{"id":1073,"date":"2007-11-06T08:36:30","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T13:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/11\/06\/best-bet-toys-for-2008\/"},"modified":"2008-11-15T15:55:22","modified_gmt":"2008-11-15T20:55:22","slug":"best-bet-toys-for-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2007\/11\/06\/best-bet-toys-for-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Best bet toys for 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Edited to add<\/strong>: looking for the 2009 report? I’ve got a post about it here<\/a>!)<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/div>\n

Every year, the Canadian Toy Testing Council <\/a>releases its picks for the best toys of the year, as selected by the more than 1000 families that are part of the toy testing network. The CTTC provides a full report on all the toys they test (sorted alphabetically or by age), and also provides a list of award-winners in categories like Best Bets, Children’s Choice and Great Books. They base their rankings on design, safety, battery consumption, durability, ease of assembly and “play value,” meaning whether young testers remain interested in the toy after weeks of play. I love these lists and get great ideas from them every year.<\/p>\n

This year, “Best Bet” toys include Diego’s Animal Rescue Centre <\/a>for ages 3 – 5 years, My Real Digital Camera <\/a>by Little Tykes for ages 3 and up, a Thomas Making Tracks Board Game <\/a>for ages 4 and up and the Big League Hockey Manager <\/a>game for ages 10 and up, to name just a few. (For the full list, check out the CTTC website<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

They also give the nod to my very favourite gift for any child age 6 months to 2 years, the Playskool Busy Ball Popper<\/a>. We got one of these for Simon two years ago, and both boys still love to play with it. I’ve since given at least three of them as gifts, and have at least one recipient in mind this year.<\/p>\n

Some of the other great toys we’ve loved in the last year or so include Cranium’s Superfort <\/a>, Hullaballoo <\/a>and Cariboo <\/a>(I totally love Cranium and am looking forward to giving the boys more Cranium stuff this year), just about anything Lego, this “fun in a drum<\/a>” percussion kit, card ganes like Uno<\/a> and those concentration-type matching games (we’ve cornered the market with Wiggles, Toy Story and Bob the Builder versions) and all things Star Wars. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, we’ve been rather disappointed by a lot of our Leap Frog toys (I really wanted to like this company) including the Leap Pad <\/a>and My First Leap Pad <\/a>– but ours keep malfunctioning and though the boys want to play with them, the darn things work less than half the time. We thought getting the boys a DVD player-based game would be a good idea last year, but we’ve been disappointed by Zoooos<\/a>. It’s simple enough to use, but maybe a little too simple – both boys were bored with it, despite the Bob the Builder and Thomas themed games. Also a bit of a disappointment was Mr Bucket<\/a>, which Simon pined for between Christmas and his birthday last year, and then when we got it, it was so noisy that he was afraid to play with it.<\/p>\n

Hmmm, favourite toys have no batteries in them and disappointing toys are all electronic. Coincidence? Maybe not!<\/p>\n

So, bloggy peeps, the holiday buying frenzy season is upon us. I plan a few more posts on best gifts and other holiday-buying thoughts, but what have been some of the best and worst toys you’ve seen recently?<\/p>\n

***<\/div>\n

And if you’re so inclined, you still have a few days to vote<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Edited to add: looking for the 2009 report? I’ve got a post about it here!) *** Every year, the Canadian Toy Testing Council releases its picks for the best toys of the year, as selected by the more than 1000 families that are part of the toy testing network. The CTTC provides a full report … Continue reading “Best bet toys for 2008”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}