Stupid Toy Tuesday- Moon Dough Bunnies

I wasn't a fan of moon sand, so I had low expectations for Moon Dough.  Apparently not low enough. 

It's allergy safe, wheat free, and never dries out, which means it has sort of a weird texture, it's like slimy but not at the same time.  It defies all logic.

And it crumbles and it's a pain to clean up.  Playdoh is SUPER easy to clean up, one piece can clean up everyone every piece just by pressing them together.  It's like magic.  Moon Dough does not have that same magically quality.

But it does come with a mold.

If you squish the right amount of Moon Dough into the top, a bunny pops out.  Repeat the process until you run out of Moon Dough or you want to swish the bunnies.

Never would I have believed my daughter had psychopathic tendiences until I saw the insane joy she got when killing these bunnies.  Well first she made like 15 of them and lined them up like an army and the squished the crap out of them. 

And if you didn't put enough of Moon Dough in the mold you got some creepy mutant deformed bunny spawned from Gund's worst nightmares. 

Moon Products-- I am not impressed.

Stupid Toy Tuesday- Color Wonder Glitter Paper

I love Crayola.  Talk about a creative, parent friendly company.  Everything is washable, everything is safe and it's all fun. (But I hear the crayon maker is pretty lame)

I am a HUGE fan of the Color Wonder paper and markers.  Hubby is a little stain phobic and thanks to color wonder my daughter can color without any fear of mess.

My daughter has an obscene amount of color wonder stuff.  Paints, finger paints, markers of every color and like a billion color books.

But ONE is a huge fail... and she has three color books of GLITTER princess paper.

You know little girls like? Princess and glitter.   SOUNDS LIKE A FOOL PROOF TOY.

The picture  doesn't turn out as pretty as you would have liked.  It's all stripy. 

But the glitter get the markers and then you have to wipe the glitter off of the marker and now your fingers glittery and you hand looks like it hangs out a strip club.

Of course it does come to my attention that I could just wipe off the marker with a paper towel or something... but, um, yeah I didn't do that.  And besides, I needed to hold the paper with my hand....

(Confession- this stupid toy is stupid because Me, a 32 year old with her masters degree is too stupid to play with it.)

Stupid Toy Tuesday- spinning projectiles of doom

This weekend we went to the circus as a family.  It was full of the circus goodness, I had come to expect, animals, clowns, people with no spines or fear doing things that will be most likely tried at home and end in a trip to the hospital.

But what I knew, as SOON as my hubby emailed me about the tickets, we would be coming home with this overpriced piece of crap that lights up.  I was right.

BEHOLD!!! It's a pink holder, and it spins around and it has little dohicky that light up.  Oh and it's hard to see but there is a white tiger at the top.

Yep.

Drumroll for the cost...$22.
The people behind us make this offer to their child, "you can buy the light up thing or you can go to college, which ever one you want." 
It's a good offer and tells you alot about the kid.

But of course that's not all, she got cotton candy that came with a stupid hat for $10 and a program for $20.  PLUS another $10 for food.

Grumble.

But here's the thing, my daughter has smacked herself in the face so many times, she flinches when she plays with it.

Yep. Nothing says fun like pulling a piece of plastic out of your eye and becoming traumatized by lights.
Ringing Bros, I'll be sending you the therapy bill for that one.

Stupid Toy Tuesday- FOR THE WIN!

I decided to do a post of Stupid Toy Tuesday about a toy I LOVE.  

I love every Melissa and Doug product we've ever bought.  It's the quality of the craftsmanship and the though that goes into every toy that impresses me. 

One of my favorites is the Melissa and Doug's spin art.

IT doesn't have excellent reviews in Amazon and it isn't a perfect toy. 

But it is an wonderful ten minute activity. 

Pop it out of it's box, yes it still stays in the box, suction it to the table, place the paper squares on the spinner and paint away.

My daughter does the paint, I do the spinning.  It's a hand cranked spinner and doesn't have the power of a battery opperated one.  (restaining myself from a joke here)

But because it's not as powerful the mess is minual. 

My God an arts and crafts project with paint and NO MESS!  Insanity you say, but I say neigh.

It's the prefect activity my daughter and I can do without one of us getting bored (me), and it always comes out looking awesome.  

I always feel like an awesome mom whenever my daughter and I play with it.    Then I shoo her off to go watch tv so I can blog and play on the computer for hours on end. :-)

Stupid Toy Tuesday- My Little Ponies.

I'm a girl.
I'm a girl who grew up in the 1980's, which means I watched a lot of cartoons.
Jem, She-ra, (who deserves her own blog post one day) but the BEST was My Little Ponies.  I loved the cartoon but I also loved the toys.
Oh they were glorious.  Moondancer was my favorite.  

Then I grew up... Stupid time. As a married woman, I walked around Target with my hubby and what did we see, but MY LITTLE PONIES.   But now Moondancer looked like this.

The 2000's pony is thinner and we wonder why girls have such awful body images, even horses need to be a size 4.

Then my husband bought all the Little Ponies he could.  My hubby is a collector and needed something to hunt for... and I ended up with EVERY PONY in Maryland.  Flash forward five years and I find out I'm preggers.  And when we found out I was going to have a little girl,  my first thought now I have to SHARE my ponies! Then I thought my daughter's teenager years were going to suck, because that's the life of a teenage girl... sucky.

So when my daughter started potty training, she got a pony every time she pooped on the potty. It was the poop for a pony program.

That's a TINY fraction of all the ponies she has.

Over the years Hasbro has reduced the size of the ponies. 

Then a few weeks ago she discovered the NEW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic TV Show and since she had surgery so got a few new toys and I noticed some differences.

The two pink ones are the EXACT same pony, but "reimaged", Look how the eyes have changed and heads have changed,  they're thinner and have cute smiles.  OH AND LOOK HOW SMALL THEY ARE!

The yellow one with pink hair went to my staff development meeting with me.  She was jammed in my back pocket by some three year old as I was walking out the door.  Some ponies have brushable hair, some are all plastic. 

Then there's princess Celestia, she's the princess because she's the tallest. (yep, stealing ideas from Invader Zim... which the world would be a better place if MORE things were stolen from Invader Zim.

But the ponies from the early 2000s and current ponies can't play with each other.  Look at the scale of the differences between two ponies and their playsets. 

My Little Ponies, how I love you... but it's still a fail.  And I don't want to talk about how much money I've dropped on these damn things.

bonus points if you can tell me who this guy is:

Stupid Toy Tuesday- Shinner and Shine Hair

Stupid Toy Tuesday has focused on Tangle Toys before.
My daughter got this:

Then it came out of the box and it looks like this:

It's one huge knots.

It sheds.

It's hard to get on.

Strike Three Disney.

Okay let's face the fact that I'm probably going to buy my kid lot of Disney stuff. But I'll be really annoyed about it.

Stupid Toy Tuesday-ball pit

From the box this toy is AWESOME.

You see the balls, you see the size of the ball pit.

The ball pit is HUGE.  It's like an inflatable tent.  My daughter LOVES it. She has stashed all her toys in it.

It took my husband all the air in his lungs and a possible aneurysm  to blow the thing up.  But within minutes she had a new awesome toy.  Sure it leans to the left a little bit, but she loves it.

But then we threw the balls in the tent and well, it was a  little underwhelming.

It's a ball pit.

It's supposed to be filled with balls.

It came with 12 balls.

It's a tent, that a few things to trip over.  It's a twisted ankle waiting to happen.

If it had been marketed as tent, it would have been the BEST TOY EVER!

But someone decided to market it as a ball pit and it's a massive fail.  I have to buy another bag of balls for $20 to fill it.  And there's no guarantee that it will.

This is a classic example of adding a little extra just screwed it up.  Think about the final chapter in the last Harry Potter series.

Disney that's strike 2.

Stupid Toy Tuesday- boneknapper

How to train your Dragon is a pretty big deal in my house.  My daughter LOVES the 7 minute short called Boneknapper on the HTTYD Blu Ray.  It's called The Legend of Boneknapper.  It's pretty awesome.

When my Hubby found the toy a few days before her birthday, he knew it was the best gift of her birthday.

I broke it getting it out of the box. I was using shears to get all plastic rings out of the box and I cut a piece of the bone armor.

I ruined her gift.

She didn't care, but Hubby did.

That being said, it's a cool looking toy.

But every piece comes off.

They're supposed to form some tiny dragon but because I cut a millimeter of plastic off of it, we can't make the dragon.

As I was taking off the pieces to take the picture the wing fell off.

In fact EVERYTHING falls off of it.

It's one of those toys that's cool to look at but you can't play.  And doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of a toy doesn't it.

For a different review of the toy, you can go here

Stupid Toy Tuesday-toothbrushes that make you go hmmm

When my daughter turned three, we got her a big girl toothbrush.  Now she loves brushing her teeth.  We ended up getting her a second toothbrush for the downstairs bathroom.  This one might have been a mistake.

The big purple blob is where you turn it on and off.  Yep, you  have to molest Ariel if you want to turn it on.... yep insert your own joke here.

Let's point out that the toothbrush vibrates... better then the first one my daughter got.

How about Ariel's pose,  tense arms, vacant stare, the confused smile.  yeah, she's been through this before.  She has a dark secret. 

I think the soft rubbery button could have been placed in a different location with less sexual tension.

That's all I'm saying. 

Stupid Toy Tuesday-always look at the puzzle before you give it away.

Hubby loves puzzles and every here his mom gives him one.  This Christmas I watched the exchange go down.
He unwrapped it, saw it was a puzzle, said thank you and threw it to the side.
His Mom said, "I liked the colors and thought you would too."

Weeks pass and the Christmas decorations have been stored away the attic.  I found the puzzle in the office.  The first thing I noticed was the creepy sun.  Then I looked at the rest.  "OMG those gnomes are harvesting pot."

I walked down to Hubby and said, "Why do you have a puzzle about gnomes harvesting pot?"

Hubby says he has no idea what I'm talking about.

A few hours later he says, "Erinn, those gnomes are harvesting pot?  Why would my mom buy me a puzzle like that?"

We cracked the mystery--- she didn't look at the picture and neither did my husband.

Good news is thanks to the safety messages on the side, my daughter is allowed to put together the puzzle,  since it's not safe for 0-3 year olds and my daughter is 3 and two weeks old.