Toys

As we begin the Fall season, it is inevitable that Christmas products would also be hitting shelves, and that is the case with The LEGO Group’s newest set of Advent calendars. My wife and I have loved gifting our kids Advent calendars ever since they were born, but recently we have been investing in the LEGO advent calendar to help populate our growing LEGO winter village we build each year. Any discussion about this year’s advent calendar will be limited…

7 Wonders and 7 Wonders Duel are two games that I have many fond memories of playing. Not only are they great games, but they are easy to teach as well, so they make great experiences to share with other people. When I first saw Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth at Asmodee’s Canada Plays event this past year, I couldn’t wait to have the final copy in my hands. That day has arrived! Almost everything about the…

Much of what I said when we reviewed the Turtle Van  is going to apply here when we talk about the LEGO Dreamzz Crocodile Car. In fact, some of that article I’m going to copy and paste here, not because I’m lazy, but because the importance of imagination, and why I think Dreamzzz is such a great theme, is the same regardless of which Dreamzzz set we build and review. That being said, it’s been about a week since we…

It’s been a few minutes since our last Playmobil review, but that doesn’t mean my youngest hasn’t had his many Wiltopia animals out on the floor week in and week out. As his animal collection has grown, he’s been pining for more and more Wiltopia animal sets. We bought a few ourselves, but Playmobil was nice enough to send over another smaller set, the Animal Photographer. This set is based on a watering hole in Africa, and includes a number…

I wasn’t sure what to expect when we began opening up Mrs. Castillo’s Turtle Van from the LEGO Dreamzzz. I’ve seen LEGO themes crash and burn before, but for some reason despite the wackiness of Dreamzzz, my kids were super enthused by the entire theme. So, to do my homework, as we opened up the Turtle Van, we put on a few episodes of the show on Netflix, and my kids were hooked. LEGO is a huge hit in our…

The LEGO Group and Universal Products & Experiences are releasing a new line of LEGO Wicked sets based on the upcoming musical film. LEGO Wicked Welcome to Emerald City (SKU 75684): Detailed Emerald City: This set recreates the iconic city of Oz, featuring a 3-story tower, a bakery, a cosmetic store, and a coffee shop. Interactive Features: Builders can explore the city, interact with various elements, and recreate iconic scenes from the film. Character Variety: The set includes mini-dolls of…

River of Gold, based in the Legend of the Five Rings universe, is one of the most beautiful games released in 2024. Beauty, however, can only get you so far, but thankfully River of Gold has a ton of great and easy to understand mechanics that makes this a really good game for veteran board game players, and casual players as well. We looked at the games components in a previous post, so we won’t go into depth on all…

Honey Buzz was one of our favorite games last year, and we raved about the games production value and game mechanics. Players would draft honeycomb tiles for their hive, attempting to make rings, use actions, produce and sell honey, and much more, all to earn points and hopefully be the best hive at the end of the game. The game was phenomenal, and we played it a ton. The more we played, the more we realized we wished there was…

We have talked at length here on the website about the variety of upgrades you can get to make your board gaming life that much better. From upgraded resources to board games bags, we’ve had the pleasure of covering a lot of great stuff. One thing we’ve never covered, however, has been board game tables, and on the eve of getting one for review, we thought we would answer the question everyone has, “Do I need a board game table?”…

A few years ago, Playmobil ran a line of futuristic dinosaur themed playsets called Dino Rise, and while my son was really into dinosaurs, I think all the guns, lasers, cannons, and more threw him off a bit and the set wasn’t as popular as I would have thought. With their new line of dinosaur sets hitting shelves this month, the Dinos theme from Playmobil is showing a lot of promise. We had the chance to look at the T-Rex…