Bangs McCoy

Our #1 toy

September 11th, 2007

In our house, we try to keep our toy inventory to a minimum. The main reason is that we don’t want our kids to be spoiled with too many belongings. It’s really fun to see how excited and appreciative they are when they do receive a new toy (generally only birthdays and Christmas). The size of our house also factors in - we simply don’t have the space for a huge toy collection.

Bryan and I tend to gravitate toward educational and building toys (puzzles, blocks, a marble run). I am partial to pretty wood toys. However, when Rees was around a year old, we spotted a Playskool Ball Popper. Although it is plastic and seemed pretty much non-educational, we thought it looked like fun (plus the box said it had won some awards). It has turned out to be our favorite toy. Despite having it for nearly three years, Rees is still highly entertained by it and plays with it almost every day. Jamie loves it too. It is very simple - when turned on, the fan blows the five different-colored balls up out of the tube and into the spiral slide, where they roll back into the tube. They continue to blow out the top and roll down the slide until it goes off. Sometimes, when the balls blow out the top, they bounce out and on the floor. This adds to the fun as the kids try to pick up the balls quickly and get them back in the tube. Here are the some of the reasons we like it:

It plays songs, but they are less-often-heard songs like “Rockin’ Robin” and “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Also, the style and volume of the music is not irritating (to me anyway). It only plays one song at a time, so it doesn’t go on and on forever.

It takes four “D” batteries, but they seem to last forever. We’ve only changed them a few times. It also has an On/Off switch on the back.

It has a very large, easy to push button to start the music and fan. Even babies can figure out to to run it.

Entry Filed under: I have kids

3 Comments Add your own

1. becky | September 12th, 2007 at 8:48 pm

Hey! We have this toy too! Violet was terrified of it initially because of the loud fan noise. Then she grew to like it and loved to play with it.

Then she lost all the balls to it. Then the batteries died. And now it sits in my basement. Alone, and unloved. And never to played with again.

Not sure what the point of all this is.
2. jessica | September 13th, 2007 at 9:41 pm

I read somewhere that ping-pong balls work with it.
3. Too much information &raq&hellip | September 26th, 2007 at 10:20 pm

[...] toys: bug jar, blocks, magnet letters, anything that fits inside something else, ball popper, stacking stars, rolling ball, any kind of [...]

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