Product Review: Happyland Goosefeather Farm

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!

Product Review: Happyland Light and Sound Lift Off Rocket / Mobile Moon base / Moon Mobile

As I mentioned in my Christmas list post a while back, the main present for The Boy from The Hubby and me for Christmas this year was the ELC Happyland Rocket (RRP £32). I found a good deal on the ELC website for Happyland products when I was making my decision on which Happyland product to get him (the success of the train set, station and vets surgery that he received for his first birthday makes the Happyland range a go-to for The Boy) Eventually I decided to purchase both the Happyland Rocket and the Happyland Mobile Moon Base (RRP £16) set too (This gift was labelled as from The Hairy Hounds of Hell).

               Happyland Light & Sound Lift Off Rocket

The Happyland Rocket is an eye catching bright shiny red, with three doors up one side. The top door opens to reveal space for two spacemen to lie side by side for take-off. The middle door opens to show the living area, which has kitchen units around the outer edge, with a bed attached to the door (so it moves out of the way as you open the door) and when you flip the bed up it reveals the toilet (highly practical, space-saving design!) The bottom door is a drop down door and in here the little moon buggy fits perfectly, and can be driven up and down the ramp. The Rocket comes with two spacemen, a space dog, moon buggy, alien and moon crater which the alien can stand in. It’s a very practical design, as all these items can be put into it and the doors secured shut and there is a handle for easy carrying, so this toy quickly became a favourite when we went to visit my in-laws, as it provides The Boy with plenty of entertainment. There’s a red button on the carry handle, and when the Rocket is in the upright position and this button is pressed it begins the ‘countdown’ for launch, with the bright red lights on the underneath of the Rocket flashing red as if the engines are lit and the thrusters are burning! After the countdown, there is a lot of whooshing noises as if the rocket is taking off. Once the Rocket is horizontal, if the button is pressed again it makes noises of a rocket travelling through space (more whooshing and ‘space’ noises). While this makes it a noisy toy, The Boy loves it, and he can often be found spinning in circles with the rocket in his hand, whooshing away and scattering spacemen all round the room. The product is durable and hardwearing – he’s dropped it countless times, yet still the shiny red exterior is shiny and looking good. The downfall of this product is the doors – they keep coming off. In one way it’s good, because when The Boy puts too much pressure on them or tries to open them too far, they pop out of place rather than breaking, which is great as it means I can just pop them back into place again, but it seems to be a habit that within a few minutes of him playing with it he is moaning for me to put the doors back on again. To be fair, though, this is the only downfall, and as I say I can see the point of them being so easy to remove, as it makes them easy to replace and more difficult to break.

The Happyland Rocket gets a very happy four out of five! I am very pleased with this purchase, and it confirms the Happyland range is definitely a go-to for children of this age group.

              Happyland Mobile Moon Base

As I mentioned, as well as the Rocket, The Boy also received the additional gift of the Happyland Mobile Moon Base set. This set comprised of a moon buggy (different from the one included in the Rocket as this one has a moving front digger section) the mobile space station unit which attaches onto the moon buggy and opens out to reveal the computers inside; it came with two spacemen and a robot. This one doesn’t have any buttons for noise, but encourages dexterity with the hook and catch system of linking the moon buggy to the mobile space station, though again the only downfall of this product is that the doors of the mobile space station come out of place easily and I’m forever clicking them back into the slots. Again for travelling purposes you can fit all three characters into the mobile space unit, which makes this an excellent addition to the Happyland Rocket when going out for a long day with The Boy to somewhere he’ll have the space to play but no toys already there, such as my in-laws house. 

I am also very pleased with this purchase, would recommend it to my friends especially as a great compliment to the Rocket, and would also rate this four out of five.

                 Happyland Moon Mobile

In addition to that, my mum also found the offer at ELC on the Happyland range, and after we discussed what I’d already brought, she decided to spend her pennies on the Happyland Moon Mobile (RRP £16). This funky, turquoise blue space car comes complete with three different aliens, and there are buttons either side of the car which activate either alien ‘speak’ or more ‘whooshing’ and ‘space’ noises. In addition to this, the red lights around the back circle section of the car flash when the noises are activated, and the friction wheels mean that when the car is pushed along a level surface it activates the ‘whooshing’ and ‘space’ sounds, which all add to the amusement of The Boy. This one is again another fantastic compliment to the Rocket and the Moon Landing set, or great as a stand-alone toy. Another noisy one, though not so practical for travelling with as the aliens can’t be locked into place in the car – the times I have taken it to the in-laws with us, I’ve put it in a bag, whereas the Rocket you could just pick up and go with as it is. Further happy entertainment and once more a product I would recommend, this one has no doors so there is nothing to fall off, the only thing you have to worry about is the location of those aliens once they’re out of the vehicle because they, like the spacemen, are just the right size to vanish under the edge of a sofa when you’re not looking!

Another brilliant Happyland product, once again I would recommend it, another four out of five rating!

Product Review - Waybuloo World Of Nara Playset

It’s been a few weeks since I last had chance to sit down and write a blog post, but finally I’ve been granted a few minutes peace & quiet so I thought I’d better get on and do the first (of many!) posts about Christmas gifts The Boy received this year.

Like a fair few children, The Boy watches CBeebies and one of the programs that has been a firm favourite for some time is Waybuloo. The adventures of Nok Tok, Yo Jo Jo, De Li and Lau Lau have kept him merrily entertained since he was fairly young. He perks up if he hears the intro music, the chiming music when it’s time for Yogo has him bouncing about excitedly and now he’s a little older he’ll even try to join in the Yogo moves.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I popped into Asda one evening with the sole purpose of seeing if I could find some nice things for him for Christmas. One of the first things that caught my eye was the Waybuloo World Of Nara playset. It was reduced from £30 to £15 and contained a fair few pieces and came in a handy box with handle.

The Waybuloo World Of Nara playset is aimed at children 18+ months, includes 2 Waybuloo figures and various accessories including a hammock, a picnic table and a trike. The description states “(…) Allows children to explore the Piplings homes, play peek-a-boo in 4 different hide + seek spots and help the Piplings float to Buloo in 3 different levitation areas.”

On Christmas Eve, when The Hubby and I were sorting through the pile of gifts accumulated for The Boy to wrap them, we decided that the Waybuloo gift would be from Father Christmas, so it was duly wrapped in the special paper that only Father Christmas presents were wrapped in, and it was one of the first things he opened on Christmas morning.

He was immediately very interested in the World Of Nara, and had everything out of the box and all over our bed within a few short minutes! He seemed duly impressed, and the two figures included were De Li and Yo Jo Jo.

 

Unfortunately within a few minutes the centre piece of the hammock (it would be the fabric part if any of it were fabric, instead this is a mesh of plastic) had fallen out of the hammock itself. I fitted it back quite easily but once it had come out once it seems determined to not fit back in properly again and as a result is always coming out and going missing. The Boy was disappointed that the wheels on the trike don’t go round and round as he expects all wheels to, so he was quickly bored of that idea and I find it hidden in various locations including the laundry basket and under the chest of drawers in his room – It’s almost like he puts it out of sight because he doesn’t like it and doesn’t want to be troubled by the lack of wheel movement! The levitation areas are a bit hit and miss too – they either flick up too quickly, resulting in a flying Pipling shooting through the air, or they get stuck and the Pipling doesn’t reach Buloo status! (This also frustrates The Boy). The cloud arrangement on the top of the playset is made so that the Piplings can sit in the clouds, and a third cloud is a lever which moves the other two in a circle – but when you’re trying to lever the third cloud your hand is in the way of the other two moving, which is frustrating, and the clouds rotate anti-clockwise which seems to upset The Boy, who prefers to push it round without using the lever, and he always pushes it clockwise!

I see no use for the picnic table other than it ending up on the floor upside down, and The Boy or myself invariably end up treading on it and as it is hard moulded plastic it does then really hurt your foot – more than once The Boy has ended up in tears about this and having a strop with the picnic table, generally resulting in him picking it up and throwing it into his toy box in disgust! In a similar way the sun dial is a non-moving piece of moulded plastic (I wasn’t expecting it to come complete with crystals or play plinky-plink music, but then again what’s the point if it does nothing?) Again, The Boy appears as frustrated by this non-moving thing as he does with the non-moving wheels on the trike, and again it is constantly discarded or hidden elsewhere!

The main playset itself is an inventive collection of Piplings accommodation, linked with doorways and including a winding slide that the figures can use, and he does spend some time playing with it – chattering away to his Piplings, he’s obviously having a lovely time with his imagination and he does play with it on occasion but it certainly isn’t as much of a favourite as I would have anticipated it would be when I first made the purchase.

If I’d paid full price for this, I’d have been seriously disappointed; It is cheap moulded plastic, the justification for the high price seems to be that they’re trading on the Waybuloo name, and I’m sorry but that alone isn’t enough to justify it. They could have included less in the playset and made it better quality and I’d have been happier – it seems quite flimsy, cheaply made and not very well thought out (what is the point of the trike wheels not moving, why is a picnic table included when in the show you never see them sitting at a picnic table and why couldn’t the sun dial have been made to do something – even if the dial turned it would be better).

My advice to other mums – even if your child is Waybuloo mad, spend your money on something more worthwhile! Unless you get this on a decent discount or preloved, it simply isn’t worth it, and the bits will most likely go missing within the first fortnight of ownership. While I don’t doubt his imaginative play is fun for him, I feel I’d have done better spending the money on something else. This is pricey for the sake of the name and I don’t think it’s worth it.

I rate this product a disappointing one out of five.

Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I’m at risk of sounding as though I’m wishing away The Boy’s childhood, but rest assured I’m not doing that, but part of me is very excited about when he is old enough to grasp the excitement of Christmas because, for me, Christmas just hasn’t been right since my grandparents died.

As a kid, I remember always going to see them on Christmas day – they had a huge house about 30 minutes drive from my parents house, and while we regularly visited them at the weekends, Christmas was special because all my aunts, uncles and cousins would be there and we’d all be spending the day there together. There was too much food, presents for everyone, a visit to the church and the neighbouring residential home where my great grandmother and great aunt both lived, and then back to my grandparents house for more food and games in the afternoon: The women cleaned up after the vast Christmas feast, the men smoked cigars, or slept in front of the TV, and the kids would run around the house playing with our new toys.

As I grew older, fewer relatives would be able to make it every Christmas day, and after my grandparents died there wasn’t a central, large enough location for Christmas day to be held, so each branch of the family did their own, small, quieter day, and there were no children in the family for the day to centre around. Then The Hubby and I moved up here, so we’re miles away from my parents, my brother and The Hubby’s sister, my aunts and cousins – the only family we keep in contact with now, apart from the MIL and FIL, who live just down the road. Our Christmas days had become a quiet affair of a nice meal and some lovely presents and polite chit chat in the front room over a glass of Bucks Fizz feeling very restrained because I’d have to drive us home again afterward. I want The Boy and his cousin to have Christmases like I used to, with lots of family around and a day full of stuff to do and excitement – and I want to revel in him enjoying that as much as I did as a child.

The Nephew will be six months old by Christmas, so while he is a little older than The Boy was last Christmas, The Nephew is still not going to be as involved in the unwrapping of presents and playing with new things like The Boy will be this year. In years to come I can imagine the two of them ripping paper off presents, laughter, noise, running around MIL and FIL’s house, MIL complaining about the noise and the mess, FIL complaining about sticky fingerprints on his flat screen TV, me and SIL chasing after the kids who are hyped up on excess sugar while both our husbands snore in front of the TV. It’ll be like reliving my childhood, from a different perspective!