Activity Toy Reviews

All our children love temporary tattoos. This one is special because you can color them yourself. We purchased this for my son's 7th birthday and it was a great birthday activity for all. Needless to say, I & the rest of our guests were covered in art when the day was through. The tattoos stay fairly well if you don't get scrubbing them too hard & are easy to put on, they don't stick and peel like some we've tried. They offer varied styles of tattoos, everything from dragons to sports. All in all this is great fun!!

I do wish there were a few more tatoos in this kit, but you can continue to use the markers and draw free hand tattos when they are gone. They were easy to apply and fun to color in for the kids. I was a little skeptical after reading a few of the reviews, but I am glad I decided to purchase this anyway.

this is fun now because i like making tattoos so its nice and me and my friends play with it when they come over:-D

I read the reviews and still bought this and the shed for my bob the builder fan. This stuff really is terrible. My son wanted over and over to build the house as shown on the box - it can't be done.You just can't build anything - not even the face of a house. Not even because the magnets do not hold but because there aren't the right shape bricks.

He uses the bricks now as Skip's load but surely there are cheaper things for Skip to cart around! Also the Bob the Builder Shed is terrible - I super glued it together in the end as if you just touched it, it fell apart. The vehicles and die cast characters are A+++ but the other stuff is utter rubbish. Get Wendy and Bob on e-bay!

But if I could I would. My 3 year old son has every one of the bob the builder toys. The trucks and vehicle toys, for the most part, are great. Every single one of the playsets are junk and will fall apart the first time you play with them. They are of poor design and as you see in other posts they can be dangerous. DO NOT BUY ANY!!!

We have the Bob Toolbox playset, and it is junk, too. The only good thing about this set is that you get Bob and Wendy, and at least they don't break. If your little one likes Thomas the Tank Engine, buy those playsets instead. They are so much better made that it is ridiculous. They cost a bit less, too. The take along Bob vehicles are nice, but the larger talking vehicles, junk as well! My four year old loves his Bob the builder toys, but they are a huge pain because the design and quality are shoddy. You do need to know that before you buy. These are not toys you can set up and feel confident that they will get hours of trouble free play. The pieces fall off, some of the pieces do not fit properly. It is annoying, but kids love it.

While my son enjoyed the illustrations anf fun content of the books in this set, I felt it was disappointing as a learning tool for beginning readers because it moves much too quickly. The first book is just letters and letter sounds. Very introductory. The second book introduces three letter words right off with no transition at all like 2 letter blends. That was ok to me since it was phonetic 3 letter words, but by page 2 we were already "leaping" to 4 and 5 letter words and by page 3 they were already introducing a sight word - "does" and a double consonant word - "cannot". I thought the pace was frustrating for my son. I was hoping/expecting a book devoted to just blends and/or 3 letter words. Instead this program is organized by vowels with the letter a being introduced first. I don't see that as a problem, but I was expecting more phonetic 3 letter words to start and introducing harder 4 and 5 letter words by maybe book 3 and sight words coming later, like maybe book 4. Unfortunately, you can't see exactly what your getting until you open the box.
Nonetheless, the audio is entertaining for children with music and humor thrown in and the reward stickers, poster, and ribbon are a fun way to recognize your child's achievement. The practice game is basically just like the Word Whammer Fridge Phonics product but with cards instead of magnets.

If you enjoy a good time...then look elsewhere. This game is awful! I had done one of these murder mystery games before, years ago, and really enjoyed it. So I decided to host my own, and I bought Staying Alive. It came with a bunch of prep materials including invitations, costume suggestions and the like, but the materials were much more focused on giving you recipes for your gathering than supplying you with detailed character descriptions or instructions on how the game is played. The night of my murder mystery everyone showed up, all dressed up which was fun. The we started the game. The game is set up very rigidly, and doesn't leave any room for interpretation or imagination. For example, at the beginning of each round each character is given information about themselves, some of which shouldn't be revealed "unless directly asked about from another player." We discovered while playing the game that each of these pieces of information were given to other players in order to ask us about. So each round played out as if we were reading a script...and a really bad script at that. The motives are all poposterous and stupid and there is absolutely no character development at all, or room for character development. And the murderer...comes out of thin air, as if chosen at random from a hat. Please don't waste your money on this stupid stupid game!
P.S. I gave this game a 3 for durability, but I'm not sure what that means. I guess you could play it again, but then why would you want to?

i got the idea of doing a murder mystery from my friend ashley who did the "pasta passion and pistols" murder mystery. hers was lots of fun, so i decided that i'd try it out for myself. when i got the game i was so excited. the thing about these murder mysterys is that you can only have 6 suspects and if you invite 8 people, two of them have to be insignificant. that was a bit of a bummer. when all the guests arrived, they all looked like they just stepped out of a time machine from 1979. (of course i wouldnt know what people looked like from that time because i wasnt alive then, but from what i could imagine they looked the part). we ate fondue and the room looked oh-so-seventies. when we started the game, the character booklet for "andy warthog" the first two pages were right and the last two pages were right, but all the other pages were fom the wromg murder mystery, so that was a bit of a disappointment. but at least we could know if he was the murderer. overall this was a fun game and i think that the night came to the perfect close and if a had another opportunity, i would do it again!!

My husband and I played this game with some friends last weekend and we had a truly GROOVY TIME! Talk about making a dinner party fun! We used the invitations that came with the game and the menu suggestions. We encouraged our friends to dig out their old 70's cloths (some even bought some at the local Salvation Army for very cheap) and we played 70's music as people arrived. We even gave a bottle of wine to the people with the best costume. It was really fun and everyone got into acting out their 70's cheesey characters. The game was very easy to understand and we all go into solving the murder. We are going to get another Murder Mystery Party for the very near future. Get this!!! Especially if you have friends that need a little change in their life. Have some fun and be creative! No holds barred!

A must if your child is into the sensory pleasures of playdoh. It's not as good as the original playdoh designs of the late 70s/early 80s, but it's still enjoyable. Older set let you crank the hair out with a handle, now you have to push the plastic character down onto the stand, which can be quite hard for a little one. But with Mommy or Daddy's help, your child will truly enjoy giving the characters hair cuts and treats. The set is small, with even smaller tubs or playdoh, but my daughter really enjoys it and looks forward to playing with it every afternoon. Enjoy.

My 2 year old daughter loves to play with the fuzzy pet parlor. She sometimes has trouble pushing the play doh through the animals heads but she still has fun playing with it. I don't think she has come across a play doh toy that she doesn't like. You usually can't go wrong with play doh.

You have never seen something like this!! I thought I knew all the cool toys. It stretches and bounces back ... wow !!! And it works again and again. My 12 year old son and I spent 8 hours stretching and releasing it last Monday (or was it Tuesday ... I can't remember). BUY THIS TOY!