Shelltoon TV

My Little Pony @ the Toy Fair

It's that time of year again! Time for all the big toy manufacturers to show off their goods to potential buyers for what will no doubt be the big toy for the holiday season. As expected, Hasbro is showing off a few additions to its newest generation of My Little Pony, and given that my life was sabotaged by ponies, I might as well give my thoughts on the matter.So, let's take a look at what we have.

Looks like we've got another carriage to go along with Rarity, which gave Hasbro an excuse to re-release Applejack in a new pose. The carriage itself is rather cute, but would it have been too much trouble to maybe give Applejack a hat of some sort since it's one of her trademark personality quirks in the show?

These Riding Along toys look like recycled toys from 3.5, which sort of has no right being in place with the toy line given the show's mythos. Still, there are some cute quirks with these, especially Twilight's helmet having a tiny hole in it for her horn. It's just out of character is all I'm saying.

I don't think I'd ever trust Pinkie Pie in a car. Haven't you seen her behavior in the show? I'd steer as clear of the road as possible!

How fitting Rarity gets what is possibly one of the more expensive toys in the line. If I had to guess, Hasbro wants to push this one as the hot item everypony will want for Christmas. They even give you two ponies, and it apparently plays music. If I had to guess, the music is probably a few bars of the My Little Pony theme, similar to Twilight Sparkle's Twinkling Balloon. The decor is nice, and it appears that Rarity either has a sparkly mane, or the photo is playing a trick on me.

It would appear that the Newborn Cuties line from previous generations was successful enough for Hasbro to try and carry it over to the new generation. Me? There's no way I'd buy any of the NBC line, but then again it's not meant for people my age. As for this toy itself, looks like the legs kick, but maybe it knows when it's trying to walk.

 

To sum it up, this seemed to be an underwhelming showing for ponies simply because a lot of it seems out of character when you watch the show. On top of that, Hasbro also had a lot of their already available toys in the line to possibly attract even more potential buyers. Still, there may be a few surprises we have yet to see and this doesn't reveal everything that's coming out in the year.

More Ni Hao Kai-Lan Toys [TOY][REVIEW]

I will review Need for Speed Shift on friday, so for right now... here are a few more Ni Hao Kai-Lan toys. Why did I choose to do this again? Because of dissatisfaction with Toy Island Manufacturing having the nerve to put their wooden toys out without any quality assurance. It was so bad, I actually had to take one of them back to the store. I've never done that before, and trading in video games does not count as returning to a store, that's trading in. So, let's put some toys on the chopping block and see what's hot and not.

Fisher-Price usually does good with interactive toys, but I think Elmo Live has been an impossible product to top. Everything beyond it almost seems lacking. The Kai-Lan I Feel Super toy is somehow lacking in a few departments that prevent it from being the perfect toy for the little ones. Press a button on Kai-Lan's hand, and her big heart will change color as she plays out one of several different emotions such as happy, dreamy and sad. I was expecting this to be completely random and almost play out like a slot machine, but instead it goes through them as a cycle. Kai-Lan's head, eyes, and arms move about, but that's about it for movement. One tip of advice I can give you is to make sure this toy is played with on a flat surface, Kai-Lan's head is big and tends to move A LOT, so if you're not careful it will fall over. It runs on four AA batteries located at the bottom of Kai-Lan's shoes, and it also has an on/off switch, possibly as a means to save battery life, but this causes the toy to reset its emotion cycle as well. Issues aside, it's a cute toy and a great representation of what Kai-Lan is about, but I really hope Fisher-Price has something up its sleeve for the holiday season, because if this is their big Kai-Lan toy for the holidays, it may leave parents disappointed in the $40 they spent despite their kids being happy.

So, how about those wooden toys from Toy Island Manufacturing?

The Wooden Dragon Boat is pretty straight forward, it's a dragon boat on wheels with wooden "cut outs" of Kai-Lan and Rintoo in their floaty jackets. This toy is plagued not by extremely limited play, but by all sorts of design flaws. The "cut outs" only have the characters on one side, and it would have been nice if they could have either put them on both sides, done a rear view of the characters for the other side, or put some sort of fancy pattern on the back. The dragon is printed on both sides in a glorious violet, with red flowers against a yellow background on the wheels. It's a nice contrast, but at the same time, almost unusual. Unlike plastic toys, you're taking a greater risk with wooden toys. Fine example, the wheels are not perfectly sanded to be completely round, meaning it may be a bumpy ride. With my boat, the rear wheels were stuck to one side when I bought it! I had to push the wheels out so it could roll. The other issue is the print could be horribly off. In my case, Rintoo looks like he's balancing on his toes, and his tail is about to be cut off because the print is too far to the left. For $10, you get what you get I guess, and to be honest, the prints are a fantastic quality. It's just a shame that manufacturing flaws ruin a quality toy.

Honestly, after the Dragon Boat, you'd probably ask yourself, could things get worse than that for Toy Island? Well, yes, their most expensive toy happens to be their worst so far for all the wrong reasons.

A big playhouse sounds like a good idea, right? Well, I've already mentioned the cardboard play house is bizarre, but unlike this toy, the cardboard house was actually manufactured with care to make sure it passed quality assurance. How this thing got past QA is beyond me. First off, the assembly is a big confusing mess. Every part is labeled on the instructions with a letter. Sounds simple right? Just match the letters on the instructions with the parts. Well, to make it more confusing, they chose not to label the parts and make that a guessing game on its own. In the end, assembly took about an hour trying to find a piece with that letter, find out where it goes, and get the screw in there. I had a difficult time getting the screws to go in straight and I was worried about screwing up the assembly process. Even when I got them in all the way, they only went in so far and the posts still didn't feel secure. After struggling to put together something as silly as the roof, mostly because I couldn't get anything to stay secure at that point and I was prepared to give up and take it back, I tried to endure to the bitter end. Trouble is... I literally couldn't finish the house because of a HUGE flaw. The second floor of the house has a big red block glued in place as part of the roof I'm guessing. Well, it was so far off to one side that I couldn't get the holes in one part of the roof piece to line up with the second floor piece which was lined up with a post below it. As a result, I couldn't get one of the posts to hold the floor in place in the holes. End result? I spent an hour assembling this only to get a big kick in the butt at the end. It's bad enough the lanterns didn't secure into the peg holes well, but the roof was it for me. For $40, I would not take any chances on buying this toy.

So imagine the frustration I went through for that Playhouse. It's worse than the packaging for Tolee's Tree House with the 50 twisties.

Ni Hao Kai-Lan Toys! [TOY][REVIEW]

This is a first for me. While I could easily be reviewing just one toy at a time, I can't make a 50 paragraph essay about the toys, unlike the video games I review. So instead of doing just one toy, I thought I'd do several toys. There's quite a list to go over with the toys, so this will probably amount to 50 paragraphs by the end.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ni Hao Kai-Lan, it's a show on Nick Jr. Ni Hao Kai-Lan teaches kids elementary Mandarin Chinese phrases, and introduces them to culture. It's sort of like how Dora and Diego taught Spanish, but Kai-Lan has nothing in common with Dora. Kai-Lan's main focus besides Chinese is enhancing a preschooler's social and emotional skills by helping them identify and cope with their feelings. The show is only a year and a half old, but Fisher-Price has been putting out merchandise like there was no tomorrow. Go to any store that sells toys, you're most likely to see A LOT of Ni Hao Kai-Lan toys. Instead of going through all of them, I decided to pick out a few different toys to review. We'll be looking at the Super Emotions Kai-Lan plushies, the Soft and Floppy Pals, Kai-Lan's Super Happy House, and the Dino Dreams plushie.

Let's start with the Super Emotions Plush toys. There are four of them and each one carries a different emotion. Sweet, Happy, Giggly, and Silly. Each one has a different expression, Kai-Lan wears different colors depending on the emotion, her shirt has the Chinese character for that emotion, and each plush comes with a Jade Necklace with the Chinese character for the emotion. The expressions are absolutely adorable, and you can't help but go "dawwww, so cute!" It plays up the emotion card as its selling point, and it seems to be working. I'm not sure who the necklace is for honestly, because it's too small! The packaging states it is also for the plush, but then it becomes too big! Speaking of size, these are simply too small for their price. At about $12.99, I would have expected a big plush, but it's about as tall as a 20 oz bottle of soda or water. This doesn't count against the toy, but I would have loved if Kai-Lan would have had at least 3-5 phrases related to that emotion, and all four could carry her trademark "You make my heart feel super happy!" Wishes aside, these aren't the worst toys I've ever seen, but they are pretty disappointing for their price.

Next on our list is the Soft and Floppy Pals. When I first saw these on the internet, I thought they were the cutest things ever. Then I went down to Toys R Us and my mind was blown when I saw them. THESE PLUSHIES ARE HUGE!! They all stand 14 inches tall, and their heads are so big! The Soft and Floppy description itself is very accurate. They're very soft, almost like a fleece feel, and their limbs are indeed floppy. They're almost perfect, but there are some minor issues I take with them, specifically Rintoo and Tolee. For Tolee, my beef is why isn't he wearing his Panda Slippers? They're a part of his characteristics, and it just feels odd, even though his hoodie has the Panda head on it. With Rintoo, the issue is in his stripes. They don't go all the way around his head, and his arms, legs, and tail aren't striped. Lulu is missing her red baloon, but this can be fixed by getting your own baloon and tying it on her horn. These issues are so minor to me, and at $17.99 were worth the price. They're well made, extremely cute, and BIG!

Now let's look at Kai-Lan's Super Happy House, one of the most interesting toys I've seen in a while. The one thing that makes this toy so interesting is that the house itself is made of CARDBOARD. I am not kidding, the house is made entirely out of a durable cardboard. I'm not willing to test the durability of this thing out myself, so let's just go to the design. When it's all closed up, it's an accurate model of Kai-Lan's house. When you open it, you see a whole world for Kai-Lan to explore. The front of the house becomes an outdoor section with the little bridge that goes over a pond. The right side of the house is Kai-Lan's bedroom, and the left side leads to Tolee's treehouse. The big middle section is a standard living room. Even the furniture inside is made of cardboard, and yours to arrange however you wish! What's most bizarre about this toy is Fisher-Price choosing to put the characters on the insides of the house. It's kind of odd seeing Hoho sitting in front of the bridge to the house, because with the included Kai-Lan figure, it would look like she was stepping on him! As I stated, it's one of the most interesting toys I've seen, so I'm giving Fisher-Price major props for it. My wishes for this would have been a figure of Ye Ye included, and possibly have scaled everything to be more in line with the Special Places playsets. It's easy to carry around for playtime on the go, but you need to be extra careful when cardboard is involved!

Finally, we'll look at Dino Dreams Kai-Lan. This toy's selling point was that it sang lullabies, so my expectations were low as I thought it was just going to sing the same basic lullabies we're used to hearing. in fact, when I kept squeezing Kai-Lan's dinosaur and reached a lullaby, it was completely original. Aside from the lullabies, she also has a few original phrases, and even teaches some Chinese! One of my biggest concerns with these talking toys is they may be too loud, so it'd be heard across an entire house. Thankfully this toy has a decent volume level so it won't be too loud or too quiet. The toy does feature Jade-Lianna Peters' authentic voice, and she gives the voice that sleepy tone. It's bigger than the Super Emotion Plushies, and looks to be more in scale with the Soft and Floppy Pals. This is probably one of the sweetest, cutest, adorable, and loveable toys to come out using the Kai-Lan license.

So far, I have to give Fisher-Price a lot of credit for proving that Kai-Lan is indeed profitable as far as merchandising goes. These toys are cute, interesting, unique, and loveable. There is one toy that I'd like to review, but to be honest it's bad enough at my age to be buying these toys just for the sake of reviewing them. Also, I'm running out of space for half the things I own. I support Nickelodeon and Fisher-Price for wanting Ni Hao Kai-Lan to be a big success. Well, good night! Wa An!