundled up kid in the picture is Rainbow at three years old on his second outing to the local tennis courts.  It’s hard wanting to ride your new kid scooter for your birthday is in late November!

We gave them to the boys for their 3rd birthday and have LOVED them every since.  As they turned 4 years old and 5 years old, the kids scooters have logged tens of miles on the Bike Trail near our house.  They get pulled out at every playdate and party we’ve ever had, typically resulting in at least one argument over who gets one next (we have two, but when there are 8 kids all wanting a turn it gets harder).  While more expensive than other toddler scooters on the market ($75 vs $45 for some other cheaper brands), you certainly get FAR more for the extra money.  The top two reasons that set them apart:

1. We’ve been beating and abusing the Mini Kick Scooters for three plus years now and they are still going strong.
2. They were stable and easy to use from day one for a 3 year old toddler.  They turn by leaning on the handlebars which move the wheels slightly.  You can’t sharply turn the handle bars and suddenly veer off the road or tip over like many other two and three wheel scooters.   We’ve had no major accidents or problems, unlike every time they’ve tried a two wheel scooter or other three wheel scooter that turn too fast.  Preventing just one fall is well worth the extra in my book.

Well, the boys turned 6 last year and are now over the 45 lbs weight limit on the Mini Kicks and won’t be able to use them anymore.  So what to do for the scooter loving 5 year old, 6 year old, 7 year old, or 8 year old that you don’t want riding a hard to control two wheeled scooter down a busy bike path in the summer?

Kickboard USA to the rescue!  The company formerly known as “Micro” that is behind the Mini Kick recently released the Maxi Kick Scooter for kids 6-10 years old.  It appears to use the same steering technology that makes the Mini so great, but in a larger design that replaces handle bars with a really cool looking “pilot steering” stick rather than traditional handlebars.

Click here to get more details on the Maxi Kick Scooters.

You can check out their promo video below to see the Maxi Kick in action:

We’ve been speaking with Julie over at Kickboard USA and they’re sending a couple of Maxi Kicks to us at the Toy Report to do a full review, as well as a Mini Kick for a giveaway to one lucky Toy Report reader!  Check back here for the Mini Kick giveaway and full Maxi Kick review, including videos of the Maxi scooters in action at the local kid scooter testing grounds (AKA the community tennis courts) and the real live six year old opinion.  Can’t wait, they look awesome…

And remember, when using any riding toy, always wear proper head protection!  Helmets are a must.  Knee pads and elbow pads are always recommended as well.

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