Friday morning I have my 6 year old in tears- we’ve decided to return two of her birthday presents. She’d been looking forward to opening these boxes ever since her birthday and creating the appealing, sparkly (tacky) jewellery for weeks.
We finally got around to sitting down to get creative with one particular favourite a set. A set of digital watches which each had a bracelet to string beads on.
In preparation for our activity, trying to take the watches out the breads spilt all over the floor. Lots of tiny beads in the floorboard gaps!
We meticulously picked as many as possible up. Retrieving them from far corners of the room too, spots seemingly impossible for them to end up in. Any parent will know these shorts of things defy physics.
When we’d finished I got back to the task of freeing the watches from the packaging. Only once I got to the end of this fiddly task did I notice that none of them worked. I thought maybe they had little plastic strips to stop the battery from going flat. Well no!
Checking the instructions the batteries were actually non-replaceable.
I talked it through with Angelina and we agreed that we’ll take it back and get her something else. She’s amazingly good with these sorts of discussions!
Then Angelina took the other box out enthusiastically to kick start her half term crafting. It was another type of jewellery making kit. It didn’t have bits to go wrong,… or so we thought!
Angelina caringly assembled the jewellery in the dining room, away from little hands and mouths; then started playing with it on her wrist. One compartment fell out within minutes spilling it’s small, appalling quality plastic bits all over the playroom. We thought we’d picked up all the bits, till I saw Max chewing something. Thankfully, one of the first things he’s learnt to do is spit things out when asked to… you have to when you have older siblings. 🙂 Out came one of the large pea-sized beads.
I thought maybe Angelina hadn’t put it together properly, so read the instructions and redid it for her. Within a couple of minutes of her playing shopping with her dolls it came apart again, spilling its hazardous contents. It had to go!
And we had a very distraught little girl!
Toys r us,
I am very disappointed that you choose to sell such bad quality, cheap tat under your own brand of Totally Me. It reflects badly on your overall brand!
These packs present a hazard for younger siblings.
Get it sorted!
Kind regards,
Monika
On a positive note, our local Toys r us store were amazingly good- I took the boxes back and explained they were presents and the problem with them. They gave me a credit note without too many questions. So now we have a pack of wooden beads and a flower pressing kit instead… and one happy 6 year old.
Flower pressing is a lovely hobby anyway – we got Roman a flower press and are doing a summer project about flowers so he has something for his show and tell in the first week of school (they requested a summer project!)