Speaker: With all the toy recalls happening lately, what parents or grandparents isn't concerned about what to buy their children this year. Gone are the best toy list, our ward then must have a hot toy. Instead, what you must have is an education about how to choose the smartest and safest toys. Join us now as Marianne Szymanski founder of Toy Tips and publisher of a magazine called Toy Tips & Parenting Hints. How are you doing Marianne?
Speaker: Great! thank you.
Speaker: Good Marianne, can you tell us you have been doing this for over 15 years, how do you test toys?
Speaker: We are independent, we are not paid by toy companies. We test toys at testing centers, we have over 500 of them around the country and what we do is we test toys with children to find out what they learn. So while we are looking for fun toys, we are also looking at developmental skill and we do that with an academic and scientific research project, the way that we handle everything. So, when you are interested in a particular toy, you can come to our website toytips.com for the toy report card to find out about the toy before you purchase it.
Speaker: What tips could you give to parents on how to make the right choices for their children?
Speaker: It's really important to make sure that a toy is age appropriate and that's completely for safety and then second of all, you have to make sure that the child that you are buying for, has the skills necessary and needed to play with the toy because if they don't they are going to get frustrated or bored if that's not fun and finally make sure they have interest because if you are not really even interested in the toy, there is no sense of buying it.
Speaker: Can you show us a few example of toys that most likely will get recalled this year?
Speaker: Board games. Board games are great for social interaction, really of all ages. Lot of the classic games that you played with are still around. This one is called Last Word. It's a new game but what child doesn't like a Last Word, so the idea is to pick a subject, things found at a school and then there is a letter and when you press the timer everyone starts to yell out or shout out, or say quietly the word that comes to mind and the person with the last word obviously wins that round and what's great about it too is you can adapt to different ages, so if you have children that are younger, you can take some of the subjects out they may not understand or if you have older people in your crowd and they don't about the trivia you can do the same.
Also Nintendo has Flash Focus, now this is great especially for kids all the way up to an older generation because what it is, is visual training for your eye and the games that are used in here are to actually help you with hand-eye coordination, visual perception, visual acuity and the games in here are actually the same ones they pro athletes use. So it's really a fun game, not to be used all day long, but a little, you have few minutes everyday is great and it will actually trained your eyes. Also for younger kids a lot of time you might think, oh! I don't want to get things that, children are putting in their mouth. Focus this year on toys that are really enhancing motor skills and it's really important for exercise obviously.
This is made by Play School there is a new line called kid motion and this is the bounce and go into lawn, you could sit on it and you can hold the handle and you can bounce on it and then when the child put the feet on the floor they can move forward. This one is called the honey bee hop and what's fun about it is, once you press this it starts to spin around a little bumblebee goes around and plays right by the little bumblebee, children can chase after it, they can hop after it, they can skip after it, but if it is going a little too fast you can slow it down or if you have two children and they are racing together you can press it again it will go a little faster. So this is one of those great toys for family with more than one child and if you are looking for something for baby you don't want to buy a toy with all the recalls going on, you can still get some that are very playful, there is a whole line if baby wear called I am a toy tester, these are adorable, there's eight in the line and they are available in at Amazon.com.
Speaker: Great information Marianne, where can people go for more of your tips.
Speaker: Toy Tips & Parenting Hints Magazines is available on newsstands, nationwide our magazines are sold and at website toytips.com.
Speaker: Thanks Marianne and thank you for joining us.
Speaker: Thank You.
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