Dinosaurs for Dinner (Lakeland Dino Cutter)

Member Name: jo1976

Product:	Lakeland Dino Cutter
Date:	15/08/09 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clever way to produce dinosaur shaped treats, cheap, durable

Disadvantages: Doesn't fit all slices perfectly

I might not be Annabel Karmel in the kitchen but I do try to prepare food and meals that the kids will actually enjoy and be happy to eat. I love Lakeland products in general and can spend hours browsing through their catalogues and when I came across these cute dinosaur shaped cutters for just £1.95, they went straight on my Lakeland wishlist!

The cutters are actually one piece which is very cleverly designed to produce two (small) identical dinosaurs from one piece of bread. The image in the catalogue (and on Dooyoo) shows how the cutter fits almost perfectly within a slice of bread, just cutting off the crusts (which my kids don't eat anyway) and minimising wastage. The reality is that all loaves of bread are going to be of different proportions. We tend to buy Warburton's medium sliced bread and these cutters are certainly not a perfect fit for those slices and quite a bit of the bread is actually wasted and the cutter has to be strategically placed to avoid one of the dinosaurs ending up with a broken leg! Fortunately, the little dinosaurs it produces are devoured greedily and none of those are actually wasted by my little dino-hunters.

The day we bought this cutter, everything ended up being dinosaur shaped from sandwiches to toast! The cutter has smoothed ends so that the edges aren't going to be too sharp for young children to use independently. The down side of that is that the cutter needs quite a lot of pressure to get through thicker items like toast and doorstep sandwiches!The cutter is made of thick, shiny plastic which is very easy to clean so it would be ideal for baking as the pastry wouldn't collect in the edges as with some cutters. It also seems very durable and even the roughest of little chefs would be hard-pressed to cause this handy little tool any damage (although the product does come with a 12 month manufacturers' guarantee in addition to Lakeland's very generous returns policy.)

If you're looking for a novel way to serve up kids' sandwiches, perhaps for packed lunches for a fussy eater or for a themed children's party, this simple but ingenious little cutter is ideal.

Summary: Let's make dino bites