My mother in law also chose a Happyland gift for The Boy’s main present at Christmas. Driven by his love of animals (he and Boy Hound are BFF’s) one of his favourite programs (Big Barn Farm on CBeebies) and the continued success of Happyland products in general, she purchased Goosefeather Farm (RRP £30).
Goosefeather Farm is by far the most value for money Happyland product we have so far. In the box you get:
- The building itself – this has a row of buttons along the top to press for noises of each animal included in the set, which is great for association of the right noises with each animal. Inside the barn are three downstairs areas, separated by fencing, an upstairs area so the cockerel can look out on the farmyard through his little window, doors that open at the front of the barn.
- The tractor, trailer, farmer and his wife
- A horse, a cow, a sheep, a pig, a cockerel and a sheepdog
- A pigsty and a sheep pen
The trailer latches to the tractor using the same simple hook system as the moon buggy and mobile space station, so The Boy was familiar with it and quickly had the hang of it. After we’d opened it we had bits everywhere, so I took the time to set it all up properly while The Boy had lunch and when he came back we sat and played for some time – though the farmers wife ended up going into the space rocket with the pig and the sheepdog, the robot from the mobile moon unit jumped in the tractor and was pulling the sheep in the trailer, the farmer was in the alien car and the cockerel was kicked out of his hidey hole by aliens by the time we’d finished! What an exciting adventure that was!
This product, like the rest of the Happyland range we’ve experienced so far, is brightly coloured, robust and well made. Despite the amount of abuse it has already encountered since he unwrapped it, all items remain undamaged and as new in appearance. While we do have to be careful that the pieces don’t vanish under the sofa (I found Girl Hound chewing on a plastic horse the other day that had been missed during tidying up after The Boy went to bed, so I do have to watch both dogs with these small plastic pieces from sets like this) The pieces are chunky enough that The Boy cannot choke and brightly coloured and attractive enough that he enjoys a lot of playtime with them all. The Boy’s imagination is a fantastic place to visit, the times we’ve sat there playing and he’s muttering away to himself, chatting and singing, whooshing and burbling, and Goosefeather Farm and the characters from it often seem to be involved in that playtime ever since Christmas.
Unfortunately once again the downfall of this product is that the window shutters and the doors come off very easily which frustrates The Boy, as he can’t fix them back on himself, the fencing that makes the pen for the sheep falls apart quite easily and takes a moment to put back together again and the blocks that are meant to sit in the stables for the cow and the horse as hay bales fall out and get lost easily too. In all fairness though the attention to detail plus the amount of pieces in this set I am very happy with it. The Boy spends a lot of time with his (now fairly large) Happyland collection of toys and again this is a decent product that I would recommend. Another very happy four out of five!
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