Gearhead Mom

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

You Can Go Ahead And Take This Off Your Wish List

Posted by Missy W. @ 12:59 PM

Sy has always loved play dough. Sadly for her, I usually make her the hippie homemade kind in homely colors. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to make purple play dough? It’s hard! So when Sy’s best buddy Kara got this Hasbro Play-Doh Magic Swirl Ice Cream Shoppe, she was beyond thrilled. All those attachments and colors and smells! Micky busted it out one day and the girls were immediately entranced. They made oodles of ice cream sundaes topped with mountains of sprinkles and swirls. They hardly looked up for a half hour (almost eternity to a four year old). I have to admit, I was charmed. The sprinkles were so twee and the swirly cones of multi-colored delight were irresistible. All those cute little sundae dishes and little spoons were too fun. And the play-doh smelled so good; who can resist that old school smell? So, of course, I folded. I bought it for Sy one rainy day and set it up for her when she was away at school.

Begin rant:

Here’s the thing - I failed to notice that Micky never ever busted it out ever again. Ever. Did I bother asking her before I bought it? Nope. I mean, I run a site reviewing gear, and I didn’t think to run the due diligence on this hunk of plastic? What a rookie move! The thing about making those twee little sprinkles is that you can only do it with really fresh play-doh. As soon as it’s been left out to dry and crumble - which is you know, oh, just about every time - no dice. Tough, even slightly dried out play-doh allows the extruders to do very little extruding and the four year old get pissed. And then the parent has to do some toothpick extruding. And then the parent gets pissed. Little 15 month old brothers are very intent on eating all those little sprinkles (once extruded) and take their Little Plastic Spoon Stealing very, very seriously. The little crank that is supposed to crank out swirls of ice cream onto the little plastic cone is nearly impossible for a four year old to operate (that darn fresh play-doh problem again). Once the play-doh sits in that part for more than a few minutes, it starts to toughen up and you have to clean the whole shebang out before you try again. The play-doh comes in ice cream flavored colors (mint, chocolate, little sprinkly colored bits for the sprinkles), but if your child is like the other 98% of little kids out there, it’s not like those colors are going to stay in their own separate compartments for more than twelve minutes. So you now have muddy, crusty ice cream that refuses to leave the insides of the extruding devices. Awesome. I have to clean the bejezus out of this thing every time we use it just to keep the innards from getting all gummed up. And as you all know, I sure do looooove to spend time cleaning. Not.

I consider this play-doh product a bust. Sy has shoved this thing to the back of her art corner where she dutifully ignores it. Now I just see parts of it walking around in Little G’s hands (or mouth) as he rushes past me, unwilling to give up his sparkly, plastic treasure. I almost feel bad taking it to the second-hand store near us.

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