The Dollar Bazaar was the dollar store where I got such toys as the New Concept Bike, City Nimrod, the Battle Tops and the Mobile Phone with the leaking batteries. It was also the place I got some yet to be posted items such as the Space Wars Lightsaber, Soldier Force Paratrooper and the Army 9mm Auto gun, like the SWAT gun, only army. Oh, I also got some funny coloring and activity books, the Superfriends and Star Wars.

I am really trying to find the time and energy to post those other toys but I have been so busy with school and work for the past while.

All this does is takes away some of the convenience I had of getting unique toys since many of them I have never seen anywhere else. It was just like when there was the dollar section at my work which was eventually rearranged into something else.

It takes the better part, if not all, of an evening if I start from scratch in prepping a toy post. I need to take the pictures, transfer them over to my computer, size them how I want and then write the content to go along with the post.

That in itself takes quite a bit of time and doesn’t include making a video with the post. I’m really trying to get a video to go along with the toy post if the toy has some action or sound to it, but with school and work it’s hard to find time and/or energy.

This old footage was done in a night or two when all I did was record a bunch of toys in action. I posted the battle tops one separately because I hadn’t done the review for it yet, but the following videos already have their associated reviews up.

Click the heading for the video if you want to see the original post.

Boxing Glove Gun

It’s a little blurry, but I’ve seen much worse on Youtube.com. I try it out on a couple of test targets.

Dart Board

This is the only non-artillery video in the bunch. It actually works pretty well, but it’s a mini dart board so it’s like having to go for the bullseye every time unless you’re close.

Mini Disc Blaster

Here is a double feature on the mini disc blaster. One of them is supposed to be a bad trial while the other is a good trial, but they both seemed to go ok except the one didn’t want to fire the last few shots.

Mini SWAT Gun

This was testing one of the targets from the SWAT gun packs with the mini SWAT gun. It was a good test and the toy actually works.

Hope you enjoyed them.

This is apparently causing some issues with some people who feel that these new sets are implying that Lego toys haven’t really been for girls before and I don’t think it should be taken that way. One of my cousins, a girl, had a ton of Lego toys including a medieval castle set 20 years ago and it was never a problem.

One of the complaints was that the toys were bright pink which I don’t really see as a problem. Some girls like pink, like my nieces, and just because an adult is going to view that badly, doesn’t mean little girls are going to notice or even care. One of the reasons lead paint was used in toys was because it gave the toys a shiny look that got a kids attention.

Pink is just a color used to get a little girls attention and it has been for a long time. It seems like this is being viewed as something to imply views of the past, but it’s just a color that is generally viewed as being a girl color and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. My cousin had a non-girl set and maybe that is what she wanted and maybe not. All I remember was that being kids, it didn’t matter. That was the toy we had to play with.

I’m sure there are girls out there who like Star Wars and the other Lego sets that would be typically viewed as a toy for boys, but perhaps not all girls wanting a Lego set would welcome tank set 42 or a Lego X-wing. In that case, there are these new Lego sets as an option for girls who might like something like this.

I think what it comes down to most if you don’t like the Lego sets then don’t buy them. If your girl likes the other sets then pass over these new girl ones and get a different one. A funny thing about products is that when they don’t sell, the companies stop making them and they go away. Also, all making complaints about a product does it bring attention to it and that might end up having the opposite effect.

So what do you think? Is this something that is being blown out of proportion or has Lego really done something stupid?

Something else before I go. Sorry for the LONG delay in posting, but two jobs and full time school really take a lot of time and energy out of a person. The site is still around and I am trying to update more frequently.

Thanks to all the people who are still around awaiting for new stuff to be posted.

Battle tops are the tops you send spinning in a little arena and then they bounce into each other until one stops or one gets knocked out of the arena leaving the remaining top the winner. Beyblades are another type of battling tops and with their edges would probably make it more interesting, but I have not tried out my dollar store cheap version of Beyblades yet.

The package itself comes with a small bowl shaped arena, two launchers and 4 battling tops. What I don’t get is why there is a red launcher with two red tops and a yellow launcher with one yellow top leaving one random purple colored top. It would have made more sense to have two red and two yellow tops. Then again, maybe they ran out of yellow and wanted to make another pack.

There was only one at the store so I couldn’t do any comparisons on package contents. If there was the option, I would have grabbed one that had two of each, or I could have seen whether or not I got a fluke one or the tops were just thrown in at random. It’s one of the characteristics of cheap toys.

This is very old footage with poor lighting. It was taken even before the other videos and even they were taken a long time ago.

I think the arena is a little too small to have decent battles. If you couldn’t watch the video, a split second of contact was usually enough to blast the top out of the arena. Then you have to crank it up in the launcher before battling again.

It’s kind of like going sledding down hills in the winter time. Sure, its great fun going down the hill, but it got tiresome when it came to having to climb back up the hill, with the sled in tow, in order to do it again. You have to climb the hill for couple minutes for a few seconds of sliding down.

This is what happened to Shane Fenton when his wife stepped in and insisted he sell his £200,000 Transformers collection to help pay off his mortgage, and of course, free up some space where they live since collections like this tend to take up plenty of room.

He states needing more room but in order to get a bigger place he would need the money from selling them, but fortunately for him, he sees it as necessary for the future.

His only stipulation is that someone buys the entire thing and appreciates them because he doesn’t want them opened and played with. Once they are opened, they would no longer be collectibles. I’m sure it would be tough to find a buyer though, not a lot of people would have that kind of money to spend.

I never liked trying to build any sort of collection. I never wanted to shell out the amounts of money needed to make a worthy collection. That and I don’t have the desire to put up with the frustration in trying to find the missing items of my collection.

Read the details of the sale story here.

Blizzard is very careful on who they allow to create merchandise based on games so this should be a very big thing for Mega Bloks so hopefully they don’t blow this opportunity.

It confuses me a little bit because Mega Bloks are something you have to assemble and depending on the complexity of the set, it could take a while. That time could be spent playing their games.

Then again, maybe that is meant to counter all the issues with people playing their games too much. Something to get you away from the computer or gaming console to make toys based on the people, places and things you see in their games. But could fans of the game pull themselves away to make/play with those toys. Oh the dilemma.

I also wonder why they picked Mega Bloks over Legos. Legos seem to have more experience making sets based on popular franchise, such as Star Wars, and Legos seem to be more of a collector type item to have over Mega Bloks. If some guy told me he collected Lego sets I wouldn’t give it a second thought however if a guy told me he collected Mega Bloks sets, that would sound a little weird to me.

The sets are supposed to be released in the summer of 2010, but there is no mention on what these sets might consist of specifically.

Mathew McCurley has some ideas for potential sets listed here along with more information about the Warcraft and StarCraft Mega Bloks sets. I never played the games so I don’t know the references, but you might.

The new legislation is called the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and it covers certain household items, sporting goods, cribs and, naturally, bad toys. However, it doesn’t cover the recall of food, drugs, vehicles or the parts included with them as they have other legislation handling them.

This also lets them stop the import of dangerous products and keep them from getting on the shelves in the first place.

I’m surprised it has taken this long for this sort of legislation to be passed considering how long recalls and other bad products have been an ongoing issue.

When you look at the number of hazards that toys have been recalled for, you’d think they would have added legislation sooner than an incident in 2009 involving cribs.

Well, whatever the exact reason they started it and why it took so long to pass the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, it’s here now and hopefully they will put it to good use.

Only time will tell if they act on it and we see a decline in unsafe products on our store shelves.

CTV has a news report on it here.

This time it’s a Toy Story Bowling Game Rug with Buzz Lightyear on the pack. It comes with one plastic bowling ball, six white plastic bowling pins and a rug to play the game on.

The reason for the recall is the red paint used on the bowling pins. There’s more lead used in the paint than is allowed and is, yet again, a violation of the federal lead paint standard. It was made in China, but imported by G.A. Gertmenian and Sons, LLC located in Los Angeles. All of which is written on the package for verification.

They were sold at Walmart for a couple weeks in September and were $18. I got the bowling set I reviewed before for $1 and it had two plastic bowling balls and 10 plastic bowling pins, but it didn’t have the rug. The red stripe on the bowling set I have was made with some red tape similar to what I would see at the grocery stores used to wrap around cooking bananas so you could tell the difference between the cooking and regular bananas.

Only 600 sets are being recalled so it makes me wonder if it was just a fluke because for something like Toy Story 3, you’d think they’d have made them in the thousands. Another reason I think it may have been a fluke is that customers have been instructed to take their set back to the manufacturer for a free replacement set, which is different than the usual refund offered.

You can see the CPSC report and the picture of the game here.

This has prompted complaints that these stores aren’t true dollar stores because everything isn’t priced a dollar. I think people are just taking things a little too literally in those respects.

Dollar and discount stores were most likely set up merely to offload inventory standard department stores couldn’t get rid of at a price that would most likely clear them out. With that in mind, it’s hard to believe they would price larger items at only a dollar just to clear them out. I mention this because I have seen printers for 10 dollars at a Buck or Two store. My initial thought wasn’t, those jerks, their store is Buck or Two, it should be no more than two bucks.

From the idea that dollar stores should sell everything for a dollar, or they shouldn’t be called dollar stores, comes Dollar Mountain. The owner, Glen Witter, insists on keeping everything to a dollar and wants people to know the inventory is not made up of closeout items, but rather merchandise from companies that supply items specifically to dollar and discount stores.

It’s also mentioned they will have lots of toys. Too bad for me they are in Wausau.

You can read the article here.

The Target Practice Tank Play Set was recalled because the battery powered controller used to move the tank, back and forth, and to rotate the turret has a tendency to overheat and melt. This has some obvious issues with burning people and it poses a burn hazard.

The tank requires 3 AAA batteries to run and it was probably a poorly designed system, common in cheap toys, that leads to the burn hazard. Poorly designed electrical systems without the proper safeguards have that kind of problem, whether it be a house, car or toy. If the toy comes with batteries, I can’t tell if they do, the batteries themselves are probably the same cheap toy batteries that came with my toy cell phone and they have their own problems with acid leakage.

About 67,000, units are being recalled and they were sold at Family Dollar stores in North Carolina for $5. They were made in China and imported to North Carolina.

Fortunately no one was reported injured by these controllers, but they should be taken away from children before they do and they should be returned to Family Dollar for a full refund.

For the full details, read the CPSC report.