The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 4: "Crayola Digital Light Designer"

Click here for intro and PART 1.
Click here for PART 2.
Click here for PART 3.

PRODUCT:

Crayola Digital Light Designer

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT’S EXISTENCE:

[The Hungry Preacher and his family have been working hard to expunge the memory of this product from our brains.  Thus, we have destroyed all visual records of this product.  Sorry.] 

WHAT THEY SAY:

"Grab the digital stylus and get ready to draw in an amazing way—with colored, spinning lights! Drawing, special effects, animation, games, activities, and so much more—it’s hours and hours of creative fun! You can even sit back and replay your favorite creations as they appear to float in mid-air on the 360° surface. You won’t believe your eyes!"

(from Crayola Website)

THE GIST:

It’s like drawing, but your canvas is shaped like a cone and your medium is light.

PROS:

I am grateful for the CDLD, because it has given me a new appreciation for things like coal and Etch-a-Sketches that can also be used for drawing.

Buying the CDLD has also taught me that returning a product to a third-party seller through Amazon can be difficult and full of hurdles.

CONS:

On the Crayola website, this product has 71 user reviews, and the average rating is 1.9 stars out of 5.  That’s actually a little misleading, because 1 star is the lowest rating you can give.

Accompanying the ratings are user comments, and I agree with most of the concerns expressed:

-It’s loud.  Probably not quite hair-dryer loud, but close.

-It’s pretty crappy that, unless you pay extra for the cord, you need 4 size-D batteries to use the thing (plus 2 size-AAA batteries in the stylus).

-It’s annoying that the dome needs to be almost completely level to be used.

-It’s cumbersome.

-It’s expensive.

-It’s hard to figure out how to use.

All of this is potentially able to be overcome, except for the small detail that

-It’s not very much fun.

No, really.  The pictures that you can draw are no more precise than something you could do on a Light Bright 30 years ago.  They are so pixelated that even using the word "pixelated" to describe them is misleading because it implies that they are still on the "spectrum of pixelation."  But to achieve even this level of precision, you have to be very exact with the stylus.  Of course, it is difficult to get the stylus to illuminate the exact spot you are going for.  It’s like when you’re at an ATM and you realize that you need to touch the screen about a centimeter above the icon you’re trying to highlight.  Now imagine that in the middle of your transaction, the touch-screen suddenly begins to accurately respond to the location of your finger.  Then it doesn't.  Then it does.  Then you realize that how the screen responds to your touch seems to be related to some combination of the angle of your finger, the duration you leave your finger on the screen, the suddenness with which your finger touches the screen, and the precision with which your finger touches the spot you are going for.  Now imagine you are six years old.  That's how much fun this product was.

The descriptions of this product on both Amazon and Crayola.com read like those of a realtor spinning a house that no one wants.

From Amazon:

“The Crayola Digital Light Designer lets children express their artistic side, without the mess of traditional pens.”

Traditional, like with ink wells?  OK, I guess I can see that.  But clicky pens with a little adult supervision aren’t that messy, are they?  Especially for a 6 year old (the minimum suggested age for this product), right?

“The round dome responds to the touch of a stylus to display up to seven colors, providing unlimited imaginative fun.”

Up to seven colors?  As in, “One less than the number of colors included in Crayola’s most basic box of crayons”?  Is that the seven you’re talking about?  If seven colors provides unlimited imaginative fun, why do you make a box of crayons that has 120 colors?

To be fair, a thorough study of the Crayola website reveals that boxes of crayons come in seven different sizes.  This can't be a coincidence, and it stands to reason that the type and degree of fun that can be experienced with seven colors of light is the same as that which can be experienced with 120 colors of crayons.  This handy table should help you convert how many colors of light you will need to match what you experience with crayons:

# of Crayon Colors	# of Light Colors	Predicted Experience
120	7	Unlimited, imaginative fun
96	6	Slightly limited, imaginative fun
64	5	Moderately limited, imaginative gladness
48	4	Severely limited, rote gladness
32	3	Structured, uninspired ambivalence
16	2	Highly structured, disillusioned melancholy
8	1	Mundane, bitter hopelessness

“Kids can make their drawings move with animation options or even create short movies by combining drawings.”

A few paragraphs later, Amazon tells us just how short those movies are:

"They can also create six-frame movies with the Movie Maker activity on the light dome."

Six frames?  Six?  Forget for a second that the first movie ever made (of a horse galloping, in 1878) was 16 frames.  Forget that for a second.  Is there anyone in the world who would chose the word “movie” to describe what it is you’re saying my kid can do with the Crayola Digital Light Designer?  Words have meanings.  If you want to use a word (like “movie”) to describe something that it has never before described, shouldn’t you blaze that trail in something other than an official description of a product you are trying to sell?  Is that asking a lot?

"The dome also features eight engaging activities and games to keep kids entertained."

I can’t really address this, because we didn’t make it to all eight.  After about three, we realized we were neither engaged nor entertained.  We were mostly bored and confused.  I don’t want to think about what would have happened if we’d tried all eight.

In summary, if my kid had been born in the 1910’s and time-traveled to the present, maybe she would be completely engaged with this product.  Maybe then she would “sit back and replay her favorite creations as they appear to float in mid-air on the 360° surface.”  Maybe then she “wouldn’t believe her eyes.”  But for non-time-traveling 6-year-olds and 39-year-olds living in 2013, the messages our eyes sent to our brains regarding this product were very, very believable.  On the other hand, that a 6-year-old kid living in 2013 with $60 to spend (or have spent on his behalf) would be intelligent and patient enough to learn how to use this product, but still be inexperienced enough in his use of electronics to be fascinated for hours and hours with all that this product can do?  If I saw that, it’s fair to say “I wouldn’t believe my eyes.”

RATING:

1 star out of 5

Thus we conclude "The Toys of Summer, (WINTER EDITION)."  Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back in a few days when I will arrange letters and words in an entirely new way, thereby communicating thoughts that have never before been communicated by another human being.

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 3: "Blobimals"

Click here for intro and PART 1.
Click here for PART 2.

PRODUCT:

Blobimals

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT’S EXISTENCE:
[see below]

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

Very few people are saying anything about Blobimals.  Even the Blobimals website doesn’t offer an entry-level description of the product.  Instead, the website invites you to enter the world of the Blobimals, and I can’t find any place where they “break character” for Blobimal novices (“Blobimalices”?) and say, “OK, so here’s what a Blobimal is…”  Same for the Blobimal Facebook page.

While it’s hardly an official product description, a writer at squidoo has this to say:

"Blobimals; my guess is that they'll be this year's hot playground toy this autumn/fall term… Blobimals are really easy to make.
1. Simply pop open the tub, and take out all the bits.
2. Start shaping your monster's body in the squishy putty and when it's done, place it on a clean, flat surface.
3. Stick your monster's feet, arms, horns, eyes, and mouth into the putty body - wherever they look cool!
4. Admire your monster creation, and take a photo for your friends.
5. Pull off those monster limbs and face, squash that monster body, and start all over again, to create a brand new monster every time!
6. Or, leave your Blobimal overnight to melt into a pool of monster slime - yucky!
Blobimals are available in three varieties: a one-eyed toothy green monster, a two eyed fanged monster, and a three eyed spikey red version."

THE GIST:

You get a ball of clay that seems like a cross between Play-doh and Silly Putty.  Shape it into a monster.  Add the accessories.  Check back later and find your monster melted into a puddle.

PROS:

I’m a sucker for things that do what they’re supposed to do.  Once, Beth and I saw some ad that was bragging about how this fancy new vacuum cleaner sucked up dirt.  And I said to Beth, “Sucking up things is what makes something a vacuum!  If it doesn’t do that, it’s not a vacuum!  By definition!”  She told me I was so cute.

And while I have lived long enough not to be shocked when a product doesn’t work exactly as advertised, at the same time I am especially satisfied when it does.  Would Blominals provide that level of satisfaction?  Could a putty really be firm enough to mold but soft enough to melt into a puddle?

Even though we bought it as last-minute stocking stuffer and didn’t have a lot riding on its functionality, we still hoped.  At first, the clay was a little firm.  We softened it up.  The girls sculpted their monsters, then accessorized.

These pics are recent—not taken from that first day—but they are a fair representation of “take one”.

Yes, they melt.  We were all pretty delirious, though none of us fully understood it.  But they didn’t promise we'd understand it.  They promised “mold and melt,” and on that basis, I offer my highest compliment: “The functionality of Blobimals exceeds even my greatest hopes for a product making these particular claims.”

CONS:

With the passing of time (and half-lifes?), the Blominal clay has become more liquidy and harder to shape.  The re-uses may be finite in number.

It would have been nice to get just a little bit more clay to work with.  I suspect that in the very near future, we will combine the blobs of clay and make large monster sculptors a few times before we dispose of the Blobimal clay.

I think we paid $6, which seems a little bit high.  I don’t know what the ingredients are, so maybe $6 is a bargain.  And, like I’ve said, the product does what it’s supposed to do, so I can’t fault them too much for trying to make some cash off of their invention.

RATING:

5 stars out of 5

To borrow an old slogan from the Army, this product is all that it can be.  I respect that.  The PROS are significant, and the CONS are nitpicky.  Consider it stamped with The Hungry Preacher’s seal of approval.

Next up:
Crayola Digital Light Designer

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 2: "4D Cityscape Time Puzzle"

Click here for intro and PART 1.

PRODUCT:
4D Cityscape Time Puzzle: USA

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT'S EXISTENCE:

WHAT OTHERS SAY:
"4D Cityscape allows you to build the history of the USA over the 4th Dimension of Time. Starting with the base layer, our unique jigsaw play showcases the evolution of the USA - based on territorial expansion from the year 1783 to 1900's. You then assemble the 2nd layer 'modern' jigsaw map - which showcases the formation all 50 states in a time sequence based on each State's date of established statehood. The third layer is constructed using the 4D Time Poster where 93 of the most famous US monuments & buildings are placed into the puzzle in the order that they were constructed.

The puzzle includes 93 plastic building replicas that depict the Country as far back as 1450 to modern day. The puzzle includes such iconic structures as Arches National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the St. Louis Arch. The buildings fit into pre-cut holes in a traditional 2D jigsaw puzzle that form the country's layout and Rocky Mountains. The product includes a Time Poster that directs you through time as you rebuild America’s famous history. Ages 8+."
(from 4D Puzzle Website)

THE GIST:
It's part puzzle, part timeline--and all learning.

PROS:
The good things about this product are very good.  The first layer is a visually engaging map, with each land acquisition of the United States distinguished by its own color and faux-texture.  The map is loaded with names and dates, and includes natural and man-made borders.  The second layer—pieces made of foam—lays on top of the original layer and depicts the US as it exists today.  Then you fit tokens representing landmarks (mostly man-made) into their appropriate pre-carved spots in the foam layer.

Each layer conveys loads of information about the geography and history of the United States.  This is one of those great “you can’t help but learn” toys that I’m a big fan of; if kids are going to do puzzles, why not make them do puzzles that will trick them into learning cool stuff?

CONS:
The painful thing about this toy is that the “CONS,” though minor seeming, were actually pretty annoying.  Furthermore, they seem like they could be easily fixed. We’ll start small, and work our way up.

First off, the Gateway Arch does not straddle the Mississippi River.  Yes, we all wish it did.  That would be way cool.  But it doesn’t.

Next, the puzzle pieces on the bottom layer are small and very uniform.  Do puzzle enthusiasts consider uniformity of pieces to be just another element of a puzzle’s degree of difficulty?  To me, it was annoying.  When 4 people spend 5 minutes studying the connection of 2 puzzle pieces and still can’t come to a consensus as to whether they actually fit together—it just seems like overkill.

Do they or don't they?

Next, the tokens: I thought they’d be akin to “Monopoly game pieces.”  Not quite.  They weren’t metal.  They were plastic, and came connected to frames.  Breaking each token away from its frame was tricky.  And after the pieces were broken free, most retained pokey, plastic nubs at the points they were attached to the frame.  These pokey nubs had to be sanded off in order to fit the token into its spot on the foam layer of the puzzle.  And I think we can all agree that when you’re reading a description of a toy, the phrase, “These pokey nubs had to be sanded off,” should be a red flag.  Forget metal Monopoly pieces—in my daughters’ room there are literally hundreds of plastic toys, tokens, and chips that won’t cut you.  I’m pretty sure the information on the map is public domain; is cardboard (level 1) and foam (level 2) that expensive that the monument tokens have to be the same quality as the bottom-shelf prizes at Chuck E Cheese?  With a price tag near $40, this toy is like one of those big-budget Hollywood movies with no special effects or car chases.  Where did the money go?

Full disclosure: My giant thumbs probably didn't make the sanding process any easier

Anyway, as you can imagine, a lot of questions go through a man’s mind when he’s sanding the nubs off plastic replicas of 93 American landmarks.  Do puzzle enthusiasts consider sanding plastic nubs to be just another element of a puzzle’s degree of difficulty?  How can we as a nation have the vision and skill to construct the Golden Gate Bridge, but struggle to create a 1-inch plastic replica of the Bridge that doesn’t cut your finger if you don’t sand it closely enough?  Wouldn’t it be quicker for me just to build full-sized replicas of all these landmarks?  Why does America have so many landmarks in the first place?  What’s wrong with us?  And so on.

Speaking of the landmarks, I can’t fault 4D Puzzle too much for going all “MLB All-Star Game” on us and including representatives from every state.  Kids want to cheer for their home-state landmark.  I get that.  That said, when you have 43 “extra” landmarks to work with after you've handed out the “participation trophies”, should something like this really happen?

Hint: Count the spots for landmarks

I’m not saying Mississippi isn’t an awesome state or anything.  But even Mississippi apologists would admit that their love for the state is not landmark-based.  It seems like this conversation should have taken place before the puzzle went to print:
4D CEO:  Did you develop a criteria for deciding how many landmark tokens go to each state.
PUZZLE MAKER:  You bet we did.
4D CEO:  Do California and Mississippi have the same number of notable landmarks?
PUZZLE MAKER:  Yep.  So says the criteria.
4D CEO:  Destroy the criteria and start over.  And never speak of this again.

The most disappointing component of this toy, though, was the informational poster included with the puzzle.  It had pictures and dates of each landmark, but it was surprisingly short on, well, information.

Here's proof.  It's a sample section of the information poster regarding the landmarks:

For comparison's sake, a few years ago, we bought the monkeys a National Park Memory game.  This memory game also included an informational poster.  Here is a sample from that poster:

I realize the print looks a little small, so here's the entry for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial ("the Arch" to you and me) in readable form:
"Jefferson National Expansion Memorial consists of the Gateway Arch, the Museum of Westward Expansion, and St. Louis' Old Courthouse.  The 630' stainless-steel Gateway Arch gives St. Louis, Missouri one of the world's most unique skylines.  Designed by architect Eero Saarinen in 1947, the Arch was built between 1963 and 1965.  It is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service established to re-tell the story of America's century of westward expansion."

It's not the most thorough description ever, but at least it's something.  On the other hand, here's what we know about landmarks from the 4D info poster:
1) their names
2) their home states
3) the dates they were either started or finished
4)

The blank space after 4) is on purpose, for dramatic effect. Pretty powerful, right?

Of course, even this sparse information is more than kids will learn putting together a puzzle of, say, Sponge Bob. But how much effort would it have taken to include even 2 sentences about each landmark? Is “additional knowledge” seen as the 5th dimension?

Ideally, this additional information could tie together the layers of the puzzle. For example, the description of the Gateway Arch could mention the Louisiana Purchase (which is clearly designated on layer 1 of the puzzle).  Nope. Instead, we learn that the Arch was built in 1963. That’s all you need to know (oh, and that it straddles the Mississippi River).

RATING:
4 stars out of 5
A 4-star rating may seem inconsistent with how down on the puzzle I seem to be.  I am torn, for sure.  It’s a 5-star concept with a 2-star execution.  It’s like they invented pizza, but settled on St. Louis style thin crust pizza as though that was the end-all, be-all of pizza.  Why settle?  Why not tease this out to see where it goes?

Like pizza, the idea of the 4D puzzle is nearly impossible to screw up, no matter how hard it seems like they’re trying to.  And at the end of the day, hey, they invented pizza!  With much ambivalence, I give them their props.  If they had metal pieces and a paragraph description of each monument, I’d probably give them another 40 bucks for any of their other 4D puzzles.  Until that day, I just need some time to sort out my feelings.

Next up:
Blobimals

-THP

The Toys of Summer (Winter Edition), PART 1: "Squishy Baff"

The household of The Hungry Preacher has experienced an influx of toys and games over the past couple of months.  We partook in Christmas celebrations well into January; and in early February, Monkey 2 commemorated turning 7 years old by fluttering her maternally-inherited eyelashes and coaxing scores of loved ones to shower gifts upon her.  (If this didn’t work, she was prepared to flex her paternally-inherited biceps.  Booyah!)

For the next week or so, on this very website, I will post my first-ever product reviews of some of the more notable toys.  I’ll begin with perhaps the most notable of all.

PRODUCT:

Squishy Baff

VISUAL PROOF OF THIS PRODUCT'S EXISTENCE:

Level of joy conveyed in this image is not typical.  Your experience may vary.

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

"Turn ordinary water into glorious colorful goo and then back again. Create fun goo adventures, while feeling it squishing between your fingers and toes! It's safe, fun, and doesn't leave stains or residue. When you are done playing, simply add the dissolving powder and watch it go down the drain!" (from Squishy Baff website)

THE GIST:

Pour pink crystals into your bath to make the water turn gooey.  Play accordingly.

PROS:

The goo-dissolving solution did, in fact, dissolve the goo.  Whew!

CONS:

I was raised to believe that if want to bathe the way God intended, you need at least a foot of water.  And if you’re splashing around in less than eight inches?  Goodness, don’t even call it a bath!  Biased as such, I cringed when I read that the recommended water depth for using Squishy Baff is 3.5 inches.  Never mind that the bathtub on the Squishy Baff website is filled to the overflow drain, and that the goo is mounding.  Emboldened with what I now realize was false hope, I filled our wider-than-average tub with about 4 inches of water, and poured in the powder.

My test subjects were ready and excited.  We all hovered over the edge of the tub and waited.  And waited.  And stirred.  And waited.  Once I realized the gooiness of the water was probably maxing out, I instructed the monkeys to climb on in and play with the goo as best they could.

The clearest way I can describe the substance in the bathtub is to tell you to imagine about a half-inch layer of Osetra Karat Amber Russian Caviar mixed with 4 inches of water.  Each bit of goo (like each piece of caviar) was its own entity, but the goo particles did not bond in any useful way with each other.  About three minutes into the Baff, my girls were asking, “Is that it?”  I assessed, then somberly admitted, “Yes.  That is it.”

Fortunately, our pack of Squishy Baff came with 2 packages of goo particles.  I should have just added the second pack to the first bath.  Instead, I told the girls, “Next time, we’ll use less water.”  “Next time” ended up being last night.  I used about a third less water and—whaddaya know?—the goo was substantially more viscous.  This time it was like caviar mixed up in Malt-o-Meal (AKA, "the breakfast of Saudi polo champions").

Apparently, the consistency of the goo makes all the difference in the world for bath time enjoyment, as my girls did indeed “Create fun goo adventures.”

I should note that a key plot-element of these “goo adventures” involved blobs of goo being splattered on the wall and on all the edges and ledges of the tub.  Clean-up was neither “a breeze” nor “a snap”.  It was more like “payback,” if you’re familiar with the corresponding phrase.  Finally, for the record, there is nothing about a Squishy Baff that remotely serves the purpose of an actual bath, which 9 out of 10 fuddy duddies agree is “to get clean”.

All in all, Squishy Baff overpromised and was nowhere near worth the trouble to me, but did provide moderate enjoyment for the participants once the proper consistency was established.

RATING:
2 stars out of 5

Next up:
4D Cityscape Time Puzzle

-THP