Last year my daughter had seen an advertisement for a toy called Squinkies and told me she 'REALLY' wanted them. I had a look online to see what they were. At the time Disney Princess Squinkies weren't available in the UK, but they are now. I saw an Ebay seller from Hong Kong was selling packs of Disney Princess Squinkies (at a really low price too) so I decided to order a pack from them as my daughter loves Disney Princesses. There are a number of different Disney Princess sets to choose from (including Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White and Jasmine from Aladdin) but I went for the Beauty and The Beast set.

What the heck are 'Squinkies' I hear you ask? Squinkies are very small and simple toys. They are tiny rubber figures (measuring about half an inch tall) that come inside plastic gumball type balls. There are lots of different Squinkie designs, the most common being people and animals. Squinkie dispensers and playsets are also available.

The Disney Princess Squinkies arrived a couple of weeks later. They came packaged in plastic and backed by cardboard. I was initially surprised at how small they were. There are 12 Squinkies per pack and they come in glittery balls (you could clearly see 3 of the Squinkies in the packaging but the others were obscured by the glittery balls). They Squinkies were really cute looking - you could tell which characters they were but they had a more cartoonish look than normal.

Characters included The Beast, Mrs Potts (the teapot), Chip (the cup), Cogsworth (the clock), Lumear (the candlestick), 4 Belles (1 yellow dress, 1 blue dress, 1 green dress and 1 pink dress), the wardrobe, Belle's fathers horse and the Enchanted Rose. I'm not sure why there are 4 Belle's (I don't even recall her wearing a pink or green dress, although I'm sure she did) when there isn't any Gaston or Belle's father etc, to be honest...

Naturally when I presented them to my daughter she was thrilled. She wanted to play with them straight away and played with them all day long. As they are pretty basic, she used her other toys to play with them - putting them in houses and different playsets etc. We were rather surprised at how squishy they were (I thought they were just plastic when I brought them) and my daughter enjoyed squashing them and throwing them on the floor and watching them bounce! Within a week she had lost half of them and I believe the dog may have eaten a couple! The balls are also very fiddly and flimsy - she had to really concentrate just to close the balls (which usually resulted in me doing it) and the balls are also easily broken.

There really isn't much point of Squinkies unless you have something like a playset to use them with. My daughter also has a squinkie dispenser which she had a small amount of fun using and a Squinkie bracelet (which allows you to WEAR Squinkies by changing them over) which she really does like. She would probably say that she likes the Disney Princess Squinkies, but I think she just thinks they're 'okay'. I'm not too keen personally.

Since first buying these last year, I have noticed them being sold in many toy shops and supermarkets. Each pack generally costs around the 10.00 mark. I paid less than half that price and still wasn't very impressed by the Disney Princess Squinkies so there is no way I would pay 10.00 for them!