I shall start with me and a bit about my loathing of play doh. I am not usually a fan of play doh, I have cringed in the past when my kids have been bought play doh set by other people as the mess it causes is a nightmare it ends up everywhere and trodden into carpets and its difficult to get out. My second issues is that it all turns into a ugly brown mess when the colours get stuck together. However my six year old saw the advert for this Candy Cyclone playset and begged for it. The advert of course makes the Candy Cyclone playset look amazing with the bright colours and funny voices of the play doh men my kids were drawn in and had to have this. Cue huge amounts of pesting from both my boys about how much they want this. As it was on special offer on Amazon at a mere £9.99 and them having there own christmas money to spend I caved in and ordered it for them.

I thought they may be a slightly disappointed as toys are rarely as good as they look on tv. I was also dreading the assemble of this product as it mentioned adult assemble required and I hate setting up toys. Dispite my fears it was very easy to put together. You simply click a few peices into place and it is ready for action. I had bought them extra play doh tubs so they had plently to play with. It is very easy for a child to use. I demonstrated how it worked to my kids and they were able to do it all for themselves. Even my 3 year old had no problems getting to grips with this set. First to make the dough balls you need to roll out a peice of play doh into a log shape. If you want plain balls use one colour, if you want your balls to different colours mix two or more colours together. Then you pop the log into the top of the candy cyclone machine and turn the handle, after a few turns the balls will start to come out of the bottom. Once you have created the balls you can place the balls into the stamper which makes various shaped sweets or put them in to what looks like a syringe and squeeze out a long thin piece that can be wrapped around the lolly pop handle to make colourful lolly pops. Making lolly pops is the most difficult part as the playdoh does tend to crack sometimes when been wrapped around. Making the candy balls is lots of fun, they look great rolling out of the machine. My son's aged 3 and 6 played for hours with this when they got it. It has become a favourite toy.

It is worth noting that the colours do soon become a green/brown mess as you would expect when mixing them together over and over again but I just told the kids they were making chocolate and they were happy. I believe this is a clever ploy of the manufactors to get you to intentional mix the colours together so you end up buying more playdoh. Currently Argos sell 20 tubs for £9.99 and its also in the two for £15 offer so you could get 40 tubs for £15 so might be worth taking advantage of this great offer and stocking up. The machine is actually really easy to clean. The back panel comes open so you can clean away any play doh stuck inside. I have discover play doh is a still as difficult as ever to remove from carpets but supervising the kids closely when playing could prevent this happening.

I am glad I gave play doh a second chance as this is a great set which has provided my kids with hours and hours of fun.