Make sure you listen to what your child is saying, or pay the price! (Build a Bear)

Member Name: belglen

Product:	Build a Bear
Date:	06/09/08 (315 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely toys, great day out

Disadvantages: Could be expensive

My seven year old daughter introduced us to the Build A Bear workshop. One of her friends had got a rabbit from the workshop and of course she had to have one. She had very tactfully introduced the subject to my husband, who, as he typically does, was only half listening to what she was talking about and gave his agreement to her getting a bear from the Build A Bear Workshop. Of course when she broached the subject with me there was no going back as her daddy had already agreed she could have one, even if he didn't realise what he had agreed to. I needed to make some enquiries to find out what we had agreed to and how much it was going to cost.

Build A Bear Workshop is a chain of shops that sell stuffed toy animals. The stores are a bit on the Disney Store style of shopping, very bright, very child pleasing and quite expensive. The Build A Bear workshops sell soft toys and a multitude of accessories and clothing for the toys. When we entered the store there was a young assistant who told us how the shop worked and explained that the bears ranged in price from £8.00 to £18.00, this was better than I had anticipated as I had had a quick look at the website and there were bears/animals on the site right up to £45.00, so I was expecting my daughter to choose something very expensive.

The theme of the store is that you are buying a best friend, you choose your animal, you get a birth certificate and you bring it home in a special box. We entered the store and to our right there was a section that had various animals and bears, at this stage the toys are unstuffed and you basically select the "skin" that you want. In our store there were bears, rabbits, dinosaurs, zebras, cats, dogs and many more, my daughter spied a "Hello Kitty" on display and this is what she wanted, we found a "Hello Kitty" skin and took it with us to the next stage. The next stage is to get the toy stuffed, you have to queue for this, we were very lucky and only had to wait about five minutes for our turn. You can also choose a sound to put in your toy, perhaps an animal sound, you can even get it to sing "Happy Birthday" or play Brahms Lullaby, my daughter didn't want a sound for her kitty. The stuffings are in a big machine, a bit like an industrial washing machine, you hand your animal to the assistant and the animal is attached to a hose, the child can control the stuffing process and is told to put their foot on a pedal, a bit like a sewing machine pedal, this releases the stuffings into the animal.

A key part of the process is choosing a heart for your toy, the child selects a little material heart to put inside the animal. When the heart is selected the child is told to rub it between their hands, to warm it, then kiss it and make a wish, next the assistant puts it inside the animal before the toy is sealed. When the toy is being stuffed you are asked how firm you want it to be, my daughter opted for cuddly. So now we had a stuffed toy with a heart, you can then take it to have it fluffed, but we didn't need to do this as my daughter's toy didn't have long fur. I think the next assistant gives the toy a good brush to fluff up the fur. Then comes the expensive part, clothing your toy and buying it accessories.

The Hello Kitty my daughter chose is 40cm, and cost £18.00. There is a whole plethora of clothing and accessories to choose from underwear, nightwear, casual, dressy, shoes, boots, male or female. You can also buy various accessories ranging from hair accessories to skateboards and roller-skates, prams, wardrobes. I know it is totally over the top. I am not suggesting that you have to buy everything or even anything. I let my daughter choose 1 outfit, £8.00. 1 pair of pyjamas, a pair of shoes £6.00 and a pair of pants £3.00, including the bear at £18.00 the shopping trip cost me £41.00.

It is an expensive shopping trip and one that should probably be kept for very special occasions, but we did have a really lovely time. The shop was bright, the staff were friendly and the toys are gorgeous, you could spend hours browsing through the clothing and accessories.

In the shop you register your bear online and this generates a birth certificate for the toy, you can also then log onto the website and I suppose sign-up for other things, I haven't fully checked this out. Also when you register your bear the bar code is recorded and if you lose it and someone returns it to the shop they can find out who owns the bear.

There are numerous Build A Bear Workshops throughout the country, the one we went to is in Belfast and is relatively new. The website gives details of shops, you can also make purchases online www.buildabear.co.uk

My daughter knows that she is a very lucky girl, and that this was a very special treat.

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Summary: A lovely day to remember choosing a new soft cuddly best friend