14.1.09

Transformers Robot Fighters Game




Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description
Meet Transformer robot fighters Optimus Prime and Megatron. Ideal for ages 6 and older, these two robots compete in head-to-head battle. The first to knock their opponent off the base wins.

Action Figures for a New Generation

Modeled after the hit 1980's TV series and recent movie, this Transformers Robot Fighter game includes detailed figures of Optimus Prime and Megatron. Parents can have it ready in a matter of minutes; just slap on a few stickers, put the robots on their stand, and the battle begins. Playing this game is simple: The action figures perform ruthless kicks and punches as your galactic young mastermind twists and turns the knob. One minor design flaw is that the limbs move only at the shoulders and hips, thereby limiting the moves they can make. But they are built to last and loads of fun. These Transformers should integrate nicely into your child's regular action figure collection.



Optimus Prime and Megatron are modeled after the characters from the recent Transformers movie. View larger.


Turning the knob causes Optimus Prime to unleash a fury of punches and kicks. View larger.

What We Think


Fun Factor:

Durability:

(what this means)


The Good: Fun, exciting, designed for small hands

The Bad: Strike plate is small, hard to hit

In a Nutshell: Provides hours of entertainment

At a Glance

Ages: 6 and older
Requires: No batteries or power source required

Defeat on Battle Platform, or Play Anywhere

Transformers have been around for decades and are now more popular than ever. This game allows children to decide the outcome of the endless battle between Megatron and Optimus Prime. Kicks and punches can be completed on command, and knocking your opponent off the platform is quite a challenge.

Keep track of hits with the zero-to-five bar--the first one to land five hits wins the game. Or defeat your opponent by targeting the strike plate and knocking the robot off the platform. When taken off the base, the Transformers stand on flat surfaces and make a great everyday toy.

Easy and Action-Packed

After being a staple of virtually every home in the 1980's, Transformers are now a favorite for the new generation. With a simple design and easy game play, this toy amuses little boys for hours. Shaped like a joystick, the base features a slick futuristic design adorned with the Transformers logo.

Lightweight and durable, the base is easy for small hands to control and maneuver. The action figures boast intricate details and moveable joints at the hips and shoulders. One minor design flaw is that their knees and elbows don't bend. When playing the game, the warriors are somewhat limited to sidekicks and uppercuts, but once the fighting frenzy begins, most children won't notice.

Another slight drawback is that to knock your opponent off the platform, you have to hit the strike plate, which is so small it is nearly impossible to reach. Kids will enjoy trying to land five hits first and the numbered bar at the top allows them to easily keep track of their score. Overall, the Transformers Robot Fighters game is simple to play and packed with action.

What's in the Box
2 robot Transformer action figures, 2 bases, and decorative decals


Product Description
Meet Transformer robot fighters Optimus Prime and Megatron. Ideal for ages 6 and older, these two robots compete in head-to-head battle. The first to knock their opponent off the base wins. Action Figures for a New Generation Modeled after the hit 1980's TV series and recent movie, this Transformers Robot Fighter game includes detailed figures of Optimus Prime and Megatron. Parents can have it ready in a matter of minutes; just slap on a few stickers, put the robots on their stand, and the battle begins. Playing this game is simple: The action figures perform ruthless kicks and punches as your galactic young mastermind twists and turns the knob. One minor design flaw is that the limbs move only at the shoulders and hips, thereby limiting the moves they can make. But they are built to last and loads of fun. These Transformers should integrate nicely into your child's regular action figure collection.

Special Optimus Transformers from HASBRO





4.1.09

Shopping Suggestions For the New Mom (Maternity Items, Newborn-Safe Toys, Etc)

If you're having your first child, you probably have about one million questions, as well. It's only natural that expectant mothers should worry day and night about whether or not they'll be a good parent, whether they're providing for their baby well enough, and so on.

The first step is to relax. Raising a child certainly ain't easy, but it's a lot harder to make all those mistakes new parents worry about than most realize. Just make sure to be prepared, and you should be okay when the baby arrives.

If you are expecting a child, you may want to start looking for toys that are appropriate for newborn babies, so as to ensure that the learning process begins right away. And while you're at it, you might want to check out some maternity items, as well (note to baby shower invitees, this list is for you, too!).

Stuffed Animals

Stuffed animals are great for children less than a year old. The plush, soft feel helps children to learn about texture, the design of the animal can help to teach them the basics of recognizing faces and shapes, and the colour can help their eyesight develop.

If you stick to dolls and animals intended for babies, there should be no problem. Otherwise, just be on the lookout for things like plastic eyes and buttons, which can pop off more easily than you might think.

Baby Toys

Toys for babies look ridiculous to older kids, "Why is the dog seven different colours with a rubber ring sticking out of his head?" but the zany designs are usually put together with a purpose in mind. For example, the Playskool Let's Play Together Puppet shaped like a monkey has a few plastic rings of various colours and a dial that makes clicking noises when turned left or right. These bells and whistles actually help to teach babies about various tactile surfaces, colours, sound, and interacting with their environment, as well as providing something safe and harmless to chew on to assist in teething.

Strollers, Baby Carriers, and Baby Care

This one should be obvious. You're going to be carrying your baby pretty much all the time for awhile, so strollers, baby carriers, baby seats, and so on, are vital to giving your arms a break once in awhile. And of course, you'll want a well-stocked supply of baby safety and health items, like electrical socket covers, Q-tips, cotton balls, infant medicine, and so on.

Your Shopping List

Okay let's be frank, here... You've got a big shopping list to fill out. Baby clothes, diapers, bottles, formula, breast pump, crib, baby food... We can't possibly list every single thing you'd need in one short article. Rather, we'll just recommend a couple of things...

1. Don't neglect toys for the baby, and...

2. Don't neglect yourself.

Look, having a baby is tough. If you can get yourself something to lighten the load, be it a baby carrier, or your favourite tea and chocolate, do it. Having a baby is wonderful, but it's also a lot of stress and hard work. Being prepared means taking care of yourself, too.

Yogee.com.au is a leading Australian online toy store. Visit yogee.com.au for a wide selection of Kids Toys at discounted prices. To save money on your next purchase, please visit Toys.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chang_Lim


Toys That Work For Both Boys and Girls

Okay, girls love Dora the Explorer, and boys love action figures. But, there's something to be said for toys that brothers can share with their sisters and vice versa. The way kids spend most of their free time is playing, and if you can give your children some toys based on a common interest, you can encourage sharing, and playing together, which can strengthen the sibling bond and make for a more harmonious household.

One of the real hurdles for brothers and sisters playing together is that most girls really don't care about Batman, and most boys wouldn't be caught dead playing with Barbie dolls. So, more often than not, you'll need to provide your kids with some "gender neutral" toys if you're hoping to see them getting along and learning to share.

In the 1980's, we had He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He-Man had initially been marketed to boys, but because of the generous number of strong female heroes and fantasy elements, as well as a female animation director taking on a lot of episodes, the show actually wound up having a lot of crossover appeal, hence the spin-off series and toy line, She-Ra Princess of Power, starring He-Man's sister. The whole He-Man/She-Ra family of toys was nothing if not an excellent way to get brothers and sisters playing together and enjoying the same shows. Unfortunately, children's entertainment today has very little in the way of popular franchises with equal appeal for boys and girls.

But then we do have Dora and Diego... while Dora the Explorer may have limited appeal for boys, the spin-off series, Go Diego Go, is definitely a boy's show. Each show shares a number of characters with the other, and the overlap can help bring brothers and sisters together, meaning less fighting over the remote when one show or the other comes on TV, and playing together to create adventures for both Dora and Diego to conquer.

Then there are completely gender neutral toys, like Legos. Legos usually tries to cater more towards boys, licensing properties like Batman and Indiana Jones, but the basic premise of this toy has a lot of appeal for boys and girls: Build whatever you want to build. Challenging your daughter and son to build a castle together may yield interesting results, like a palace with a ballroom and an armada of cannons and archers along the outer wall.

While space adventure is primarily a boy-focused genre, Star Wars actually tends to appeal to both boys and girls as well. By providing the audience with a strong male lead in Luke Skywalker, and a strong female lead in Princess Leia, every kid watching the movie has someone to root for.

Most recently, we've seen electronic toys for both boys and girls drop considerably in price thanks to the very nature of technology getting cheaper every day. You can actually buy a kid a digital camera, toy laptop, or even a camcorder for the price of dinner for one at the Olive Garden. By their nature, these are non-gender specific toys, but bear in mind that most boys wouldn't dare touch a pink and purple camera, whereas girls rarely have a problem with blue.

That's something to remember, by the way. A lot of gender-neutral toys are coloured blue for boys and pink for girls. Boys oftentimes hate pink, but girls don't have to worry about being called a sissy at school if they show up with a blue backpack.

Yogee.com.au is a leading Australian online toy store. Visit yogee.com.au for a wide selection of Kids Toys at discounted prices. To save money on your next purchase, please visit Toys Online

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chang_Lim


Buying Toys to Nurture Your Children's Interests

Every kid has their own thing. In the long run, a kid's thing might just be a phase they're going through, it might be a fleeting fancy that's here today gone tomorrow. On the other hand, even the most basic understanding of human nature will let you know that playing is how children first begin attaining necessary skill sets for their adult life. The things that kids are most passionate about tend to be those interests that will stay with them their entire lives.

Making sure that you nurture those interests, as a parent, can be the difference between a kid who realizes his or her dreams, and a kid who holds down a boring job while daydreaming about what could've been.

Sorry, we don't mean to paint such a grim picture, but it's true that positive encouragement can really play a huge role in children following their dreams later in life.

The first step to buying toys to encourage your kid's interests is, well, to know what those interests are! But really know. A kid who wants to collect all the superhero action figures might not have an interest in superheroes so much as an interest in storytelling, because that's really what kids are doing, in a way, when they play with action figures; coming up with new adventures for the characters. So it may be a good idea to look into some toys that encourage the imagination. Legos are an obvious choice, of course.

Let's get one thing straight, though; buying your kid a toy cash register doesn't mean they're never going to be anything but a cashier! If your kid takes an interest in managing money, who knows, you might have the next Steve Forbes on your hands. Wherever a kid's interests take them, it's positive encouragement that can help them take it to the top, no matter what that interest is. It's that encouragement that turns an interest into a passion, and a passion into a lifelong ambition.

It's important to be open minded. Whatever your kid is into, it's your approval, your encouragement, that can see them really making an impact on whatever field they go into. Sure it'd be great to have a doctor in the family, but being a great carpenter, a great novelist, a great plumber even, anything you put your heart into is a noble ambition.

It's a little hard to recommend specific toys in this article, because it's up to you to find out what your kids love doing, but we'll try our best anyways!

MUSIC

You know those little plastic toy guitars where you hit a button and it plays a song? Those are great for little kids, but after age of seven or so, the maximum amount of time you're going to be able to have fun with something like that is about the same as the length of the pre-recorded song! There are real, child-sized guitars available that can be surprisingly affordable, as well as keyboards, drum kits, and other musical toys available that can have your kids composing their own songs before long.

SPORTS

Even if your kid's not too into sports, a quick game now and then can be important for getting the exercise you need in a day, and that's something everybody should be passionate about. Just playing along with your kid with some outdoor toys can be incredibly encouraging and spark a real interest in staying healthy.

EXPLORATION

There's only one toy you really need for a kid who likes the outdoors, The National Geographic Explorer Kit. With a flashlight, binoculars, a magnifying glass, a manual, and a compass, the whole kit is perfect for future paleontologists, entymologists, geographers, archaeologists, scientific researchers... basically, it's a catch-all kit for any kid with an interest in making new discoveries.

Yogee is a leading Australian online toy store. Visit http://www.yogee.com.au for a wide selection of Kids Toys at discounted prices. To save money on your next purchase, please visit Toys.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chang_Lim


"I'm Too Old For That!" Toys For Pre-Teens and Teenagers

By Chang Lim Platinum Quality Author
One of the worst parts of growing up; we all go through a phase where we think we're a little too cool and grown up for the toys we loved just one birthday ago. Around the age of nine or ten, we go around saying "I don't watch Sesame Street anymore, that dumb ol' show is for kids!" Then, of course, fifteen years later we watch an episode with our own kids and laugh our butts off (if you haven't yet, get on Youtube or something and find some Cookie Monster clips, it's even funnier for grownups than it is for kids), but during our teen years, and especially our pre-teen years, we're looking for something more sophisticated, something more "cool".

Unfortunately, it's easier to indulge this phase than it is to talk some sense into a twelve year old. Still, there are some pretty neat toys on the market for the not-quite-adults out there. The trick is giving them the kind of toys where they can convince themselves that they're not toys, they're action figures, or they're R/C cars, but they're not toys.

STAR WARS

The great thing about Star Wars toys and even Lego Star Wars is that when you put them on a shelf, they're not toys anymore, they're collectibles (you don't have to tell anyone that you take them down and re-enact the final scenes of Return of the Jedi when nobody's looking), and you can tell your friends you're just saving them until they're worth a lot of money on eBay, knowing full well that you'd never dream of parting with your Jango Fett.

BUILDING SETS

A lot of kids tend to hide their old Legoes in a dark closet somewhere. The basic Legoes traditionally come with bright and cheery little guys and bricks designed to build quaint houses and flower beds and so on. Once you hit eleven years old, most boys are looking for something a little edgier. And so, Lego has a few lines geared towards older kids, such as the LEGO Agents line, and LEGO City. Both are designed to have that hip, cool edge that older kids are into. And then, of course, there's the Mega Bloks customizable Plasma Dragons, mixing dinosaurs with medieval fantasy to create edgy (sometimes literally) warrior reptiles.

It's interesting to note that there aren't, actually, a whole lot of toys out there being marketed towards teenage girls. It could be as they say, that girls simply mature faster, or perhaps they tend to just be less insecure about getting caught playing with kiddie stuff. It's hard to say, but the fact is that there are a lot more boy-centric than girl-centric toys for young teenagers. However, there are a few good toys on the market for young teen girls.

ROSE ART MEMORIES SCRAPBOOK KIT

This kit is kind of gender neutral, to be honest. Anybody can make a scrapbook. Still, scrapbooking seems to be bigger with girls than with boys. Rose Art really is an excellent company for creative kids. Their products combine practical, useful art tools with a sense of fun and ease. When you first hand an artsy kid a bottle of oil paint, they're not going to know what to do with it. Rose Art kits are a lot more accessible, allowing sharp kids to pick up the basics in one sitting.

How Old is too Old?

You're probably not going to know the crossover point from your kid being, well, a kid, to being a kid who wants to be an adult, until that point hits. Adolescence is awkward. Think back to your own early teens. Puberty, middle school, hormones going crazy, your first armpit hair, dealing with the opposite gender, it's not an easy time. The best thing a pre-teen kid can hope for is an understanding parent.

Yogee.com.au is a leading Australian online toy store. Visit yogee.com.au for a wide selection of Kids Toys at discounted prices. To save money on your next purchase, please visit Toys.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chang_Lim


Toys For the Young Adventurer

If you're lucky enough to have been blessed with a child with an adventurer's heart, the first thing you need to do is encourage them to sit down and watch all of the Indiana Jones and Mad Max films.

Next, you can take a look online and check out all the great educational toys available for adventure kids.

Dora the Explorer and Indiana Jones toys are great for playing indoors, but a real young adventurer is more interested in mounting exploration missions outdoors. If you live in a rural area, you're at a great advantage. There are few childhood memories as treasured as exploring the woods. Drawing maps, using string and a stick to make a bow and arrow, imagining that you're Robin Hood hiding from Sheriff Nottingham, life doesn't get much better.

Sadly, these rural neighbourhoods are slowly giving way to urban development. City kids are forced to take camping trips every time they want to so much as look for weird bugs under rocks, and so, it's not uncommon for most kids to retreat to video games and DVDs for their adventure. Ironically, The Legend of Zelda video games are based on the creator's memories of playing in the woods as a child. He was inspired to create these games by his lament that there are fewer exploration opportunities for kids today than there were all those years ago. The Zelda games are fun, but they don't match the real thing.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that National Geographic has a toy line. For starters, one of their best ideas so far has been the National Geographic Explorer Kit. This kit comes with real working binoculars, a flashlight, a compass, and a manual full of helpful information. If you live in the city and hate camping, we can't really recommend this one, of course, because your kids will be begging you to take them out into the wilderness every weekend.

If your kids are more of the treasure hunter type, National Geographic also makes a real working metal detector at under AU $50.00. Yes, a real working metal detector, not a hunk of useless plastic in the shape of a metal detector.

And then of course there's the astronomer kids. National Geographic's 30ML Ultra Compact 30MM-30X Telescope is a great, basic telescope, featuring a tabletop tripod, 30X magnification, and an optical tube (which can be removed, allowing the telescope to be used as an explorer's spyglass). It's not the most top of the line telescope out there, but as a beginner's scope, and at just over thirty bucks, it's an excellent way to test the waters before dropping a few hundred on some fancy high tech scope.

A lot of adults think it's gross, so finding funny looking bugs is one of the great pleasures reserved for young explorers. A lot of the funniest looking bugs only come out at night. National Geographic Night Vision Goggles allow for night time exploration via a bright LED "torch". What puts these goggles a step or two above other kids night vision is that this isn't just a pair of glasses with a flashlight attached, it also includes a sonic ear listening device, allowing the wearer to hear distant or small sounds. This means that you'll have to sit in the car with the radio turned up really loud before discussing what you're getting your kids for Christmas this year with anyone, but it's a small price to pay.

Yogee.com.au is a leading Australian online toy store. Visit yogee.com.au for a wide selection of Kids Toys at discounted prices. To save money on your next purchase, please visit Toys.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chang_Lim

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