VTech Gadget the Robot

Meet Gadget the Robot. The perfect friend to help your children learn all about numbers, letters, objects and music and great fun for them too. Gadget is aimed for children aged 3 - 7 years and any child who loves robots will be instantly attracted to him.

Gadget talks and dances, and also responds to your child clapping. You can twist his ears and nose and he in turn will move his eyes, eyebrows, arms and body in response to different things. There's an LCD screen on his body which shows pictures, letters and numbers to fit in with the activity Gadget is doing at the time.

Gadget's favourite food is "computer chips" and he comes with 30 of these round discs which go in his backpack. 26 of them are for each letter of the alphabet whilst the remaining 4 are special chips - more about these later. Chips can be fed into his forehead and then you need to turn his nose clockwise for each to be accepted by him.

There are six different modes in which children can play with Gadget - selected using the slider switch on his tummy:

1. Explore it - In this mode if you put in a letter chip Gadget will tell you what the letter is and a word which begins with it. If you instead put in one of the special chips he will either exercise, say something in a foreign language (with an English translation), sing or do a magic "trick".
2. Charge me up - Gadget asks to be fed a certain number of computer chips and counts as each one is fed to him. A great opportunity for children to practice counting.
3. Super speller - If Gadget is few a letter chip he will then tell you what letter it is an the word on the chip which begins with that letter. He will then spell out the word, one letter at a time, as you twist his ear.
4. Follow Along - Gadget gives the child instructions (turn my nose, turn my green ear, turn my purple eye etc) and they have to follow along. If they get it wrong he'll tell them, or they will be congratulated for doing things correctly.
5. Robot Rock - If you clap your hands when he asks you to Gadget will sing (mainly about the alphabet) and dance for you.
6. Gadget's Quiz - In this mode Gadget will ask you a question and you have to answer by either putting in the correct computer chip, or by twisting his ear until the correct answer comes on the screen.

There's no doubt that Gadget is adorably cute and children seem to be instantly drawn to him. At first his dancing can be a little scary if they're not expecting it, but before long they were dancing away too.

The letter and counting games that Gadget has are well thought out and have good educational benefits. The only disadvantage with them is that all the letters are in the ayy, bee, see form, rather than the ah, buh, cuh that they learn at school or nursery.

Having the computer chips is a nice touch and they can also be used on their own to help children with letter recognition and spelling. All of the letters on them are lower case which is perfect for this. It is also nice that Gadget has a backpack to store them in, although when the backpack is actually on his back it is impossible to open the lid fully to fit them in. It does slide off easily though when you want it to.

If there was one thing that I would change slightly then it would be that the LCD screen on his tummy lit up as it can be a bit hard to see if you're not in a very well lit room. Only a small suggestion though.

Be warned that as well as eating "computer chips" Gadget is also rather fond of batteries. When he's running low on energy he will tell you that he's feeling sleepy and shut down, but as he takes 4 AA batteries it may well be wroth investing in some rechargable ones which will work out cheaper in the long run! When he's not being played with Gadget will shut down to conserve battery power.

Gadget the Robot makes a wonderful friend for children and being from VTech he's also got the quality that you expect from their toys.

You can buy Gadget the Robot in any of our Cuthberts stores (Hatfield Galleria, St Albans and Letchworth) or he is also available from our online shop.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears from Orchard Toys

Following on from our recent review of The Game of Ladybirds from Orchard Toys, we're this week looking at another one of their games - Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

There can't be many children ages four and older who don't already know the story of Goldilocks and that's why this game works so well with children in that age range. The aim of the game is that the bears have to race home to stop Goldilocks from eating Baby Bear's porridge, breaking his chair and sleeping in his bed, and any child who is already familiar with the story will easily grasp this aim straight away.

When you unpack the game, the playing board comes in eight pieces which are then put together as a jigsaw - providing younger children with a great opportunity to help set the game up.

Each player selects one of the bear families and that is their playing piece. The dice has the numbers one, two and three written on it (rather than in dots), along with two pictures of Goldilocks. When a player rolls they dice, if they get a number they move their bear family that number of spaces forwards along the brown path. If a picture of Goldilocks is rolled then the player must spin the Goldilocks spinner and move her playing piece that corresponding number of spaces along the green path (in the two player game) or just one space along in the 3/4 player version.

Scattered along the path are honeypot tokens. If a player (either bear or Goldilocks) lands on one of these then they must turn it over to find out of they must go further forwards, move back, stay where they are or return to the start.

If one of the bear families arrives home first and reaches their front door then they have won the game. If Goldilocks arrives at the front door first she must then work her way through the rooms of the house and she does not win the game until she's made it to the bears' bedroom and got into Baby Bear's bed.

With the aim of the game so clear for the children playing it, the game is quite easy for children to get to grips with, and as they're not trying to understand the aim, they can instead get on with understanding how the play actually works.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears provides excellent maths opportunities for moving playing pieces the number of spaces indicated on the dice and also for understanding that the + and - symbols on the honeypot tokens mean that the playing pieces should be moved forwards or backwards.

The only confusion that we had when playing the game was the time that Goldilocks won. As no one player is in "charge" of Goldilocks my daughter couldn't quite understand how we could have finished the game, yet non of the players round the table had won. I think she finally got the concept of Goldilocks having beaten everyone who was playing, but can definitely see where her confusion came from.

The Orchard Toys range includes several games that are based on well known stories like this one, as well as nursery rhymes and family activities and they all provide an excellent scenario for children to play a board game around. When looking through the leaflet that was in the box showing the other games Orchard Toys make, my daughter was very keen to point out which of her books the games were based on.

The games themselves are full of educational opportunities are made here in the UK to the highest quality standards. We believe Goldilocks and the Three Bears would work particularly well for families where there are two or more children within the suggested age range of 4 - 11 years, as they could then play it together without needing adult help.

The Orchard Toys range is available in all Cuthberts stores (Letchworth, St Albans and Hatfield Galleria) and also from their online shop.