Mongoose has just released its first balance bike in 10 years, and we were one of the lucky few to get to test it out before launch. The Mongoose Title Tot is a balance bike designed to help kids 2 years and older build their confidence before riding their first bike.
There have been few toys that have drawn neighborhood jealousy as much as the Rollplay Nighthawk NexGen we’ve been testing. It’s an incredibly fun electric ride-on toy with a powerful 24V battery that powers a single rear wheel and is steered by your child by leaning side to side.
SKOOG, a media-tech company with the mission to enrich children’s lives through creative and immersive play, has announced a global partnership with Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, to introduce a new interactive platform that merges tactile technology with the huge content library featuring Sesame Street characters.
At my house, our kids watch enough TV, so when it comes to playtime, we try to look for screen-free toys. Jogoball from Yogibo is a new toy that combines a Bluetooth speaker, motion recognition, and smart audio to provide fun for the whole family. Pre-orders are already live, and orders will start shipping on November 5th.
There’s a reason I try to wait until I really know a product to do a review — sometimes it takes a little while to grasp what makes something truly succeed or fail. If you asked me three weeks ago what my son and I thought of the K’Nex Architecture Eiffel Tower, you’d want to duck immediately. Now? We can’t wait for more!
Everyone knows that kids love ride-on toys, and Kid Trax is raising the bar with their innovative, lifelike electric replicas. Kid Trax was kind enough to send us their CAT Mining Dump Truck, and our kids are absolutely obsessed. With two seats and a max weight of 130 pounds, two kids can ride at the same time!
We’re already fans of Boogie Board products, so we were excited to get our hands on their new Magic Sketch kit for kids. It’s an electronic art kit on which your kids can doodle, trace, learn, and more in rainbow colors with zero mess.
Kids these days have a ton of options to supplement their formal education; many more that I had when I was a child! But your options are limited if you’re trying to avoid handing your child a device with a screen. Enter the Matatalab Coding Set, a screen-free kit that helps your child develop cognitive abilities, imagination, and coding skills.
I spent some quality time at the 2020 New York Toy Fair; while it may be a bit smaller than CES, it is no less overwhelming. There was so much to see that it was almost impossible to settle on this year’s ‘Best of’, but we persevered and made our selections. Here’s a look at our picks.
Another CES has come and gone, and as we have in the past, we’ve sorted through hundreds upon hundreds of products to bring you the ones we thought were the most exciting, useful, disruptive, or clever. Take a look at our Best of CES 2020 award picks, and see what you think!
Right in time for Hour of Code Week 2019, Mattel is launching a new educational dimension to one of this year’s hottest holiday toy launches, Hot Wheels id. Hot Wheels id melds physical and digital play using NFC-enabled Hot Wheels cars to allow kids to test their cars in a virtual environment, including speed challenges and track building.
My son is 6, and his favorite subject in school is coding — mostly because he gets to play with little robots, but it’s still a very worthwhile and useful life skill. He also loves all things Star Wars, so when Kano offered us the chance to review their Star Wars The Force Coding Kit, we had to give it a shot!
Creating with plastic building blocks is fun, but building with Metomics Metal Designer Blocks looks like it will take creativity to the next level with gorgeous and long-lasting anodized aluminum designer blocks!
UBTech makes a huge variety of codable robots that teach kids all about STEM in a fun and exciting way. Their latest is the MeeBot 2.0, an exclusive with Apple Stores complete with LED lights and even dance moves!
Coding is becoming as integral a part of a kids education as math and reading. It teaches logic and helps kids better understand how the world of technology they’re surrounded by actually works. Also, Star Wars is objectively awesome and every kid wishes they had the Force. Kano is tapping into that with their Star Wars The Force Coding kit!
We checked out Jimu’s Builderbots last year and were impressed with these amazing construction and coding kits. UBTECH has even more exciting products out now, from a dragon to robotic champions!
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Self, this paper airplane is great, but it could use a motor and an app.”? Of course, you haven’t. But that’s exactly what you get with the PowerUp 3.0 Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane Kit. I know, it sounds silly, but bear with me because there’s a lot to this.
Once again we explored the New York Toy Fair, going in search of some standout products. I walked over five miles trying to discover the toys worthy of our “Gear Diary’s Best of” moniker, and … I think I found them. There were many great items to see, but these are the seven that stood out to us.
Anki Cozmo is a friendly robot with a one-of-a-kind personality. Cozmo is playful, can perform tricks, sing songs, and explore his environment. He can even recognize your face! You can also take care of him like a pet when he needs to be “fed” and “tuned up.” My kids are obsessed with Cozmo and yours will be as well.
Teaching kids about coding has become as basic to education as reading and math. In fact, my kindergartener has coding as part of his school curriculum! UBTECH aims to bring coding and building skills to kids with their UBTECH JIMU Robot BuilderBots Series Overdrive Kit. It says ages 8+, but would my precocious kindergartener approve?
Learning the basics of coding is becoming as important as reading and math skills for young children. There are a number of ways for kids to learn, but the best is sneaking learning exercises into doing fun stuff, and speaking as the parent of a 5-year-old, it’s nearly universal that trucks and building things will attract children. Enter UBTech’s BuilderBots.