$10 off of My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Littlest Pet Shop, & Baby Alive at Amazon.com

Amazon.com is offering $10 off Hasbro Girls Toys through Friday, July 16. You will need to spend a minimum of $30 from the selected list and it must be an item fulfilled through Amazon.com and not a third party.

These toys include Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, and Baby Alive Merchandise. There are a few items on the list that my daughter has that I want to recommend.


My daughter asked for the My Little Pony Gumball House for Christmas. Prior to asking, she was back and forth as to which size of ponies she wanted (the small Ponyville, or the larger ponies). She loves her gumball house. The house comes with one figure - Sweetie Belle, the unicorn. It comes with a number of accessories. My main complaint is that there are open windows that the accessories fall out of when stored inside. The music from the "elevator" can also get a little annoying.

After Christmas, she had returned some duplicate items and used her credit to buy the Ponyville Ferris Wheel. The Ferris Wheel comes with a single figure, Pinkie Pie. She really likes putting all of her ponies in here and sending them for a ride. We did find that the ponies had to be placed in the cars facing a certain direction or the weight of their heads would tip them out of the cars. The music can be annoying, but my daughter loves the Ferris Wheel (Probably helps that she loves going on rides).

Recently, my daughter has been into water toys. Grandma just bought her the Strawberry Shortcake Splash-n-Petal Pool. The pool comes with a Strawberry Shortcake figure. The pool has a slide, a picnic bench with umbrella and a flower shower that you pump yourself. The toy takes no batteries (a very good thing for a water toy). The set even comes with a towel for Strawberry Shortcake and a place to hang it on the outside. The Strawberry Shortcake doll has a large hat which does not stay on her head that well and causes her to tip off of the slide. Other than that, we really like this toy.

As long as all of the toys you select are eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping, you will get the offer even if the final price after the credit is under $25 since the pre-discounted price is over $30. Make sure you select the Free Super Saver Shipping option since standard shipping is the default.

Note: I am an Amazon Associate and receive compensation for purchases made through Amazon links on this page. I have not been paid to promote the sale or the products.

Virtually Earn Free Tickets at Chuck E Cheese

For a limited time, you can now virtually earn up to 30 free tickets before even stepping foot in Chuck E Cheese. They now have a Virtual Ticket Blaster game online. You play a game where you click the hands using your mouse to gather tickets. You have 30 seconds to gather as many as you can. My game ended when I hit 30 tickets before the 30 seconds.

If you sign up for the Chuck E-Club you will receive coupons by e-mail. There are coupons that you can print without signing up, however the ones I receive by e-mail are less expensive or provide more tokens, or a combination of both benefits. For example, through the e-mail club I received a coupon for $19.99 for a large one topping pizza, 4 sodas, and 25 tokens plus a bonus coupon to add 20 free tokens. The non-subscription coupon for a large one topping pizza, 4 sodas, and 25 tokens is $26.99.

There are also coupons available for token only packages if you opt to go at a non-meal time. Our Chuck E Cheese opens at 10a, so you could easily go then, and stay for 90 minutes and go home for lunch. Another advantage of going early in the morning, is that it tends to be less crowded.

It may be summer, but a trip to Chuck E Cheese would make a nice escape from the heat on a really hot day or a nice place to avoid a rainy day.

Toy Story 3 Movie Review - Spoilers near the bottom

This evening we went to see Toy Story 3 at the theaters. We opted for the non 3D showing since we did not think my 4.5 year old would last for 2 hours with the 3D glasses. I am not sure if this was the right call because as we walked out, she said to her aunt "I thought it was supposed to be in 3D". Although she did say she would not have wanted to wear the glasses for 2 hours.

We really enjoyed the movie. There are enough nods to the previous movie and toys of old to appeal to the adults (and a few jokes that are subtle enough to go over the kids heads). The kids love the action, the familiar characters and the crazy situations.

We knew the story line going in since we had bought the Toy Story 3 Little Golden Book to add to our collection of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. This did not detract from our enjoyment of the book at all. My daughter did comment about story points that were not in the book that she really enjoyed.

There are some notable toys from the previous movies who do not make an appearance and are missed. They do reference some of these toys and refer that they have been lost on the way. We did miss Bo Peep, Etch-a-Sketch, Mr. Spell, RC Car, and Wheezy the Penguin. Also missing is a reference to Al's Toy Barn which was a major element of the second movie and has a passing reference in the first.

However, the new characters fill in quite nicely. Barbie and Ken are lots of perky fun.

Spoilers below the break




They don't take the happy, cheery way out with the villain (Lotso Huggin' Bear). They have the opportunity to have him redeem himself by saving Woody, Buzz, Jesse, the Potato Heads, and Rex, but he continues his evil ways. Of course, he is fittingly dispatched by the end of the movie, much as Prospector Pete was at the end of Toy Story 2.

I loved how the little green aliens' obsession with "The Claw" ended up being what saved their friends. It was neat to see Buzz Lightyear reset to demo mode where he really believes himself to be a space ranger and the personality change in his Spanish mode is amusing. I also loved seeing a few classic toys like the Chatter Telephone and the Fisher Price Corn Popper.

Unlike many animated movie series, the quality of the films and story has stayed consistently high. While there are references made to events of the prior movies, it could stand on its own as well. Maybe the secret is spacing the movies far apart (5 and 10 year gaps). They have set themselves up to continue the series with Bonnie instead of Andy. If they decide to do another sequel, I hope they take the time to develop a story and treat it with the care they have with the other films.

Lego Family Creation Challenge - Playdate Review

Today we went to the Lego Family Creation Challenge at our local Toys R Us. The intent of the play date was to promote interest in the new Lego Games line, particularly Creationary. They had two tables set up, one where children were given a sheet of Lego Games stickers and could build any Lego creation they wanted from plain bricks. They were able to take their creation and the stickers home. The other table was setup for a chance to stump their parent by building an object they were shown a picture of. For example, my daughter was shown a picture of a Lego snake and after one look she had to build the snake and I had to guess what she had built.

My daughter had a lot of fun at the event. She loved getting to put stickers on her creation. She insisted on waiting in line for the creation challenge. I did feel that they could have been setup for higher capacity. They had 6 slots for the Family Creation challenge & 5 for the make it/take it. We arrived a little before noon & shopped for a while. A couple of minutes before noon we saw a line had formed, so we got in line. We were able to be the first group to do the free form creation, but then had to wait in line for the creation challenge.

The Lego Games do look interesting, but are mostly geared for older children. Most had a minimum age of 7 or 8. I have told my daughter that I will make our own version of this game by giving her pictures of things to build (a boat, a bench, a snake, etc). Considering that we already have a fair number of plain pieces, this is a much more economical way to make a game.

Of course, we did not walk out of Toys R Us empty-handed. They had a bin of sale Lego items. We found a Castle Building Set, a Pirate Building Set, and a Fire Fighter Building Set each marked down from $11.99 to $5.99. She has already built her Fire Fighter set. This set is really cool in that it comes with a little fire flame and a jet of water for the fire hose. Each set also includes a mini-figure which is one of her favorite things to play with.

Tonight...Cloudy with a Chance of Pizza?

Our anniversary is tomorrow night, however we celebrated last night. Our gift to ourselves was a Blu Ray player. With her grandmother's help, our 4 year old selected Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs on Blu Ray to give us. According to my mom, she was quite insistent on selecting this movie. This surprised me because she did not really like the movie when we saw it in the theater. However, she told Grandma that she was getting it so that we could watch it on Family Movie Night.

Since our weekend was too busy for movie night, we decided to do movie night tonight. We ordered a pizza and had a picnic dinner in front of the TV in the basement. I spread a table cloth on the floor in front of the sofa, and we sat on the floor to eat. It has been a while since we had a basement picnic. I need to keep that in mind for hot summer days since our basement is usually nice and cool.

She has enjoyed the movie much more on this second viewing than when we originally saw it. She remembered a few key scenes from having seen it at the theater.