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Mega Bloks Building Blocks Bag
by MsTricia
Earlier this year I remember being on the hunt for some indoor activities to keep my daughter entertained during the days when weather was awful and we just wanted to stay inside. She has tons of dolls, books, DVD collections of her favourite cartoons and a kitchen set but considering she was only 2 and a half I wanted something quite ... interactive and educational, yet creative without too much of a mess afterwards! My friend's son is 4 months younger than her and after visiting her house she had these bloks and both the little ones's loved playing with it so I decided to invest in some for her to have at home.
They come in a clear plastic bag, with a handle so easy to carry around and also when not in use the bag can be squashed down small and compact. With a zip opening it is pretty straightforward to open and now she is 3 she can access these easily herself and play with them whenever she feels. I purchased this bag from Argos for £9.99 at the time and in a bag there are 80 pieces which to me sounded like loads! However, this is rather misleading, and as soon as we got them home and opened them up to play there was hardly any for her to play with! So the next day I went out and bought her 2 more bags so she could have fun building castles and walls etc to her hearts content.
The bloks themselves are an assortment of colours; green, yellow, red and blue. They are plastic squares and rectangular shaped and some with curved edges, which are simple building bloks, not too dissimilar to the concept of lego - with small cylinders on the top which insert into another blok so as they all form together. The bloks are designed for enhancing motor skills and the packaging states "building minds at play'. I think that as a toy and a learning tool these are great as it encourages my daughter to think and build up colour recognition as when we first started playing with them I would say "pass me a blue square" and she would take her time and give me a square which was blue. Although the bag states these are for children aged 3 + my daughter was fully capable and happy playing with these at the age of 2 and a half (of course with my supervision) so I do think the age guideline is a bit underestimated as my daughter is now 3 and doesn't play with these for particularly long as she gets bored rather quickly of them!
The bloks are of excellent quality and do not break and are nowhere near small enough to even fit inside the mouth of a child (let alone be swallowed!) so they are fantastic as a child's toy. They are also not small enough to be accidentally be sucked up by my vacuum which is a big plus as this seems to be where a lot of her toys end up! The bloks are of course plastic so are really durable and she is yet to manage to break one so they can withstand all kinds of torture she throws at them (literally, they used to get thrown everywhere!). The only niggle with these is that the shapes are pretty basic in the bag so aside from building a house or simply piling the bloks on top of each other as high as she can until they all topple over there isn't much variety that can be built with just squares and rectangles to be honest. Needless to say there was only so many times this was fun and we did try various attempts at building the bloks that are shown in the picture on the bag, one being of what looks like a kind of ship which was fun. I would have liked if the packet came with a small leaflet of sample figures which could be constructed from the building bloks to give her a bit more of a challenge and something to stretch her capabilities a bit. (I'm not saying she could build it, but would give her something to try and do right?)
Overall I really like these bloks, as does my daughter and they have been fantastic value and have endless usage. She doesn't play with them now as much as she used to, so I am considering soon to donate them to her nursery as they are easy to wipe clean and in perfectly good use so some other children can have as much creative fun as she has had these past 9 months :)
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Mega Bloks Create Blocks
by MrsD76
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More blocks...
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When my little girl was about 2 years old, my parents bought her a Mega Bloks Building Table for Christmas. As she had no other construction type toys, I thought this would be ideal for her as the pieces are bright, big and chunky and the table element of the toy gave her something to ... build the blocks onto.
However I soon realised that the table didn't come with quite enough bricks to build anything substantial with. So of course I was obliged to buy more bricks to go with the table to ensure my daughter could get full use out of it. Although I did resent having to spend more money I did feel I had little choice - and I do wonder if this may just be deliberate on the part of the toy makers ... cynical, I know!
I bought my bag of extra blocks from the Early Learning Centre and it cost me around £15. Looking online now this seems to be available from quite a few retailers but the price has gone up a few pounds.
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A big bag of bricks
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The bricks come in a strong plastic bag with a zip around the top and a carrying handle at the top too. It is a good, durable bag and it is really useful to have this to store the blocks in knowing that it isn't going to get damaged. We have had this for nearly two years now and the bag is definitely as good as new, so this helps justify the price a little!
Inside the bag is a range of brightly coloured Mega Bloks- there are 70 bricks in total. They are completely compatible with the table we have, but do check if you are looking to use the Bloks with other products in the range as I believe a range of different size bricks are available.
The colours are blue, red, yellow and green, and this bag is suitable for both girls and boys - some Mega Bloks are more targeted to one or the other but this is definitely a gender neutral set of bricks. The bricks are all very chunky and this set is actually suitable for ages one and over, so they are perfectly safe even for very young children - there is nothing small or fiddly here. The bricks can be held by little hands and they fix together very easily - if you are familiar with lego, this is an inflated version of those bricks! They are easy and fun for little hands to build with.
This is a basic set of bricks, and although sizes vary, they are all simple square shapes. I don't think you could buy this set on its own - they do work best in conjunction with another Mega Bloks product.
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Safe and sound
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As I say I have had this for two years now and although my daughter is playing with her Mega Bloks a lot less these days, I don't think we would have got as much use out of the table without this extra set. The extra bricks were essential in order for us to get the most from this toy. They were also perfect for her at a young age - I never had to worry about her playing with these as they are perfectly safe, and she had a lot of fun using them alongside her other Mega Bloks toy. I can also say that they look as good as new - these bricks are strong and durable and stand up to knocks and bashes very well. I now also have a four month old son, and so I am sure these will get a lot more use in the years to come.
However ... I do think this set is a little overpriced, especially as you can't just use these on their own. So I am going to take off one star for the slightly steep price. But I do recommend the bricks as they are bright and fun, and safe for budding builders.
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Character Building Micro Deadly 60 Figures
by jillycat
My son is a huge fan of the deadly 60 TV programmes with Steve Backshall and loves animals so I gave into a bit of pressure and bought him one of these. They cost £1.99 and come in small little foil packs from the likes of Argos.
My first bug bear with these is similar to a lot of small pocket money toys is that they are in ... sealed foil packets so you don't know which animal you are getting so the chances are if you buy several is that you can end up for example with a lot of walrus's and no snow leopards. We have only bought one so far and have got a walrus how rare this is I don't know but my son was pleased with the animal we got though he was hoping for a snake. Also in each packet is a card with some deadly facts on such as their size speed weapons and deadliness. As my son is a pre reader at present I have to tell him what it says and the information but he has soon memorised some of these facts about walrus and how their tusks are their weapons and how these can break things. I personally think these cards are a great addition and it is one of the few things I actually like about the toy as it helps further my son's knowledge of animals which is something he wants to do all the time and asks multiple questions about them. So with these cards we can sit down and learn a bit about the animal we have.
The walrus itself is very simple to construct all you need to do is click the head into place and the rear of the body and tail so the construction element only takes a matter of minutes. Looking at all the other animals in the set that are available this simple easy construction of a couple of clicks is all it takes for any of them. Quality wise the toy is a little disappointing in that it doesn't stay together that well and some of the detailing is poor compared to say Playmobil animals that we have. However the walrus is much more detailed than the white shark we have with a larger set and this makes it more appealing to my son with the decorated back as it makes it more life like.
My son does enjoy playing with the toy alongside other animal sets he has and it is a bit of a feature with other artic animals in his Playmobil zoo. I do think if several children are into these toys then the opportunity to swap duplicates that they get will be available but at £1.99 each with 15 to collect in the set even if you are very lucky a minimum of £29.89 is needed to get them all which is unlikely and would need a lot of pocket money saving to get them. I am a bit of a scrooge I have to admit about these styles of toys that you don't know what you are getting so from a parent point of view I think they are poor value especially given the quality of the toys. However as my son loves the deadly 60 and animals I can imagine we will be getting a few for though I will try to steer him towards the Playmobil animals which I think represent better value.
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