Day 1

Is it bad that I skipped the first day of my 90 day workout thing? Unfortunately, I missed the first day because I was out of town and was unable to fit it in but I did start today.

I had a real hard time setting it up, but not because of the game. First my Wii's clock was wrong and I had to reset the clock, then my balance board's batteries were dead so I had to start over to uncheck the fact that I had one. Because I don't have my balance board at the moment, I can't tell you might weight or my WiiFit age so that will start when I get batteries.

Today's workout stats:

Calories burned- 125.3

Workout time- 00:19:38

Exercises complete- 15/16

I skipped one exercise because I had to keep my knees bent while doing it and the first time I did it my left knee was hurting so the 2nd time it came around I skipped it. Better be safe than to injure myself.

More about the game and another workout tomorrow.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I enjoy traveling. Seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, getting lost and finding my way again. I’m still waiting on my chance to see England, like everyone else I know. Although it’s better when done physically, traveling can take place within the four walls of a room if you have a large imagination. The toys in this month’s Toy Box have to do with three modes of travel children can use with their imagination to explore their own world.

Matchbox not only takes us up in the air but also out to sea with their Sky Busters Aircaft Carrier. It comes with one Matchbox airplane, which is called a Sky Buster. These planes are really cool. The body is metal and the wings are hard plastic. I bought one of them to use as decoration on an island-themed cake. When I tried to break the plane to create a plane-crash on the cake, I only succeeded in tearing off the wings after a couple of minutes. The carrier holds up to eight planes and is portable. These toys don’t float on water, so don’t take them into the bath with you. Available on Amazon.com for $17.

Matchbox also takes us to the road with Real Talking Rocky. Rocky is a dump truck that stands up and talks when you press a button. The button launches him into the standing position, and he is easily reset by pressing him down to look like dump truck. He sells on Amazon.com for $10.





For those who like to fall asleep listening to the soothing sounds of the rails, Fisher-Price has come out with Good Night Thomas. This is a plush toy that says “good night” phrases to your child as he drifts down the tracks to Dreamville. It requires 2 AA batteries that are stored in the back of the toy in a case. The case is a bit hard but is mostly enclosed in padding. The other part that’s not completely soft is the face where the speaker is encased. However, both these places are just small parts of the toy, and the padding is large enough that you really have to squeeze in the certain areas to feel the hard plastic. Good Night Thomas sells on Amazon.com for $20.

Find Them On-line:
Sky Busters Aircaft Carrier
Real Talking Rocky
Good Night Thomas

Blog Annoucement

Starting May 1st and for the next 90 days, I will be testing out EA Active. My progress will be posted here so that you may follow. I will try to post at the most once a day and at the least three times a week. Then in September, I will write a full review of the game in my Toy Box article.

Computer Animals Are Virtually Pets

When I was teenager, Tamagotchi were the new toys on the market. They were little key rings that housed a virtual pet that you fed and cleaned by pressing a button. I didn’t have one but I knew mine would have died from starvation or filthiness. In fact, they probably were a good litmus test for parents to see how fast their kids would get bored of taking care of an animal before they got the real thing. This month in the Toy Box, I look into games starring animals.

First we have My Horse & Me: Riding For Gold for the Nintendo DS. In this game you play as a recent high School graduate named Emma. She has moved to Kentucky to help her Uncle Roger with his failing farm. It’s up to you to compete in competitions to save the farm. The beginning of the game, it does a fair job of leading you through the game play. However once you figured out how to ride, the game dumps you on a main menu, which is a picture of the ranch. There are no labels to tell you what place will take you where, but this information is available in the instruction booklet. Before you compete, you have to train in the training arena. Once again there isn’t any explicit instructions, but it’s pretty easy to figure out. It does get repetitive though, so to break it up, you can play some challenges. My favorite is the maze you ride through, and I must say it’s easier to chase chickens in Zelda than it is here. There is also equipment you can buy in a shop to use for dressing up your horse. Also, don’t forget to take care of your horse in the stables. This game is geared more toward girls, and if you like horses and don’t mind some repetitive game play, then you’ll enjoy this. It sells for $19 at Amazon.com.

Next we have Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii. Rabbids, who look a lot like rabbits, have come down from outer space and are wreaking havoc all over the world. The mini-games are different, each with its own controls, keeping things fresh, which is major when is comes to game play. In one game, you can tackle your friends to see who can hold on to the football the longest, and in another, players find out who can whack the rabbid the hardest to make him fall asleep. I enjoyed the shooting gallery game, which feels like the old arcade games with the attached guns. This game is perfect for groups and sells for $20 on Amazon.com.

Lastly, we’ll take a trip down the rabbit hole in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland for the Wii. This game is based on the movie of the same name. What is interesting about this game is that you don’t play as Alice, but as her five companions, the White Rabbit, the Dormouse, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat. You cycle through these guys, each with their own abilities, to solve puzzles and defeat bad guys. The best ability is the Mad Hatter’s. He stands on podium and you move the picture around to change the perception of the world, which changes the world. This is a good game to play alone but you can play along with a friend. It sells for $37 on Amazon.com, and all these games can also be found at your local video game stores.

Find it online:
My Horse & Me: Riding For Gold for the Nintendo DS
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii
Disney’s Alice in Wonderland for the Wii

Thinking Game

Get your thinking caps on. This one's a tough one.

I was browsing the web a while back and I ran across this game on Thinkgeek.com. It's called the Lonpos Pyramid and Rectangle Game. It's a black box and you get several little pieces of different colored balls stuck together in different shapes. It comes with two booklets both filled with puzzles. They range from ridiculously easy to stressfully hard. The start you off by showing you were some of the pieces go and then it's your job to fill in the rest. Even though the easy puzzles are basically one missing piece, I'm glad there is at least one of them there, so when I give up doing the hard puzzles I can at least put the game away quickly. I would have liked to see some more variety in the puzzles. For some reason they all start putting pieces on the left side and the right side is always bare. I would have liked to see a puzzle where you place some in the middle, maybe there are some out there. However, you can just remove all the pieces and just try to put them all back in, and as long as everything fits, you win! Also there are 3D puzzles for the bottom of the box to make a pyramid using the same pieces, which are somewhat harder. Soon I'm going to make a video showing how this game works.

The game costs $15.99 and you can find it at http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/d245/
and if you want to test it out online you can do that at http://www.lon-pos.com/en/en_101_8_1.htm

Is This Your Card?

As I grew up, there were many occupations that I thought I wanted to have when I grew up. At one point in time I wanted to be a magician and started a collection of card decks that I used to do simple card tricks. These decks came in handy on trips where my friends and I played all types of games. When thinking about this month’s Toy Box, I thought it would be a good idea to dive into the world of card games. Even though there are as many card games as there are cards in a deck, I selected a few old favorites as well as some new ones you may not have heard of.

Uno has been a favorite for years. Based on Crazy 8’s, the object of the game is to get rid of all the cards in your hands by placing cards of the same number or color on the top of the discard pile. There are also Skip, Reverse, and Draw cards that add some challenges to the game. And if that isn’t enough, everyone has their own house rules, from playing an exact same card out of turn to slapping the deck when someone plays a 9 (the last person to slap the deck draws 2 cards). Mattel has also come out with several variations of Uno, most of which include a base. With Uno Attack, instead of drawing from a deck, you hit a button. Sometimes the base doesn’t spit out anything, but other times it spits out many cards. With Uno Spin, you spin a wheel when the spin card gets played. When it stops spinning, you may have to trade your cards or draw some. A pack of Uno cards salls for about $7 on Amazon.com and the other versions of the games between $18-$35.

Apples to Apples is another great card game. To play this game you’ll need at least four people. There are red cards and green cards. Each player has seven red cards in their hand. These red cards have nouns on them ranging from famous people to events in your life (i.e. “my prom”). The green cards have adjectives on them. One player draws a green card and reads aloud the adjective. Then the other players pick a red card in their hand and slide it secretly over to the first player. The card they pick is what noun they think goes with the adjective. The first player picks up the cards (not knowing who picked which card), and from those cards the first player picks what they think is the best answer. Whoever wins gets the green card, and the next player in the circle pulls the green card for the next round. The game ends when someone gets 3-7 green cards (this is decided at the beginning of the game and depends on how many people are playing.) The fun thing about this game is that it all depends on who is playing and their personalities. When deciding which red card to play you have to think about who the judge is and what card they’d pick instead of what card you’d pick. It’s also a good game to get to know one another with. The party box it comes in is for ages 12 and up. This is because some cards have words like “Sultry” on them. However, there is a Junior box for ages 9 and up, and kids’ box for ages 7 and up. The party box is about $27, the junior pack is about $19 and the one for 7 is about $25, all from Amazon.com.

Top Trumps comes to us from England. It’s similar to the game War, and there are many different packs with themes from Star Wars to insects. Each card contains a character; for example, Yoda would be in a Star Wars deck. On each character card there are about five statistics like knowledge, likability, or cuteness, and each character has its own numbers. When playing, one person chooses a statistic, then the players tell what number they have for that statistic. Whoever has the highest number gets both cards to place in the end of his deck. Whoever wins the cards gets to pick the next statistic. If there is a tie, those two cards are set aside, and the player who picked the statistic goes again. The player who wins those cards also wins the two cards that tied. You can find these card packs at Barnes and Noble in the Renaissance or at Amazon.com. They cost about $8 per pack, or you can get them in bundles of three on Amazon.com for around $20.

If you don’t feel like buying any of these specialty card decks to play a game, there are many card games that can be played with just a simple deck of ordinary cards. Hearts, Spades, Spoons, Crazy 8’s, Bridge, Rummy, Gin... the list goes on and on. www.pagat.com is a website with an extensive list of card games and how to play them. Some other websites focused on just one game are http://www.acbl.org/learn/howtoplay.html for Bridge and http://rummy.com/rummyrules.html for Rummy. And if you ever get board and you’re by yourself, there is always the basic game of solitaire, 10 games of which can be found at http://boardgames.about.com/od/solitaire/tp/best_solitaire_card_games.htm.

Find it online:
Uno
Uno Attack
Uno Spin
Apples to Apples
Top Trumps

Play like an Egyptian

This month’s Toy Box takes us to a far away land where the water runs from the south to the north, where pharaohs rule and mummies curse. We’re playing this month in Egypt.

Playmobil has come out with a collection of Egyptian-themed playsets. The largest playset is a pyramid with traps that you set off and secret places to hide treasure. Their other playsets include a sphinx, a floating ship, a tomb, and many different kinds of Egyptians to inhabit your own three-dimensional Egypt. I was fortunate enough to play with the sphinx of this set. It comes with two Egyptians and a mummy. The sphinx has a secret door that is released by placing an amulet in a hole and turning it, great for storing some of the Egyptians when playtime is over. The characters and sphinx itself are large, so they are hard to loose; however, the accessories are small and even warrant a chocking hazard caution. Playmobil says these playsets are for children 4 years and older, but they have other non-Egyptian toys for those younger than 4. The Egyptian themed playsets from Playmobil range from $100.00-$8.00 at Toys-R-Us.

For those who want to tour Egypt from your computer, EA has produced The Sims 3: World Adventures. This is an expansion pack for the game The Sims 3, which means you have to have The Sims 3 for the game to work. In World Adventures, Egypt is one of three exotic destinations your sim (people-like characters you create and control) can visit. In all the destinations there are several tombs that your sim can explore. These tombs are filled with treasure but also contain traps, and in Egypt you need to steer clear of mummies. You can even cause your sim to turn into a mummy by sleeping in a cursed sarcophagus, but make sure you also have a blessed version incase you want the sim to change back. World Adventures does a good job of adding a new dimension of game play to The Sims 3. Going on these adventures is almost like playing an on-line role-playing game, where you need to collect certain items to complete your objectives. With a few cheats entered in the game, you can also build your own tombs to explore; however, doing this doesn’t come easy, so you may find yourself searching on-line for tutorials to do so. The Sims 3 is rated T for Teen because of crude humor, sexual themes, and violence, and costs $30.00 on Amazon.com.

You might not get to sing “Walk Like An Egyptian” with Activision’s Band Hero, but it does have 65 other songs you can sing plus more you can download. Activision brought us Guitar Hero, and the game play is the same. There is a long strip (like a guitar’s neck) on the screen, and when color buttons pass a certain place, you either hold down the button on the guitar controller and strum or hit the color drum with the drumstick. With Band Hero there is also a “Party Mode” that will play random songs from the song list (that you can edit), and you and your party guests can jump in and out of playing along. Band Hero also allows you to change your game system into a karaoke machine, and in that mode you can sing however you want, and you’ll never fail the song. There is also a game mode that allows you to create your own song and download what others have created. Band Hero is rated E+10 for Everyone over 10 for lyrics and mild suggestive themes and is $49.00 on Amazon.com.

Find it online:
Playmobil Sphinx
The Sims 3 World Adventures
The Sims 3 (You need this to play the game above)
Band Hero for the Wii