Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Toy Store Vs Library

It is Murphy's Law that the weekend I've organised lots of indoor activities, is the one weekend were we have decent weather.

Saturday we went to a Cars 2 Launch party at Toys'R'Us. The wording of the promotion lead me to believe it was to celebrate the release of the Cars 2 movie. Therefore I assumed (I know, that was silly) that the party was a Disney PR and Toys'R'Us collaboration. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

The 'party' was a bunch of tables with buckets of colouring items and a couple of Toys'R'Us store workers, who were hopeless with children, playing games that were totally not age appropriate. All this was set up in front of a massive wall of Cars 2 merchandise. The approch of throwing the 'Launch Party' was obviously to bore the younger children out of their mind until they throw massive tantrums and their parents would then buy them Cars 2 merchandise to stop the tears.

The boys were happy to colour for about 15mins but after that they were completely bored and just wanted to go. The little boy that was about 8 won all the 'Mater says' games so left with about 6 balloons, much to the despair of every parent of a young child there, as they then had to explain to their 2-4 year old why he was getting all the balloons  As the boys' had already managed to get texta on their clothes we decided to skip the fabric flag decorating, which was supposed to be the climax at the end of the 'party', as that involved paint and glue and we left early.

The boys' didn't come away with any of the over priced Cars 2 merchandise but I did feel bad that it had been such a massive let down and bought each of the kidlets a hot wheels car to add to their collection.

Notice Baker Bob's super impressed expression

The kidlets had a lot more fun on Sunday when we headed to the library for a book reading and signing by Hazel Edwards.

We got there early and Hazel came over and signed the kids books and talked to them and us about her family and how there was a famous historian name Manning.


The kidlets were a little bit younger than most of the other kids there and being 2pm meant they were way overdue for a nap. We sat down and read some books, entered a competition and then settled in to listen to Hazel Edwards read one of her most famous books "There's a hippopotamus on our roof eating cake." before the free activites started up and the competition was drawn.

Linc is the one with the monkey on his back
But all the excitement became to much for the kidlets and all three started to loose it right at the end of the story. The librarian assured me it was okay, that Hazel would be used to it and the free activities would start up soon but I think they'd reached their limit, and so had I. We'd walked to the library so I flew the white flag and started the walk home early, which was disappointing. I really would have loved for the kidlets to stay and join in more but the library still came out the winner!

Overall it was weekend of family together time.

Plus I sent off my first Assessment for school on Sunday. Can't wait to hear how I did.

1 comment:

Louisa Claire said...

What a shame about the "party" - this would be good feedback to share with Toys R Us. Amazing how a toy store can miss the mark so dramatically!! The library sounds much better, though odd that they chose 2pm as that's pretty much every families nap hour :) Funny little world we live in hey?!