WIN a Scooby Doo Stretch Armstrong! Plus Our Stretch-Off Vlog

Here is a blast from the past! Stretch Armstrong is back and stretchier than ever. We tested out mini Stretch and Fetch from  Character Toys to see who was the most flexible.

It was a lot of fun tying Stretch in knots and watching him magically return to his original shape. Watch our vlog below to see him in action.

These new releases are the 7" size, and are priced around £12. There is also the big size available, I wonder if Original or Small Stretch is more stretchy? Maybe we will leave that for a future vlog on the Smix Brix channel.

The whole range is available at Smyths Toys, but we also have one to give away.

Want to win your own stretchy toy to experiment with? You can win a Stretch Scooby Doo by entering below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Make Frozen Drinks at Home With No Ice Or Mess- ChillFactor Frozen Brain Slushy Maker

Kids love slushies. I don't know why, but they are drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I remember as an 80s child coveting the Slush Puppies in Woolworths in Main Street, and more often than not being told no, it's a waste of money to pay that for frozen juice. I don't know what price they were in 1987, but a Slush drink for your kids now can cost anything between £1 and £5 if we are talking about them taking an arm & a leg at the cinema. 

So there's a range from Character Toys that can save us parents a small fortune, even in one summer season. 

For £12.99 you can purchase a spangly new  Chill Factor Slush Maker. Character sent us the new release 'Frozen Brain' cup, but you can get all colours and designs of cups that operate in the same manner. Slush Puppies are the number one cause of painful brain freeze, so it's a clever name, and also a design that appeals to those who love gory & gruesome monsters.

The tag line reads, 'slushies in less than a minute', which is half true, but some prep is needed. When you first get your Chill Factor, you need to dissemble the cup (very easy to do) and find the very inner, sectioned padded cup. This will need to be put in your freezer to harden for six hours or more. It's the magic that makes any drink into a slushie.

When your inner padded part has frozen, take it out of the freezer and reassemble the cup. You are now ready to make your drink. Take any drink, it can even be room temperature, and pour it into your Chill Factor cup. From experience I know that sugarfree drinks are really hard to get to Slush. You can use a dilute juice, Coke, fruit juice, anything with sugar content.  

Now you simply 'smoosh', crush and squish the outside of the cup for a couple of minutes. The padding is so cold that it starts to instantly freeze the drink inside. Because you are moving it around it becomes a slushie.  

Then simply drink with your straw or spoon. 

When you are finished, rinse the cup, dissemble and refreeze the inner padded part, and use again and again. 

It really is that clean and easy. No hauling out a blender to try to crush ice- no actual ice even needed. So for £12.99 you could have a slushie every day this summer without breaking the bank, or them spending all their pocket money.  

 Check out stockists- I'm pretty sure Smyth have them.

The Ugglys' Pet Shop is Stackable Grossness

Its not too long until we will be hunting for stocking fillers & presents for friend's and relative's kids. The Ugglys' Pet Store is a stackable base for collecting the separate blocks that double as pet homes for Ugglys pets.

It makes fart noises, so obviously it sets kids off with the giggles as soon as they get their hands on it. 

The theme of Ugglys is as you would imagine, totally gross animals. Our favourite from the original series had to be the horrible pet fish called 'The Rank Tank'! He's gone on the Christmas list. He'll probably last longer than any real goldfish we've ever owned.

As you'd imagine, kids love these things. We had Garbage Pail Kids in the 80s so this is a bit like the animal version of those. You can buy them as single toys, or in multipacks, with 101 pets to collect. Some of the sets include blind bag surprise toys, which are the big thing these days.

Michael loved the pet shop, so I'll be hunting down some individual Ugglys for stocking fillers. 

Yummy Nummies: The New Creative Kitchen Craze From Japan.

Yummy Nummies are little kits for kids to make teeny tiny replicas of full size meals. You'll find them soon in the toy aisle starting at £6.99, rather than home baking, as they are for novelty value rather than being designed to replace a meal. And they are a lot of fun. We were sent the cookie and pizza sets to play with, and found them easy, entertaining and quite tasty too.

We started with the cookie kit. Below shows everything that came in the pack. A very big plus is that you don't need to add anything else. Often I've promised to make buns from a kit with Michael, got home and realised the pack requires and egg, or milk and I'm all out. The only things you'll need that aren't in the pack are a pair of scissors, water and a microwave. Again a huge plus is you use a microwave to cook. No wasting energy and money heating the oven to bake six cookies. 

You have packets of dough and chocolate chips and a little scoop. The instructions tell you how many scoops of dough powder to put into the little mixing tray (another plus- no bowls to wash up after!) and how many scoops of water. 

We separated the dough mix into the baking tray ready for the microwave. Looking at the tray I thought, 'this is never going to work' especially as the cooking time was only 15 seconds in the microwave! 

But, they came out like this. One minute to cool then we scooped them out. They were tiny but tasted spot on.  We had enough dough powder left to make three batches.

Next up- mini pizzas! 

Again everything is included. You just need scissors, water and a microwave. 

Again the instructions are really easy for kids to follow, number of scoops of dough to a number of scoops of water. The pizza 'bases' go in for ten seconds. 

Then you measure and mix the sauce, and whizz for a further five seconds, then sprinkle on cheese powder. They are so so tiny, but they do taste like their full size equivalent. 

Great fun and an excellent treat toy for your budding baker or chef. The full range of Yummy Nummies will be on www.character-online.co.uk and www.toysrus.co.uk soon. The savoury kits include chicken nuggets, burger and fries and spaghetti & meatballs. Sweet treats are cupcakes, doughnuts, gummy goodies and a chocolate bar maker.  

I think I'd like to try the mini burger and fries. Yummy Nummies are super cute and easy, and not terribly messier either. A big thumbs up from Michael and me! 

The Chill Factor Jelly Maker- Does It Work?

Remember when we were young, if you wanted jelly you'd have to plan to ask your mum like a week in advance. By the time you bought the jelly, found time to make it, waited for it to set, it was hardly worthwhile. Now there's quick set jelly powders, and even better, ready made jelly pots.

If however you want to make your own jelly, you might want to invest in the £12.99 Chill Factor Jelly Maker this summer. 

We've reviewed the Chill Factor Ice Cream Maker previously, which I was intensely skeptical about, but which works a treat. Yet I was still suspicious of the jelly maker's claims of "jelly in minutes, not hours" as I recalled my own childhood asking, "is it set yet?" every five minutes of my frazzled mum.

We set about making our jelly, following the instructions carefully. You freeze the lower part of the device overnight. It says the freezer is where it 'lives' which makes sense, so it's always ready for making instant jelly. Otherwise the time you wait for it to freeze would be the same as waiting for normal jelly to set!

You make the jelly as the packet instructs and pour into the Chill Factor and start squeezing. The jelly mixture starts to thicken up over 3 - 5 mins. The process definitely needs an adult present, as you'll need the normal boiling water at the beginning. After the squeezing you put the stopper on the top and flip the Chill Factor over. 

You leave the mixture another minute to harden, and unscrew the top, leaving the jelly ready to eat in the lid which doubles as a bowl. 

The process didn't quite work for us, but I think we could have been more enthusiastic with our squeezing, and could have done with continuing for longer than the 3 and a half minutes. We were too eager to see the results.

Instead we put the bowl into the fridge for five minutes and when we came back to look, it had completely set. So if you can't get your jelly firm as you'd like, just pop the bowl into your fridge briefly. It's still a lot quicker than leaving it for five hours to set regularly. 

The Chill Factor Jelly Maker comes in several colours and is £12.99

The Ugglys are a Pack of Rude Dogs!

The Ugglys, a selection of mangy looking puppet pups, are one of those toys parents just don't understand. When we received our's (lovingly nicknamed 'Stinker') I thought it seemed like one of those presents they beg for but only play with for ten minutes and never touch again.

I was wrong. 

Michael hasn't stopped playing with this thing all weekend. It's basically a hand puppet that makes foul noises. Burps, farts, bizarre sound effects  and even a buzzing blue bottle noise. The novelty comes in the form of a little, twiddly knob on the dog's collar, this controls the pitch of the sound effect. 

If there is one suggestion to make the product better, I'd request a volume knob too. 

There are different breeds of Uggly, and they retail at £29.99 A great puppet if your daughter or son loves gross out humour. 

Trolls With a Positive Message- Love Your Zelf

Remember when trolls were collectible, big haired toys, and not nasty online beings? Zelfs are spiky haired creatures of the troll tradition, with the positive tag line, 'Love your Zelf'.

This month in my Junior column I talked about gender stereotypes with toys, and Zelfs are a good example. They are certainly what you'd expect to be a 'girl's toy', with feminine colours, hairbrushes as accessories and charms that come with each figure. However my son loves Zelfs, and already owned a number of them from the original collection that came out last autumn. 

In fact when I mentioned to him some Zelfs would be arriving for him to help me review, he was more excited about them than any of the traditional 'boy toys'  we've featured.

We played with the Toadstool Twirl and Swing Playset, priced £14.99, which comes with an exclusive, very cute, green Zelf. No batteries are required and it holds three medium Zelfs.

We also had one of the series two Masquerade Zelf figures. As I expected, Michael loved both. I'll even admit I wouldn't mind owning a few Zelfs for my toy cabinet, and they've sent me on a 1990s' troll doll hunt on eBay. 

The £14.99 Home Ice-cream Maker that Actually Works! The Chill Factor.

When I was a child I wanted, and finally got, the Mister Frostie Slushie Maker. My parents would have this look of utter misery when I'd ask to use it, as it never really was me using it, it would be them. Twenty minutes of cranking the almost impossible to budge handle, to make half a cup of broken ice. When the Chill Factor arrived with us yesterday for review, Mister Frostie was the first 'person' who sprang to mind. As my son bounced about excitedly deciding which flavour of ice cream to create first, I thought to myself, 'this is Mister Frostie's revenge'.

Nevertheless we stuck the cone in the freezer overnight, and picked up the ingredients we needed to make Oreo Ice cream this morning. All we actually needed was 100ml of cream, and some crushed biscuits. In fact all the recipes suggested in the Chill Factor instructions are two or three ingredients long. That means you know exactly what's going into your home made ice cream, sorbet or frozen yoghurt. No additives, and you can flavour using fresh fruit.

For £14.99 it's a very reasonable price for something that doesn't take up a whole cupboard to store, like a large ice-cream maker, and can help you with healthy eating as you control the ingredients. I love it. I'm freezing it up again as I type, I'm going to make myself some frozen toffee yoghurt to have while I watch tv tonight.

Let me know if you get one yourself, and which recipes you come up with.