Month: August 2013

Isn’t it funny how each kid has his or her own unique interests and obsessions? Since Tristan had such an obsessive adoration of Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, I assumed all three boys would have the same fascination for them. Then came Simon, who cared not one whit for Thomas, Percy, James or Gordon, but was instead a card-carrying fan boy for Murray, Jeff, Anthony and Greg Wiggles. And while Lucas was mildly interested in the Wiggles and does enjoy the friends from Sodor, he has lately shown a real fascination for something I thought all little boys loved: dinosaurs!

We’ve been feeding into his fascination this summer. We brought him to the Museum of Nature where he walked in awestruck excitement from one massive set of dino bones to another, and oh boy did he love the dino gallery!

Then, when we went to Canada’s Wonderland, Beloved convinced the lot of us to fork out the extra exhibit fee to visit the Dinosaurs Alive section of the park. I was not overly jazzed by it, I have to admit, but the other kids enjoyed it and Lucas adored it. Totally worth the extra $5 per person, or whatever nominal amount we paid.

So when I saw that the Imaginext Mega Apatosaurus was one of the toys up for review from my friends at Fisher-Price this month, that was a hands-down choice. Lucas was so excited to get it out of the box that I barely had time to take a picture before we took it out of the box.

Not only does it roar, but to Bella’s utter bewilderment, it walks! Check it out:

Get ready for a MEGA adventure with the Imaginext® Mega Apatosaurus. With motorized action, it walks and roars like a real dinosaur! Plus, this one comes with cool transforming tech armor and cannons that fire at the press of a button! Kids will love placing the figure in the cockpit of the dino’s armor and pretending they’re in a cool futuristic world where dinos and humans live together. And when it’s time for classic dino play, just remove the armor (and the figure) and this cool dino is ready for any prehistoric adventure with its rotating head, moveable jaw and tail, and motorized action. Includes Mega Apatosaurus with motorized action, pop-up armor, two projectiles, and Imaginext® figure with armor.

And, heh, if you’ve got a mom home for a week of summer vacation with a little too much time on her hands, you can have a lot of fun. Like this!!

(Seriously, that photo was so much fun to put together, but masking the finicky bits around the trees was WAY harder than I expected!!)

Also in our review pack this month was the awesome Imaginext SuperFriends Batcave. Like all the Imaginext toys and playsets, this toy is specially designed to encourage a range of creative play. It also facilitates fine motor development, and helps build confidence and self-expression through role playing and mastery of the various features. The Batcave has a Batcomputer (heh, maybe it’s a Samsung Chromebook? *wink*), an elevator, a jail for the bad guys, and secret passageways. I have to admit, I was a little perplexed about the functionality of some of the pieces, but Lucas happily adapted them all into his play. I’m not sure of the original intent of the removable Batwing, but according to Lucas they help Batman fly up and disable the Penguin’s umbrellas. Okay then!

I may have mention (ahem) a few times how much we love our Imaginext superhero toys, and we are getting quite the collection! I continue to love the Imaginext toys because of the creative play they inspire. One day this week we had Robin riding the Mega Apatosaurus to rescue the knight being held captive by Batman’s evil twin in the Eagle Talon castle, which still ranks as our favourite Imaginext toy of all time. There may have even been a pre-teen boy or two drawn in to play as well. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone!

I’m delighted that our toy review opportunity coincided so neatly this month with Lucas’s growing obsession with dinosaurs. Now all we need is a Fisher-Price rock tumbler, to feed their other obsession with rocks and gems. 🙂

Disclosure: I receive special perks as a part of my affiliation with the Fisher-Price Play Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada. The opinions in this blog are my own.

The voice cried out in resigned dismay. “Daa-ad! The computer crashed again!”

Sigh. The laptop the boys use as “their” computer is more than four years old, and has been played with by first me and then them on a near-daily basis. It has lived a good life, and we knew we’d have to replace it soon. Beloved looked at me and shrugged. “Maybe we can hold off until Christmas, and get a replacement as a family Christmas gift?”

And then, in the funny way the universe works, the very next day an e-mail arrived offering me the opportunity to review (for keepsies!) a new Samsung Chromebook from Staples.ca. I didn’t know what a Chromebook was – I had to look it up to figure out it was a computer. It’s actually, I am learning, more of a laptop-tablet hybrid. And I said, “Sure!” (Actually, I danced a little happy dance around the kitchen. I love my life.)

So I admit that just by the serendipitous nature of its arrival, I was predisposed to like the Chromebook. But you know what? This is a great little laptop!

As I said, it has some features in common with a laptop. It folds up like one, and has an attached keyboard. It looks like a laptop. A very thin, light laptop! But it behaves more like a tablet. It doesn’t have a huge hard-drive (16GB, comparable to a base-level iPad), as most people are now keeping most of their data “in the cloud” online anyway. Here’s the official specs from the Staples.ca website:

1.17 GHz Samsung Exynos 5250 (1MB L2 Cache
2GB DDR3 system memory
16GB e.MMC iNANDâ„¢ Embedded Flash Drive
Google Chrome
11.6″ HD LED screen size
ARM Mali T604
Stereo Speakers (1.5 W x 2 )
Dimensions: 0.69″ H. x 11.40″ W. x 8.21″ D.
Product Weight: 2.43 lb.
1-year manufacturer’s limited warranty (details with product)

Sorry, did your eyes glaze over there? Mine did. I’m not great with technical specs. I’d like to give you a thorough technical review of the Chromebook, but that’s outside of my comfort level. Here’s what I noticed: it’s the perfect size to slip in your purse or backpack, as it’s just under 12″ long folded up and weighs just over a kilo. It’s literally the size of a notebook. It boots up super-quick, faster even than waking up my old Windows PC from sleep mode. It has great battery life, over six hours on a full charge. The keys on the keyboard are a delight for this dedicated touch-typer. It picks up our home wifi signal from the treehouse. *wink*

I have to admit that until I actually got my hands on it, I didn’t make the connection between the name of the device (Chromebook) and Google’s Chrome browser. (You’d never guess my life is all about technology, would you?) So this is a laptop that uses Chrome OS (operating system). This is not a huge deal, except to say that it took me half a year to finally adapt to Mac OS after being a Windows user, and so my only big problem so far with the Chromebook has been taking the time to figure out where everything is. Coming from an Apple-infused life, I find the apps are less app-like and more like website delivery systems. Actually, that’s exactly what Beloved called the Chromebook: the perfect website delivery system for the occasional surfer.

The kids took to it like ducks to water. Or should I say, in this case like penguins to a club. :/

I like that you can simply set up user-accounts based on your existing Google accounts. We already have separate Gmail accounts for me, for the big boys, and for the family (set up initially for iTunes accounts) and the Chromebook makes it easy to sign switch between user accounts, so we can all have our own settings, e-mail accounts and favourites. If you’re already a user of Google +, YouTube, Gmail, Google Docs or any of Google’s other products, you’ll find it easy to bring everything together here.

My only complaints are that I found the trackpad occasionally sticky when I try to scroll, and since it scrolls in the opposite direction from my MacBook (you slide down to push text up) I’m always moving the screen the wrong way. I did, however, like that you can just tap the trackpad to click instead of having to actually press down on it. Also, for me, it’s not powerful enough for my personal day-to-day computer use. I need Photoshop and Lightroom, for example, which would not run on the Chromebook, and the kids can’t play Minecraft on it (but after after a summer of Minecraft every waking hour, I’m seeing that as more pro than con). It’s a bit of a pain to port all Word documents into Google Docs before you can edit them, but that’s also a minor thing.

Overall, I think this is a perfect “extra” computer. It’s light and thin but sturdy and plenty powerful enough for web-surfing, movie-watching and social networking, as well as simple document management through Google Docs. And it comes with 100GB of free storage on Google Drive! I think it would be awesome to stick in your purse when you want to take advantage of the free wifi and relative peace to do some blogging at your local coffee shop. I will be bringing this to school council meetings to take notes, on family vacations when I feel like staying connected but not lugging around the big laptop, and out on the porch when I feel like doing a little bit of mindless Facebooking. It’s a perfect starter computer for a kid who needs a straightforward net-book style computer of his own for school, at a price where you won’t be too worried if he accidentally rolls his backpack containing the laptop down the stairs. You know, the sort of thing that would never happen at our house. 😉

Thanks to Staples.ca for offering this fun little device up for my review!

Disclosure: Staples provided me with this Samsung Chromebook to review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. To see their full line of laptops and tablets, visit Staples.ca.

After a couple of years of working with and talking about Fisher-Price toys, it’s clear that while they have a diverse lineup of products and toys the one that most resonates with people is the Little People line. We had them as kids, and I’m sure you did, too! It’s funny to watch peoples’ faces as they wax nostalgic about their Sesame Street Little People set, or the original garage with the bell that dinged, or the McDonalds Little People set.

It was timely that my friend Kerry shared last week this blog post about the history and evolution of Little People because Fisher-Price has just announced a new set of five Little People characters.

Today’s Little People are infused with character traits. Sofie is a curious daydreamer who likes to paint while Eddie is an energetic lover of sports. Koby is the jester, Mia is more shy and quiet, and Tessa is a dancer who loves to twirl. You’ll be able to introduce all the new characters to your little ones through a new series this fall on Treehouse TV, and you can “meet” all the Little People friends here. Or, if you’re lucky, you can meet them on a beach in Mexico! 😉

(Sigh, already a year ago….)

So here’s what I’m wondering. Do you like the fact that Fisher-Price has put so much effort into creating personalities and a diverse line of Little People that are more like action figures? Do you think this helps kids learn about and become more appreciative of differences and that they’ll identify with the character most like themselves? Or do you prefer the blank canvas of the round-headed, non-descript original Little People?

Disclosure: I receive special perks as a part of my affiliation with the Fisher-Price Play Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada. The opinions in this blog are my own.

Way back in the spring, I was invited to the grand opening of Ottawa’s newest toy store, Mastermind Toys. Do you know them? I found out that one of my all-time favourite toy stores in my home town of London is a part of their chain, as is the gift shop at the Ontario Science Centre.

I was lucky enough to attend the grand opening of the store in Kanata Centrum, and I see that just this weekend they’ve opened up a second location on St Laurent Blvd in the east end.

I was really impressed with the Mastermind Toy store in Kanata. From the moment I walked in, I knew it was the kind of store that kids and parents alike would appreciate. It’s a big store with a boutique feel to it, and I could tell that the toy lines were chosen with an eye to the kind of educational and creative toys I love to give. Speaking of giving, if you don’t happen to have your own live-in toy consultant (Beloved does almost all the toy buying in our family, as he is deeply in touch with his inner child!) they have staff dedicated to helping you choose the right gift for any occasion, and they have complimentary gift wrapping, too!

When we visited the Kanata store, we were treated to a sneak peek at some of their best sellers and new favourite items. I can honestly say that almost all the toys they showed us were either something I’d like to give or something I coveted for myself. Two in particular leapt out at me. The first was a personal slushie maker by Zoku. I have always loved slushie drinks, and I was intrigued by how the Zoku worked. The second was a toy that you sort of have to see in action to appreciate, but from the moment I saw it I knew the boys would love it. Imagine you crossed a yo-yo with a kite and a boomerang – that’s the SkyTrix Stunt Glider. When the lovely peeps at Mastermind Toys asked if I’d like to do a review and giveaway, I knew those were the items I would love to share with the boys, and with you!

Those personal slushie makers seem pretty popular right now. I’ve seen at least two other brands, and we had even bought one to try it before we saw the Zoku version. It was such a waste of money that we brought it back to the store after a day – it didn’t make anything except cold water. The Zoku, on the other hand, is AWESOME! You put the cup in the freezer overnight, and then pour any cold liquid into the frozen cup. Wait a minute or three, and you’ll see the liquid starting to freeze to the sides. Use the included spoon to scrape down the sides and suddenly you’ll find the whole thing starting to slush up. It’s really quite impressive – and delicious! We tried chocolate milk, lemonade, orange juice and… COFFEE! Seriously awesome!

In fact, we liked it so much that when Simon needed a theme for his movie-making camp earlier this summer, he chose to make a Zoku commercial. Remember this?

The SkyTrix is one of those toys that’s brilliant in its simplicity. No batteries, nothing to assemble, just a plastic glider about 9″ across attached to a long tether. First you hone your throwing skills, but by hanging on to the tether you can start to make it do tricks, or play catch with it, or, erm, retrieve it from the neighbour’s tree.

It’s one of those toys that you can play with straight out of the box, but that’s intriguing enough to keep you picking it up. It’s also a great diversion while you’re waiting for the burgers to finish cooking on the BBQ. 😉

And now, thanks to the awesome peeps at Mastermind Toys, I have a Zoku Shake and Slushie Maker and a SkyTrix to share with you! Want to win? Leave a comment on this post and tell me about a toy you like – any toy. A fave from your childhood, your favourite one to give, one you saw and coveted when you were wee, just tell me about a toy that you thought was interesting and why.

Here’s the fine print:

1. This is a giveaway for either a Zoku Shake and Slushie Maker or a SkyTrix stunt glider courtesy of Mastermind Toys.
2. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post telling me about an interesting toy.
3. Two winners will be chosen at random from all comments posted. The first winner chosen will win the Zoku Shake and Slushie Maker and the second winner will receive the SkyTrix glider.
4. Everyone who “likes” Postcards from the Mothership on Facebook will get a bonus entry. (This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.) If you already like Postcards from the Mothership on FB, just say so in your comment.
5. This giveaway is open only to residents of Canada and the United States, excluding residents of Quebec. (sorry!)
6. This giveaway will run until 11:59 pm EDT on Friday August 16, 2013.
7. If you win, you must be willing to provide your full name and contact information to me to share with Mastermind Toys, who will ship the toy directly to you.

Thanks to Mastermind Toys for the fun toys to share, and for a terrific new place to shop for smart, fun toys in Ottawa! Good luck to all entrants!

Edited to add: This giveaway is now closed. Thank you for all your comments and congratulations to Elizabeth, winner of the Zoku Shake and Slushie Maker and Tara, winner of the SkyTrix glider. 🙂