Mr Frosty Choc Ice Maker Review - Is It One For Santa’s List?

Mr Frosty is certainly a throwback. In fact he was on my own Santa list in the 80’s, and my poor parents’ arms would despair having to crank the handle on the back of him, in his older incarnation, to dispense some slivers of ice into a cup for me, those were the days! 

I’m pleased to report the Mr Frosty of 2018 is much more hassle-free, and the Mr Frosty Choc Ice Maker is one product that parents won’t be dreading seeing on the Santa list this Christmas. It costs £12.99 and you can buy it from Asda or Smyths.

We were sent one to try out this week, so we gave it a whirl. The kit contains lolly moulds to freeze yoghurt lollies, and a lovely little igloo which you then use to melt chocolate to coat your frozen lollies. It’s very cute and a fun idea to make with your kids over the Christmas break too.

This blog is a bit of a “how to”  also in case you are thinking of buying the Choc Ice Maker, hopefully I can give you some tips and tricks.

I found a great hack was to buy Frubes, the yoghurt that comes in straw like tubes for packed lunches. Not only are they freezable, but they are perfect to snip off the corner and pipe into the snowman mould, rather than try to spoon regular yoghurt in there. A whole box of Frubes is never more than £2.

The lolly mould is like an ice cube tray, but it’s a flexible silicon one, which has good points and bad points. The good point is that once your lollies are set they are very easy to pop out, whether they be yoghurt, like we made, or solid chocolate, or anything you freeze. The downside is that the mould once filled with yoghurt is still quite floppy, so when I tried to carry it over to to freezer some of the liquid spilled. I would suggest putting the mould on a flat tray and putting the whole thing into the freezer like that. Also don’t underestimate the size the mould takes up with the lolly sticks protruding out, you need quite a bit of space in the freezer for it. Measure it out before you start so you don’t get caught out with a armful of yoghurt lollies and nowhere to put them like me!

The yoghurt freezes quite quickly, and is very easy to pop out of the moulds, and the roof of the igloo doubles up as a stand for your lollipops, which is so handy. You then melt your chocolate coating in the main igloo part in the microwave, and coat your lollipops. 

We found this part tricky, there must be a knack to it, but the shape of the snowman disappeared completely for us! It still tasted delicious anyway. We added some sprinkles and decorations, and you could add fresh fruit or any other decorations to make the pops a healthy snack. 

The clean up is very simple, I just put everything in the sink with hot water.  

We definitely want to try out some other recipes. Smix wants to try some solid chocolate lollipops. I want to try some other flavours of yoghurt in there, maybe add chopped up mini mallows or Nutella.

Would I recommend it? Yes, if you enjoy kitchen crafts it’s a fun one that you will do more than once, it’s easy, not much clean up required, doesn’t take up much storage either. Would make a nice gift too. Add it to the Santa list. 

WIN a Holiday For a Family of 4 To Orlando, Florida With Wild Science Kits- We Tried The Lava Lamp Factory!

A bit of a fun on a rainy afternoon with the Wild Science Lava Lamp Kit.  Technically marketed to girls I suppose, due to the leading packaging, but Smix and I have never let a bit of pink get in the way of being creative. 

A lot of the creative aisle in toy shops is aimed at girls. Sticker makers, friendship bracelet kits, fancy 3D pens- but we've always just bought toys like these for the fun of it, rather than say oh no, just because the box has girls only on it. So we were very happy to pick the Lava Lamp Kit out of a selection of Science themed toys to review. 

The kit has two different, but similar projects in it. The smaller glitter tube literally takes five minutes, the Lava Lamp takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes. The latter involves some mixing of powders, so you will need to supervise. However the entire project could be completed by someone Smix's age, nine, by themselves.

The kit itself is enjoyable, but a downside is the Lava Lamp is only temporary. You make little bath bomb type disks to drop into the oil/water/glitter tube which makes it move, but there is no lid to secure the tub properly, and once the bomb has stopped fizzing, that's it. It tells you to discard the mixture and do it over again if you want to have the Lava Lamp effect once more. I think this is a little misleading as you would think you would have a Lava Lamp to display in your room after completing the kit. 

The smaller glitter tube however is a permanent make, and you get a little flashing LED to put in the base of either tube to turn it into a pretty cool disco light.

There are dozens of different Wild Science experiment kits to choose from and they are running a very exciting competition throughout 2017 to win a holiday for a family of four to Orlando Florida. 

Simply buy a Wild Science product, keep receipt, then visit them online and invent the next kit for them to produce. What equipment and instructions will you need? Put together a product presentation and you & your family could be jetting off to Florida for a week. Prize even includes entrance to Disney World and the Kennedy Space Centre. As an extra special Science prize, you'll get to have lunch with an astronaut.

The competition is open until 31st December 2017, so get your thinking caps on! 

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.

Ever Wonder Where Those Effortlessly Cool Hipster Parents Shop? Not Only Can I Tell You, But I've a 15% Off Code For You To Use: Little Citizens Boutique.

There's very little I don't like amongst the inventory on the  Little Citizens Boutique website, so choosing images to share with you was tricky to narrow down. The Holywood based retailer knows good design, and have just won a silver award for best toy & gift retailer in design. They also stock children's clothing and home wares, so here are some of my favourite items from their site.

Should you love what you see too, you can use the code KITSCH15 to get 15% off orders until midnight 30th September.  (The quick buy links aren't active- sorry! It's just how I saved the photos of the products!)

Zoingo Boingo: The Flexible Fun Pogo Toy That Tempted Smix Away From His IPad & Out to the Garden!

This week we received the new Zoingo Boingo pogo toy from Flair toys, a spin on the traditional pogo stick with a bouncing ball base and bungee cord handle which allows for more movement and the ability to do more tricks than before. With the weather finally picking up it was the perfect time to tempt Smix outside and off his iPad to learn the skill to 'boinging'.

The Zoingo Boingo is suitable for age 8 and up, so Smix is exactly the target range. The toy comes boxed, and you have a guide to inflate the ball base to prepare it for use. This is where we had a little trouble. Initially we inflated it as much as it could be inflated, which made the ball base quite hard and with no give. This was our mistake! Do not over inflate the ball, it doesn't need to be like a football, allow some give in it and it's a LOT easier to get the hang of pogoing on the Zoingo Boingo. Allow for it to be a little 'squidgy'.

One side of the footplate has a lip, put your foot on this side to start

Around the ball base is the foot plate, and you'll see one side has a little lip. This is the side you put your first foot on, then tip, balance and bounce. Smix got the hang of it very quickly (now we had fixed the over inflated base problem) and within the first session he could do 17 bounces in a row.

The Zoingo works best on grass or pavement, and as you'd imagine isn't suitable for indoors on carpet. I'm just happy to get Smix outside at last and off his iPad! The Zoingo Boingo will be on sale  via Smyths Toys for £24.99 or you can purchase now on Amazon.

WIN: A Creative Kids' Stocking Filler, Nutty Putty Clay

If you have a creative kid like my Smix, then crafting kits make great smaller presents or surprise gifts at Christmas. 

The Nutty Putty set we received included 5 colours of clay, 4 shape cutters, 2 tools, a rolling pin, a baking sheet and instructions. The instructions are quite clever in that they double as a laminated mat to do your building & sculpting on. As it is the clay is non-staining, so you aren't going to end up googling how to remove clay from your sofa. 

Check out the sets available and read the blog on  http://www.nuttyputty.co.uk/

We have a kit to giveaway to one of my readers. Competition closes this time next week, so I can hopefully get it to you before Christmas. Good luck! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The World of Kitsch Introduces My Very Own Vlogger

I've hired my very own vlogger to undertake toy & kid product reviews on The World of Kitsch. He's a good looking chap, very chatty and I'm not at all biased. Yep, my son Michael has been inspired by 'Whoops, I Missed the Bus', a CBBC show featuring two quick witted teenage vloggers, and even better he works in return for getting to keep the product and a little dash of pocket money.

He is not to blame for the rookie mistake of filming in portrait instead of landscape, but we will improve the vlogs as we review toys leading up to Christmas 2014. 

If your brand has anything you think would suit Michael to review for you, send me an email. We will review all sorts of toys, as I don't strictly follow the pink-is-for-girls-blue-is-for-boys rules of the toy shop.  Videos will be posted on my YouTube channel, in a blog post on here, and is free for your brand to use in any way you wish. I look forward to hearing from you all.