My kids watch more Nickelodeon than is probably recommended or appropriate. And because of this, they see a plethora of ads for toys and things that they feel that they desperately need to have.I am heartened that they are starting to realize that the things that they see on TV are not always as fun as they are made out to be.
There was a breakthrough starting with the notable Bendaroos experience. They are fun. But not change-your-entire-life fun like they make them out to be in the ads.
Then there was our experience with the Touch N Brush Hands Free Toothpaste Dispenser
. Tater was quite desperate for that one. He hounded me daily for about a month before I found it at a store so that I wouldn't have to pay some crazy amount of shipping. And he was SO happy when I finally brought it home, but then our toothpaste tubes wouldn't fit. And it leaked. Crushing disappointment.
Our most recent foray into the land of toys-advertised-on-TV-that-must-be-aquired-immediately was AquaSand
. Tater wanted to order it from the TV, but I talked him into waiting until we saw it in a store. But the moment he saw the kit at Target, he had to have it. He spent a big chunk of Christmas money and was very excited to get the kit home and give it a whirl.On TV, they show all kinds of fun designs and things that you can make with this (admittedly cool) sand that never gets wet. Quickly Tater realized that, if he wanted to save the sand to use again, he could only use one color at a time in the water tank. Kind of like Play-doh - you can't make the really cool stuff unless you are ready to give up on keeping the colors separate.
Clearly this limits how much fun design-making you can do, but he still seems to enjoy the process of squirting the sand into the water tank and then fishing it out and funneling it back into the bottle to start all over again.
I don't know what the ingredients are, but it is strangely mesmerizing to see the sand emerge from underwater completely dry. So weird.
I think the allure wore off after the first 10 times that he dumped all of the sand in and out, and in and out...etc. And I am not sure it was worth the $19.95 he paid for it. But he isn't complaining, so I guess he thinks it was.
