Last week I mentioned this Golden Tee Golf CrunchDeal and said that I’d even buy it for myself. Well you may have thought, “That Doug, he’s all talk — sitting up in his mansion atop a pile of free gadgets, he’d never stoop low enough to buy a plug-and-play TV game for ten bucks.”
I’ll have you know that I did indeed purchase the game and I’m happy to report that it’s a perfect gift to give to someone that you HAVE to get a gift for but want to spend the absolute least amount of money possible while still making it look that you put some thought into it.
Short and sweet: Kidz Gear Headphones for Kids are just that: headphones for kids. The cans fit little ears, and the swivel mounts allow for comfortable positioning. Volume control on the cord, reasonable sound quality, and an affordable price make these a pretty good buy for Junior.
Of course the Snowball Blaster should hit the scene when I’m damn near thirty and too old to go get in snowball fights with the neighborhood children. “It’s that creepy blogger!” all the parents would yell. “Don’t get into snowball fights with him! He works out of the house! That’s not normal! He’ll try to kidnap you and teach you to type!”
As my brother said, “this is an tendinitis nightmare” or something like that. It’s quite addicting but it takes a bit of effort to actually get the fake bubbles to pop. I don’t see little kids over the age of 8 having the finger strength to play with this for very long. The texture of the bubbles is surprisingly similar to that of bubble wrap, though. And who doesn’t love a fake fart? It’s a perfect stocking stuffer for the little ones or even the big kids.
Why do you need a pig-shaped iPod dock? I don’t know, but it exists and it’s a sensible little device. The pig blows out some thin music but it’s nice and heavy on the bass and it looks great in a kids room. It is audiophile quality? Absolutely not, but it comes with a mini-remote that controls most iPod features and it costs about $150 – probably less when it comes to retail stores. Best of all, the website encourages you to make your neighbors jealous:
This speaker can be placed anywhere: on a shelf , a desk or any place you want in your rest room, study, sitting room……it will never makes you disappointing, but the only thing you should care is your neighbor’s jealousy.
Bottom Line
Great iPod dock for kids, the porcine inclined.
This $99.99 robot can talk to you, guard you, and even notify you when a set number of minutes has passed. It’s quite a bit of fun and has a charming personality, as you’ll see in our video, but we did have some issues with the IR remote control – the bugger just couldn’t tell what we wanted him to do. Compared to other robots we’ve seen this season, however, the Tri-Bot is a lot of fun and actually very cool.
It flies like a real butterfly! I was actually quite surprised at the build quality on this thing. Usually these sorts of things blow into a million pieces on the first day but the Flytech butterfly withstood quite a few crash landings during our trials. The dog also bit it a few times, which is usually the kiss of death for toys like this.
Thanks for thinking of us this Easter. We purchased your Imaginarium Spiral Train Set on sale at Toys R’ Us and our wee one — you’ll feast on his soul soon enough, my old friend, just as you did on his mothers and mine — opening it this morning. Let me tell you about the fun we’ve had trying to keep it together! The tracks rarely stay put, the motion of the trains over the rails knocks it out of alignment, and the spiral “situation” as we’re calling it makes the entire thing as stable as a starlet on a speedball binge — you just never know which orifice is going to squirt blood or which rail will fall off and make everything else fall down with it.
I’m down with the tracks being compatible with Thomas the Tank Engine but Tom is all like “No WAY am I going on that” and his friend Percy won’t even talk to us. It’s just your cheesy, potentially lead-paint free knock offs on those tracks this joyous holiday, and since the wheels don’t really turn well pushing them on the rails is a crap shoot. After all, we have all day to keep rebuilding the damn thing every time the train makes a rotation instead of relaxing on a holiday weekend, right? Anyway, we’re not going to recommend this toy to other parents of train obsessed younglings but we’re forever in your debt for killing the Czar and his ministers, making Anastasia cry in vain, so I guess we’re even.
It’s so rare to actually have actual child-like fun with the gadgets we get in that I had to put together this silly video. The Jasman toys are laser-tag-alike weapons with targets and a shot counter. When you run out of ammo the weapons pop open — the rifle shoots out its overheating fins and the top of the pistol pops up. You can recharge your weapon by pressing a button on the top and you take a few hits before your target stops registering and you lose like the loser you are — that means you, Mike!
Here we see my friends shooting each other while my son cowers in the corner and the dog enters the fray. Good times.
The rifle is $139 and the pistol is $59. I strongly recommend these for a little inter-office laser tag Covenant action.
Last week I mentioned this Golden Tee Golf CrunchDeal and said that I’d even buy it for myself. Well you may have thought, “That Doug, he’s all talk — sitting up in his mansion atop a pile of free gadgets, he’d never stoop low enough to buy a plug-and-play TV game for ten bucks.” 
