THE BIG WIN – Only Hearts Club Dolls

Only Hearts Club dolls are not new to my house – I bought each girl one of these dolls a couple of years ago hoping to pull the younger one away from the tantalizing temptation of Barbie. Alas, it didn’t work. Barbie’s charms are far too great, at least where Emily is concerned. Ana, however, is a different story. Ana is the child who loves to climb trees and dress up as Star Wars characters for Halloween. She’s loved stuffed animals since the tender age of one. In fact, I think we have more stuffed animals in our house than any other item, except perhaps my husband’s drum equipment.

So when Ana started playing Barbies with Emily (much to my intense shock),  she had only a grudging acceptance of the joys of pretend doll play. She did it for the greater good because she wanted to play with her sister and couldn’t tear her away from Barbie. It is my belief that Ana actually began to enjoy playing with Barbie, though she would not admit this to herself or to me. She also  couldn’t bring herself to ask me for a Barbie for Christmas, but when I suggested another Only Hearts Club doll (they come with their very own tiny animal), she was enthusiastic.

I pushed doubt aside and bought Ana and Emily each an Only Hearts Club doll for Christmas – I think it was the first toy I bought. The dolls are manufactured by OHC Group which seems to be an independent toy company (not affiliated with some of the bigger companies like Mattel). They sell the dolls at Target, which is where we stumbled across our first one. I was unable to locate them at our Toys R Us and the ones I bought the girls came from small independent toy retailers via Amazon.com.

These dolls are very affordable, ranging in price from about $14 – $20 and they’re made very well. The clothes are stunningly detailed. So much so that I really wish they made one of the little camouflage print hoodies in my size as it’s simply adorable. The best part? Ana loves the doll (I got her one named “Anna Sophia”) and she plays with it a lot. Emily still gravitates to Barbie, but she likes hers too. So, I’d say these were both wins. My one complaint is that the dolls are hard to dress, particularly for Emily (who is 5). It’s hard to pull the tiny little clothes over the cloth body, particularly jacket and shirt sleeves. Also, the feet aren’t really feet -they’re sort of fabric nubs and you kind of have to jam the nubs into the doll’s shoes in a way that’s borderline violent. Or that just may be how I handled it…

THE BIG LOSS – LEGO people set

Sometimes a great toy idea doesn’t materialize into a successful gift, and that was the case with the LEGO people set I ordered from LEGO.com and gave to both my girls with instructions to share. There were enough LEGO people in the set for both of them (31 to be exact). I know what you’re thinking. They fought over the set and it ended in tears, but actually, that wasn’t the case.

What actually happened was that all 31 characters and their tiny accessories got absorbed into our large LEGO bin and the impact of the 31 new LEGO characters was very minimal, when looking at the larger toy-related picture. I thought the girls would play with the LEGO people for hours, but in truth they barely played with them at all – even from day one.

Part of the problem was that Ana got about three other LEGO sets for Christmas from various sources, Santa included, and each set came with its own characters. Emily, as it turns out, isn’t all that interested in LEGOs. So, this was sort of a Christmas toy fail, mainly because it got lost in the shuffle and not because it’s not an awesome set – which it is! It cost about $50.00 from LEGO.com. That’s kind of a high price tag for a toy that evaporated once we put all the people together and removed it from the box.

Printies is another creative toy (yes, ANOTHER one) that promises not only the joy of creation, but a pretty cool payoff when you’re done. In a nutshell, kids can design their own stuffed animal using the Printies software (this is downloadable) and when their creation is done, they can print it on special fabric sheets that are designed for ink jet printers.

How cool! (I thought to myself) – I have two stuffed-animal loving children. They’ll LOVE this. I’ll be a hero! They’ll have tons of fun with their Printies creations!! What could possibly go wrong??

So, in my pre-Christmas induced state of euphoria, I picked up my $20 box of Printies at Target figuring my girls would share it, happily wrapped it, labeled it from “Santa” even though my 8-year-old no longer believes and waited excitedly for their reaction on Christmas morning. I even bought a box for my 7 & 9 year old nieces.

Well here’s the thing – I’m sure a few of the terms above tripped off some alarm bells in your head – I know they did in mine. “Download the software” for one and “print your creation on an inkjet printer” for another. I mean, even if by some small miracle everything worked like it should, I’d still need to supervise the entire operation since my children are using an old laptop that literally groans when you turn it on (thus forcing me to download the Printies application onto MY laptop).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I let my 8-year-old create the first animal after registering on the Printies Web site. I should actually be very happy I had no trouble registering, since my sister-in-law said her code didn’t work when she tried registering and at least one poor Twitterer had the same experience. Well, actually, the first time I entered the code it didn’t work, but my daughter was reading it to me and she’d confused “O” with “zero.” It was easy to do, so if your code’s not working then give that a shot.

Okay, so, out of the box…here are some positive things before I taint you all with my cynicism.

1) The toy is only borderline pseudo-creative. Children can get very creative with their designs, as long as they stick with the four pre-cut animal shapes that come with the toy. This was disappointing to my daughter who is old hat at designing her own stuffed animals (on paper) but she still had fun.

2) When it came time to print, it worked! It really worked! I didn’t even have to align anything on the printer – everything was centered properly and aside from a few smudges which I’m hoping doesn’t happen with the next animal, it looked pretty good (though not as good as the above picture would suggest).

3) My daughter loved finishing off the Printies animal and was very happy with it. Smiles are all that count with Christmas toys since they so often generate tears.

4) There’s absolutely no sewing at all, thus making instant gratification a big perk with this toy (although the way they got around this is questionable)..see “cons.”

Now the cons…

1) You do have to download software onto a computer. This is a very quick process, but it still must be done. So the toy requiries parental hands on assistance for most kids and it helps to be a bit computer savvy, which not all of us are.

2) The Printies design interface was very frustrating to my daughter (and to me, actually). It’s just not well-thought out and it didn’t always respond to a simple click. We trashed at least three designs before finally getting it right. Here’s a screen shot of the interface:

3) To finish off the animal after printing it and stuffing it (yes, the stuffing comes in the box), you have to attach it to little plastic feet. Hard plastic feet. Hard plastic is not very snuggly – sort of ruins the whole concept of a “plush” toy in my opinion. My daughter didn’t seem to mind though, but I thought it made the whole thing look kind of cheesy which it arguably is anyway. I know they did this to get away with saying “no sewing necessary at all!” but still, have they never heard of velcro??

4) When you’ve blown through all six Printies designs, you now have six new stuffed animals to deal with. My daughter hasn’t touched hers since she made it, although she is still quite overwhelmed with new toys from Christmas. She does seem delighted with it though, so I guess..that’s…all…that..matters…

My conclusion: For $20.00, it’s worth buying but the toy is not for everyone. If you are comfortable downloading software onto your computer, don’t mind helping your child through some moments of frustration due to the faulty design interface and are comfortable using an inkjet printer, then go for it! You also may want to plan out where the finished animals go. I personally have very little room for more tiny stuffed animals in my home, or in my psyche (as it turns out).

I found a cool box of Printies on Amazon for about $19.00..

I like that the Ocean Design Studio has templates with rounded heads so kids can make people if they want (not just animals) or just get more creative with their designs. I find built-in ears so confining, don’t you? This set also comes with 9 fabric sheets rather than the six mine came with for more Printies fun! (and more little animals around the house).

But I digress..

So, when my mother asked for some toy ideas to get my daughter, I suggested she buy her a Liv doll. I’d seen the dolls at Target and they looked interesting (I particularly liked the fact that you could replace the hair because we have many poor balding Barbies thanks to my fashionista daughter). So my mom got her the Liv Katie Doll

There are a lot of things I like about this doll, notwithstanding the disproportionately large head size.

1)   The doll seems to be very well made and it’s got poseable limbs, which is a change from the piles of stiff-legged, pointy toed Barbies my daughter already owns (There’s actually a line of new Barbies with poseable limbs and I got one of those for her for Christmas – but that’s a WHOLE other review).

2)  Katie really looks like a pre-teen girl albeit with too much collagen in her lips. I like that my daughter is finally playing with a more realistic doll than something out of a Playboy magazine. I mean, Barbie is just a bit creepy that way. I’m just saying..

3)  The details on the doll are impressive, right down to the hair which, as mentioned above, is detachable. Katie came with two sets of hair. The hair is affixed to the head with a sort of peg (so when the doll doesn’t have a wig on, there’s a hole in her head). The wig stayed in place and really there’s nothing else to say about that. If the wig kept falling off then I would’ve mailed her back to Spin Master Toys in a tiny body bag.

This doll gets my highest recommendation. I don’t say that often. Buy it. It’s a well-made, interesting toy that your child will likely love (if she likes Barbie and/or other fashion dolls). Here’s the proof of the doll’s worthiness – when I brought my daughter to Toys R Us to spend some of her Christmas money, she bought another one – Liv Sophie

The best part is that the dolls are relatively cheap. They were about $20.00 in Toys R Us, but I’m seeing them for as low as $13.00 on Amazon right now.

That toy is (are?) PixOs, which are basically tiny little plastic dots that kids can form into shapes by placing them beside each other in a sort of plastic grid thingy. They then spritz them with water and the dots stick together forming a plastic dot sculpture which is pretty sturdy. Here’s an example:

I generally run from toys like PixOs since they contain several very bright red flags as follows:

1) They’re expensive – even the smallest PixOs product is about $10.00 for what amounts to a hand full of plastic dots, a special PixOs “pen” and a plastic grid work surface that’s about 4×4 inches. So basically $10.00 buys about 20 minutes of “creativity” and then your child is done with the product until you scarf up another $10.00 for the refills.

2) They have lots of brightly colored plastic pieces – after years of buying toddler toys that fit this description (think “Little People”), I have a strong aversion to any toy that can’t easily be thrown in a bin and stored out of site. PixOs has the added fun of a zillion tiny little plastic beads which are now forever stuck in between my floor boards. I only hope they’re not toxic to pets. Here’s what the set I bought for my kids looks like (this was about $26.00 at Target):

See what I mean? So now we own two of those monstrosities. But I have some more reservations…

3) PixOs are a pseudo-creative toy. Yep, so many of these types of toys exist (think “shrinky dinks”) that I’ve been inspired to create a whole new category for them. What makes a toy pseudo creative? Well, we’re not talking real art supplies here – this isn’t clay or colored pencils and a sketchbook or paint and popsicle sticks. PixOs holds the sweet promise of creativity which almost always ends in tears, boredom or disappointment. First of all, unless your child is extremely creative – and you know who you are – you’re pretty much stuck with the templates that come with the thing. You can buy PixOs refill packs with additional templates and beads (and you’ll have to fairly quickly) or go to the PixOs site and print some more templates, but there’s not a whole lot there. I do like the fact that you can design your own template on the site and print it out – so PixOs gets some points for that.

4) They aren’t entirely age appropriate. PixOs is indicated for children aged 4+ but my 5.5 year old (who is VERY artistic and good with her hands) can only conceptually deal with 2D PixOs designs of her own creation – she hasn’t tried following a pattern yet. So we now have a pile of useless PixOs asymmetrical sculptures which can’t really be played with. I can’t imagine a 4-year-old having a successful playtime experience with these things that doesn’t involve a very patient parent working with them.

5) They are useless when you’re not actually creating anything. Okay, I suppose this is debatable. I can envision my children making PixOs animals and people and playing with them – but the beads do tend to fall apart with too much handling and there really isn’t a lot of “playability” with finished pixOs sculptures. So you’re stuck with completed masterpieces that you have to throw away after you’ve moved them around the house fifty-seven times and finally got fed up with keeping them (or maybe that’s just me).

My Conclusion: Get a small kit first before you go all out like I did and get the large set. I would, in fact, avoid buying the larger sets altogether and just stick with buying a starter set and refills if your child really loves these things. Remember – toys that can be stored in drawers and bins are a-okay!

Amazon has starter sets for about $15.00 each:

Pixos Starter Set