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With my mission to keep my daughter's belief in Santa going a little bit longer I was intrigued by a PR offer to try out the Portable North Pole site to create a personalised message from Santa for my daughter! I was offered a free premium code but as I went on wrong link I ended up paying £2.99...
The site asks various questions about your child including pronouncing their name and various key details. You can then upload a photograph of them and off a special event to add to their special book. At the minute this feature doesn't work on an iPad (my son's video is a bit sparser!).
Telling Santa what they have been asked to do better such as eating their vegetables or sharing their toys. Also what kind of toy they have asked for. With the premium version you can add a photo of your home and a pet to add more personalisation.
Once you have checked out the video link is emailed to you with a PIN code and you can get it ready to play to your child. I would suggest getting it to the play button before bringing your child over. This is how transfixed my two were with their videos:
The way the video has the child's name both written and spoken had them hooked. What was great for having more than one child is that the videos weren't 100% identical. Each child's special book was on a different part of Santa's shelves and they had a different reindeer.
We were all convinced that this was the Santa and the children were relieved to be just about on the good list! Hoping they will try their best to behave now they have seen how Santa and his elves are watching them!
If you would like to share the magic I can give you a special discount code. To use it go to http://www.portablenorthpole.com/voucher and enter the code BLOG10BK for a 10% discount on all their merchandise.
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Baby Born Interactive Star
This is the latest incarnation of the Baby Born series.It has moved on from the original version that my step daughter had about 10 years ago.
She comes with one outfit, a dummy, a potty, nappy, bottle, feeding bowl and spoon. There are also some bits of jewellery which are child sized. This means that you can either give her water through the bottle or special food with the spoon. Then you can put her on her potty to do a "poo" or she can do a wee when you press her belly button.Just make sure you have tightened the valve on her back before putting water in her or she leaks as granny discovered! Even though this is 3+ toy my 9 year has loved being her mummy. She is a very cute looking baby whether asleep or awake:
What is good compared to the early Baby Born is that you can put this baby in the bath as its waterproof and has no electronic parts. She is well sized so that a 3 year old wouldn't have much trouble holding her.For a first real doll she would be ideal as if my daughter is anything to go by your child will get years of fun with her.
Smasha Ballz Ninjaaah
This toy is very much designed to appeal to boys with its Ninja look and the fact that the packaging says:
- Smash 'em
- Chuck 'em
- Slam 'em
My son was very keen to chuck him around, I wasn't so keen as we have a small house! He makes proper Ninja sounds when he is thrown or whacked. Here is a little video showing some of them with me operating him:
Apparently the more you whack him the more noises he makes. This is obviously an incentive to do it more and more! If like me you discourage your children from chucking stuff around the house then this is not the toy for you. It does also respond to patting and dropping too which reduces the danger issue.
My son periodically goes back to this for short periods but it hasn't grabbed him that much after the initial excitement. Maybe other children would enjoy it more and it would do better in a home where it could be really thrown around!
Pokemon Electronic Pokedex
We have only ever watched Pokemon on YouTube so I wasn't sure what my son would make of his pokedex. In fact I was surprised at how much he enjoyed it!
The pokedex has information on 45 of the Pokemon characters plus a trivia quiz. My son seemed to manage to work out how to use it without any instruction which is more than I did!
Here is a video showing some of what the pokedex can do:
It is a very simple black display but it seemed enough for my son to see what he was doing. If you have a big Pokemon fan then I'm sure they will get even more out of it than my son did. I remember my now teenage step sons being heavily onto Pokemon at his age!
A pretty basic electronic toy but if my son is anything to go by a popular choice on Christmas Day!
Zoobles Family Day - Jump Rope
The Zoobles Family Day jump rope set will be available soon on the website. We have had a few Zoobles in the past which my daughter loves so it was nice to get a new addition. The nice thing about this one is that it actually does something rather than just allow the zooble to pop open on the magnetic pad.
Here is a little video of me making Zippy skip:
We discovered she skips much better when closed though she can pop open on occasion! All of my daughter's Zoobles can skip on the jump rope as they are close enough in size and weight. There are perching points for up to 3 Zoobles on the play set too:
And they can all share in the cardboard picnic. Not sure how long the picnic will survive before getting lost or ruined but the rest of the set is well made.
A nice addition to a Zooble fans collection or a great first piece to start a collection.
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We were sent a code to get a free copy of the latest Peppa Pig game from PS2 this time it's set in a theme park:
Up to 3 children can have a login for the game to savw their coins and stickers. Like Peppa games we have previously reviewed there are quite a few options for games inside the app:
My 6 year old's favourite was the bumper cars:
Whilst his big sister loves the music game:
Each game has simple instructions and easy controls which means its easy for a child to play. As they go they earn coins to spend in the shop on stickers to add to the scenes they can create:
A lovely game for Peppa Pig fans and one that is very simple. Slightly more than some games at £3.99 but it would get plenty of play.
My 9 year old started questioning the existence of Santa last year and even more so this year. For her little brother's sake I'm trying to keep the magic for a bit longer.
Today we were helped by Kendal Museum's Polar post as my children wrote a letter to Santa!
