I was just looking at these and a couple of 7 year old boys walked by and immediately said “I want that! Can we get those!” So now we have a pretty good indication of the target user of this especially cool spoon, knife and fork set. It is made by Fred and Friends  (I Love Fred and Friends). They are dishwasher safe and feature Lego like silicone handles for eating and stacking fun. Looks like a great lunch box set.

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Seems like with every super popular kids toy or trend, there are always rumors of a recall. The shelves empty, news reports that the popular toys are banned from schools, and suddenly everyone is asking if there has been a recall.

We get a decent amount of our readers from web searches like Google or Yahoo and can see a list of all the search terms people use to find our site. In this case, we’ve been seeing a bunch of searches for things like “is there a silly bands recall” and “silly bands recalled”

If you are impatient, as far as we know, there has been no Silly Bands recall.  In fact, it would be hard to imagine a situation where they would be recalled.  Most recalls involve something like a breakage hazard such as your kids scooters wheels falling off, or something intended for babies or toddlers that can result in strangulation, or something made of toxic metals or something inherently dangerous to all ages such as Jarts.  Seems unlikely that there would be anything toxic about them, considering they aren’t intended to be ingested at all, but you never know.

With Silly Bandz we’re basically talking about rubber bands here, just not the traditional round shape.  Yeah, it might hurt if you stretch them too far and they snap.  Sure, you could hurt a person’s eye with them if you stretch and shoot them.  But they’re essentially rubber bands, which have been around for over 150 years now.   We don’t expect a Silly Bandz recall anytime soon.

That being said, you might have trouble finding them at you local toy retailer.  As they become popular with kids, they tend to sell out quickly.  And nothing serves to drive a toy’s popularity than to ban it as some schools have already done, citing the shaped rubber bands as a “distraction” to kids during the school day.

If you have trouble finding them locally, you can always order them at reasonable prices and shipping by clicking here.

Note that Silly Bands are marked as not for kids under three, as they do present a choking hazard when balled up.  Also, remind kids that they should NOT be stretched and used as a necklace either.

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A friend (thanks E.!) just sent me the link to this popsicle maker from Williams-Sonoma and I felt the need to share. It seems to have a base that is frozen in your freezer like an ice-cream maker. Then you put in your popsicle ingredients and it freezes them in 7 minutes! Instant gratification and yummy home made popsicles all in one! Behold the Zoku Quick Pop Maker

For those of you who feel that $49.95 is too much to spend on instant gratification in popsicle form, I have alternatives for you. Tovolo makes amazing popsicle molds, but you will have to wait for them to freeze in your freezer at the normal rate. My favorite is the Tovolo Freezer Jewel Pops.

They are little, just enough for kids to eat before they melt. The popsicle bases are shaped like rings so they can be worn like ring pops while eating. We have these and they work great. Te base keeps them standing straight in the freezer and they come out of the molds easily (sometimes we run them under warm water for a few seconds). The best part is we only use juice that everyone likes so we don’t get stuck with a freezer full of lonely purple popsicles that no one wants to eat.

Also cool is the Tovolo Blue Rocket Pop Molds. Because juice pops are more delicious when shaped like a rocket. You could probably freeze in stages and make realistic replicas of the ice cream truck red white and blue rocket pops. If you are feeling like being more adventurous in your summer popsicle creations you can always try the book Pops! Icy Treats for Everyone. It looks quite fancy, as popsicles go.

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When you have three kids who each need their own sand toys the beach toy bags can get a little bulky. There are many toys that can be shared, but everyone realy needs their own bucket and shovel. I am seriously considering, in the interest of saving space in the beach bags, switching to collapsible sand pails. I especially like the Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Cinco Starfish Collapsible Bucket.

Not only for the cuteness (but really, the cuteness!). Holds sand or water and can be smushed flat for ease of storage.

Honestly, this along with the Melissa and Doug Cinco Starfish Scoop and my kids can entertain themselves for hours at the beach. We often bring other toys too, but sometimes if I am the only grown-up and I can’t manage to carry more than the snacks and towels then we jettison all the toys except what the kids can carry themselves. We have found that with a bucket and shovel each, they don’t really need anything else.

For the days when we bring the larger collection of beach toys, I am thinking we may need one of these Melissa and Doug Sunny Patch Clicker Crab Hourglass Sifter and Funnel. Can be used with either sand or water, I can envision the boys timing beach races with this hour glass.

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Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch sand toy week continues. I really like the general baking set.

Officially called the Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Seaside Sidekicks Sand baking Set, it performs all the basic functions of any sand bucket set. It has a mixing bowl/bucket with a lid that doubles as a sifter. It has a mixing spoon/shovel and a whisk. Also includes three measuring cups, perfect for sand baking.

I am also a fan of the Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Speck Seahorse Sand Ice Cream Set.  It comes with an ice cream bucket, ice cream cones that you can scoop sand into with one of the ice cream sand mold scoops and a shaker for sand sprinkles. Because these toys don’t include the kinds of little molds that the cookie set and the cupcake set, I think they have a wider age range, fun for kids as young as one or two. The youngest kids may not get that they are scooping ice cream, but they will have just as much fun with scooping sand into different containers and dumping it out.

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The Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch collection includes some great new sand toys perfect for the beach (or sand box) this summer.

Every year I like to put together beach bags for the kids. I salvage anything that can be saved from last yer and pickup some new sand toys. We spend a lot of time at the beach in the summer and some simple shovels and buckets see the most use. You can find past sand toy reviews like the sand sac here and sand wheels here.

Well, thus year Melissa & Doug have outdone themselves. I love their food themed sand toys and I know my kids will too since they frequently serve me sand cake and sand ice cream. The first is this Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Seaside Sidekicks Sand Cookie Set (that is a really long name).

It comes with a rolling pin, cookie cutters, plates and a sprinkle shaker for sand sprinkles. Best of all it comes in its own mesh bag (I love toys that come with bags to help keep them all together).

My other favorite is the Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Seaside Sidekicks Sand Cupcake Set.

It comes with hinged cupcake molds, a “baking” tray, and different shaped frosting molds. It also comes with a handy mesh bag for storage.  I can just see my kids digging out a sand oven to bake all their sand treats. I can also see Rainbow trying to sell his treats to other beach goers (he is on an earning money kick).

These toys look like so much fun, but the molds maybe a little fiddly for younger kids. I think four and older may have the most fun with these. Have fun digging!

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We attended a birthday party last week for two 7 year old girls and got them each the same thing. This stitch-it doll kit from The Little Experience.

Adorable and the box turns into a chair for the doll.

Also, a copy of Babymouse: Queen of the World. Everyone loves Babymouse.

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A few years ago the boys wanted night lights they could take to bed with them. We finally found some kids night lights at Ikea for their 6th birthday.

I recently saw these OXO night lights and I know what to get if we need new nightlights.  I love these blue and green OXO Candela Tooli lights. They are rechargeable and have a safe recharging base that has no exposed electrical parts. They will light for 8 hours and can be lighted while recharging (in case you forget to charge it during the day). They also come in orange and pink. Having twins, a set of two is perfect for us, but you can also get a single OXO Candela Tooli.

Now, are you ready for the best one? The new OXO zoom light.

Awesome, no? I know so many kids who would love to take this light up rocket to bed. I think these sorts of things make great presents for kids when you don’t really know what to get them. Great for a wide range of ages and you don’t have to know whether they prefer pirates or dragons or princesses or baseball.

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It is officially spring and after spending so much of the cold months stuck inside kids are eager to get outside and dig in some dirt! Put them to work with some garden tools their size. The Toysmith kid’s big tool set looks just like the grown-up version which will appeal to kids who love to help in the garden.   If you want to “plant” something for the doll house garden too, try the Plan Toy doll house vegetable garden, We have this and boy is it cute. You can plant the wooden carrots and radishes and then pick them and serve them to the dolls for dinner.

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I am kind of loving ImagiPLAY. This wooden spinning top set comes with 8 wooden tops and instructions for a game called Bambaram that is played by kids in India. From what I can gather using the magic of the internets,  the game involves trying to push each others tops out of the circle. My kids (who enjoy all forms of sublimated violence) would love this!

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It’s amazing how some childhood traditions continue to last year after year and generation after generation, and friendship bracelets are one of those things.

I remember making friendship bracelets as a kid at camp and wearing ones given to me for months it seemed, until they finally fell off in pieces.  Being a child of the 80’s I remember making these bracelets out of gimp, a strong plastic lacing that could stretch a bit

Make A Friendship Bracelet Kit from Alex

If you are looking for the perfect gift for a seven, eight or nine year old, look no further.  The Friends 4 Ever Bracelet Making Kit from Alex gives you everything you need to make tons of different varieties of friendship bracelets.  It comes with two different looms to make different styles of friendship bracelets, as well as eight different patterns.  There are 22 different colors of floss including solid and multi-colored threads, as well as beads, a beading needle and detailed instructions to making many completely different and unique friendship bracelets.

Click here for more infomation on the Alex Friends Forever Bracelet Kit

Wooden Bead Friendship Bracelets from Melissa & Doug

If you have a younger child interested in making friendship bracelets, then the Alex kit might be too complicated for them.  For a four-six year old, you are far better off with a wooden bead bracelet making set.  Small hands make light work of putting beads onto thread and tends to be far easier than trying to weave and knot the patterns required for a thread based friendship bracelet.

Click here for more information on the Melissa & Doug Wooden Bead Kit

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We’ve been on a serious board game kick here at Chez Toy Report lately, with the boys really starting to become interested in playing tabletop games more and more as they get older.

Let’s face it, board games for toddlers are geared toward the 3-4 year old set.  Any parent who has been forced to sit for round after round of Candy Land knows just how mind numbing boring it is.  There is nothing to do, no choices to make whatsoever, you pick up a card then move to that color.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  For a 3 year old, it’s great.  Don’t make your 5 or 6 year old play it though.

I’d put Chutes and Ladders into this category as well.  At least there is some tiny amount of math involved in Chutes and Ladders.

These types of games typically play themselves and help ready our children for adult lives of sitting in front of the television being spoon fed entertainment.  That’s not for me, nor do I want it do be for my kids.

With that in mind, I’ll be highlighting some great kids board games that really allow for fun, creativity, learning, and problem solving all rolled into one.

We are big fans of Enchanted Forest by Ravensburger lately.  In fact, pretty much every game Ravensburger makes is awesome on some level, but this one particularly so.  The rules are a little too long to go into here, but it’s basically a memory game.  You need to travel around the board and discover which treasure is hidden under which tree, then race to the castle once you find the treasure.  Get there first, guess correctly, and a new treasure card is turned over.  Guess wrong and get teleported back to the start of the board.  The first person to find three treasures wins.  Sounds easy?  It’s not.  Anyone who rolls doubles can use “magic” to change the treasure card, so if someone is racing towards the castle if they know the treasure, you can thwart them.  Be careful though, they might know where the new treasure is as well.

This is a decent length game, typically taking about an hour to play a full game, but it culminates quickly once a few players have seen most of the treasures on the board, typically resulting in a mad dash to the castle by all the players.

It’s a great learning experience for younger kids, since it doesn’t involve advanced reading skills but can involve advanced strategic learning.  I’ve been able to teach the boys how to infer when someone knows where the treasure is, how to play defensively, how to bluff, and how to balance the risks of making an educated guess based on available information.

Click here for more info on Enchanted Forest by Ravensburger.

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Our boys are pretty exclusive to the Star Wars LEGOs, they aren’t as interested in the other sets. I imagine that will change once they see the Toy Story LEGOs that are being released to go along with Toy Story 3. I like the Woody’s Round Up set which also includes a LEGO Stinky Pete. I love Stinky Pete.

But I suspect the boys will be all over this Construct-a-Buzz set.

He has pop-out wing action. Everyone loves pop-out wing action.

There is also a Construct-a-Zurg. “So we meet again, Buzz Lightyear, for the last time.”

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This is a suggestion from a friend. She gave this to a just turned four year old girl who Loved it! It is a Hello Kitty diary set.

It come with a diary that locks with a key (fun!), a fuzzy top pen, a Hello Kitty stamp and a whole bunch of stickers.

The birthday girl in question was delighted and immediately started wrriting all her secrets. I think this is perfect for a 4 to 7 year old Hello Kitty lover.

Not a Hello Kitty lover? (It is hard to imagine, but there must be a few out there). eeBoo makes some adorable locking journals, like this mermaid diary.

Looking for something similar for a boy? Well, unless that boy likes pink or mermaids, you are out of luck. Apparently the makers of such things don’t think that boys like writing or have thoughts that they might like to record.  Some of the eeBoo diaries are sufficiently gender neutral. The travel notebook is way on sale today (but this is Amazon so that may change at any moment!).

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Know anyone who you could describe as an odd duck? Well, here is the perfect present for them. Yes, quite literally, and odd duck. Boon, as anyone who ready this site knows, is a minor obsession of mine (let’s just say I’m a fan). I am still hoping for a Boon animal bag or four for Christmas. The Boon Odd Duck may just be the best thing to ever happen to a rubber duckie. May I introduce to you:

Squish

Bob

Jane

And I know I shouldn’t play favorites, but I think I love this one best, Slim.

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I have already confessed my love for the boon animal bag in my Stuffed Animal Storage post. One of the reasons I love it so is that the stuffed animals don’t seem terribly miserable inside of it. Sure they get sat on, but any stuffed animal who has had some coveted time on the bed has been squished plenty and I don’t think they mind that so much. Not having bones must help with this. (Can you tell we have been reading Toys Go Out again). What I really object to in stuffed animal storage is making the snuggly toys look as if they are trying to get out.

I think jail is completely the wrong way to go with stuffed animals. What could they possibly have done to deserve this?

Hanging from a chain seems unpleasant, even if you have no bones.

The other version of this is hanging from a tree. I don’t think this is better but it is somehow more disturbing. Like they grew there.

There is  nothing wrong with an old fashioned toy box, but I think boon gets points for style.

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We have a bit of a stuffed animal overpopulation problem at Chez Toy Report.  There is a huge wooden chest filled with them upstairs, storage boxes in the attic, an empty duvet cover filled with them downstairs, and all the current favorites on the beds, of course. Now, I would be happy to thin the herd but the boys switch favorite animals all the time and we periodically go on hunts for stuffed teddy bears or bunnies or brown puppies or whatever is needed. They would certainly notice and be distraught if they disappeared forever. I have done extensive research on how to store stuffed animals and I have determined that there is only one truly good solution. The Boon Animal Bag.

I haven’t ordered one yet, but I am dreaming of them as the answers to all my problems. I think the single green one is cute, I may have to acquire one to see just how much of the plush menagerie fits inside.

The genius of these bags is that you end up with functional bean bag type seating in addition to stuffed animal storage. The bags zip open and animals get stuffed inside, but there are see through panels in the bags making it easier to spot a a favorite if needed.  Of course, having imaginative kids, there are always some unreal concerns here.  There are certain plush animals that really do not belong together.  You cannot put the plush manatee and plush seal in the same bag as the stuffed shark, and woe be to the parent who packs the tiger plush together with the plush bears.  You may wake up one morning to find a bag full of shredded fluff and stuffing.

My only real concern is that we have three children and I’m not sure I can invest in three separate bags so everyone can have their own. I am tempted by this triple bag, but I’m not sure how if three actual children could sit on it together.    It would solve the issue with large stuffed animals fitting in the smaller bag though.

The lounger model looks comfy, but we again have the three kids problem.

This is absolutely the best stuffed animal storage I have ever seen, and boy are there some terrible options out there. I’ll tell you about the unpleasant alternatives later.

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I saw this on Cool Mom Picks last week. The Sand Sac is a 100% cotton pail that comes with a bamboo shovel (admittedly it looks more like a spoon but it will still shovel sand). It also comes with fabric markers so you can decorate yourself. It is such a perfect sand toy, especially for anyone concerned about having to much plastic. It will carry sand or water just like a plastic bucket but it made of renewable resources, is machine washable and contains no petroleum products (yay!). It is also collapsible, meaning it takes up much less room in an overcrowded beach bag. I think I may put this on my list for all summer birthday parties. The Sand Sac people suggests using them as party favors – and now I have another reason to wish my kids had summer birthdays.

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We get a lot of random mail here at The Toy Report asking us if we’ll post something on this new toy or that new gadget by various manufacturers, and typically we ask a toy manufacturer to send us a sample of their stuff so we can have our playtesters evaluate it fully.

However, in some cases we see a toy so darn cool that we just can’t wait to let you know about it, and this is one of those times.  We’d never heard of Bluw.com before Myriam contacted us asking if we’d review some of their toys.  Everything on the site is designed by the company and they have toys like you won’t find anywhere else.

This one really caught my eye.  Yup, those are radio controlled jousting knights. The goal is to joust and knock the opposing knight from his seat which ends the battle.

Note, this is not a toy for the very young, as it has small parts and appears to be quite fast and challenging for even adults to joust accurately.  Probably put this one in the 8-12 year old range.

Check out the video of them in action:

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We don’t review many kids toys that make noise here at The Toy Report. Mrs. TR historically has had a very strong aversion to toys that make noise.

Imagine her surprise when we received one Mr. Norman PhartEphant in the mail. After some discussion we decided that despite any misgivings we might have with the noise, we should let the experts decide. Our twin six year old boys would undoubtedly think it was the funniest thing ever. Rainbow is a sucker for soft, cuddly cute things and also things that fart, so we’d be bad parents NOT to give him something that combined both into one snugly little guy.

Well, you can witness the results of the boys first exposure to Norman PhartEphant in the video below. Note, they had no idea what was coming and had no coaching. I think any stiffness you might perceive in the acting is a combination of awkwardness being filmed and the fact that they weren’t sure they were allowed to laugh and enjoy a farting elephant. We received some whoopee cushions as a party favor a few months back and had set some fairly complex ground rules regarding farting noises and toys, such as not at the dinner table, not at school, not right in someone’s ear, etc. I think they were trying to figure out where farting elephants fit into the rulebook…

The next day, Norman was still a big hit and was put through some pretty rigorous play testing, including a decent bout of tail swinging by a crazed Rainbow chasing Speedy around the house before I put a stop to it. You can likely see that as one of the related videos to the one above, as I doubt there are many videos tagged “farting plush elephant” up on YouTube.

The little guy is pretty darn cute, and I challenge you to try and find a 4-8 year old boy (or girl for that matter) who wouldn’t think this farting elephant is hysterical. If you are looking for a gift for a 4-8 year old boy that needs cheering up and a little laughter, Norman certainly fits the bill and is strongly recommended as a get well gift that is sure to put a smile on someones face.

Norman is a creation of Fierce Fun Toys, a new toy company out of New York. You can purchase him from his home at Phartephant.com by clicking here.

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