After seeing these cups in a review here, I thought I would get some for my own children to have a supply of cold drinks in the summer. I loved having slushies myself as a kid, and they were certainly a great way to cool down on a hot day, and I was sure we could have a lot of fun with these.

I bought two mugs, both blue in colour though also available in red. They were £7.99 each. I bought them from amazon, but the seller was firebox, and they came superbly packaged in lots of those plastic bags with air in within a cardboard box which had firebox written all over it.

The mug itself is quite large in size. It reminds me of a half pint tankard as it is around that sort of size. There are 2 sections. The blue plastic outer is made from quite a tough plastic. The insert is then made from a more rubberised material, with a liquid inside it that needs to be frozen in order to work. These inner sections are quite bulky really, so it does take up a bit of room in the freezer.

This inner section needs to be frozen between 6-12 hours. I would say this is closer to 12 hours, especially the first time you use it. This then feels very hard to the touch. If you put it back inside the outer layer, then add a drink of your choice to it, you can watch the magic start to happen in front of your eyes.

It is recommended that you use naturally sweetened drinks to get the best results, such as fizzy drinks, fruit juice or flavoured milks. You could even use coffees and fruit teas in it. The mug came with a little recipe book containing 10 recipes for drinks you can use with your cup. So far we have been a bit boring and stuck to cola and fruit juice, but I will experiment further.

It is also recommended that the drink you put in is already cold first. I have tried it with a room temperature drink and it didn't work very well at all.

Within a couple of minutes of adding a drink up to the convenient fill line in the insert, you notice that there is ice forming around the edge of your drink. You need to scrape this from round the edges, and keep stirring it regularly to get the slush like consistency of this sort of drink. I used a spoon to do this. I tried a straw, but it was just too bendy to be effective.

After about 10 minutes, the slush is fully formed and good to serve. Here, you need to transfer it to another glass for drinking as if you don't it will continue to freeze the liquid. The first time I made them, I didn't read this bit, and we still had slush in the cup nearly 2 hours later.

These are really a fun item that can be kept in the freezer and used to make fun and impressive drinks for the family within a few minutes notice. It isn't a lot of hassle other than the room the inners take up in the freezer, and the only negative I can see is that if you have to wait for the cups to refreeze and the kids are plagueing you for them, you will have to put up with their moans.

The only potential problem is if you manage to damage the inner section. There is an address on the packaging for ordering more from, but the cost is $6.50, plus postage of $7.95, so I imagine for most UK users it would be cheaper to just order a new mug.

A nifty idea that works very well to make slushie drinks. Simple enough that even a child could do it.