FOAM AND DISPLAY BOARD:
· 9” x 12” Mini Bi-Fold Foam Board

X-ACTO:
· Designer Series Gripster Craft Knife
· Designer Series 12” Metal Ruler
· Designer Series 12” X 12” Self Healing Mat
· Designer Series 8” Scissors
· Designer Series 5” Precision Tip Scissors
· Designer Series Basic Shape Templates
· Designer Series Decorative Shape Templates

PAINTERS:
· Painters Bright Colors
· Painters Sherbet Swirl

CRAFTBOND:
· Dot Runner
· Foam Mounting Tape
· Thin Medium Glue Spots
· All Purpose Glue Stick
· Quick Dry Dual Tip Glue Pen
· Elmer’s Designer Tape

Just leave a comment below telling me what awesome project (holiday project???)  this box would inspire you to do, and by random selection you can win your own box. Tweeting about this also counts as a second entry, as they show up in the comments as well. Be sure to stop by and visit the Elmer’s Craft it! facebook site, too!

{Contest is Closed! Stay tuned for the winner as soon as I’m not on death’s door with this cold…!}

Recently I had the opportunity to review a new robot toy: Mechatars, and you know we do love the robots around here, so how could I resist?   Plus, you guys get a chance to win one, and a coupon code MECHMOM for 10% off at iloverobots.com, valid until November 30, to buy your own if you don’t!

The Review

Basically, a Mechatar is a toy that is part remote control robot, and part video game.  Which is pretty much right up my 6 year old’s alley.  So I had him actually do the review on this… see the video below!  But to summarize:

You have 3 Mechatar toys to choose from: a raptor/dino/dragon looking thing, a wolf, and a bear (which the Boy decided was a Polar bear.) The toys have a simple to use remote so you can drive them around, and engage in battles with other Mechatars, or do ‘missions’ which apparently involve beeping.  We didn’t have another Mech to battle with, so I can’t attest to that portion, but the driving around was a little clunky and difficult to control.  Though The Boy didn’t seem to mind.  So your ‘offline’ mode is basically a fighting toy.

The ‘online’ mode is a computer game where you fight with your Mechatar in the virtual world.  The boy and I agree this was the best part of the game.   The fighting game itself was fun, complex enough to be interesting, but not so complex that a six year old couldn’t handle it.  See a little bit of it in action in the video below.  It’s an online game, played in the web browser.  As far as I could tell, there is no interaction with other actual players, so it’s not really a virtual world, but you can play against your friends’ mechatars by allying with them for training missions.  You’re not actually playing against the friend, but you are pitting your Mech against the friend’s Mech, which is being played by the computer.

There are some other pieces to the online game, like Challenges, but The Boy didn’t find them very interesting.  However he LOVED the battles.

From a technical perspective, the game suffers from an unfortunately common problem for kids’ games, of requiring Administrator access to run.  Like many smart parents, we prefer for our son’s computer account to be restricted in what he can run and install (who knows where he might accidentally click when out on the web!) , and his account does not have Administrator privileges.  This means that the program which allows you to sync and auto-connect to the online game doesn’t work automatically – it has to be run as an administrator by us.  It also meant we had problems on the initial install-make sure install the game as an administrator to avoid failures.  If you were doing a lot of syncing between the offline and online this would be an issue, however since you don’t even have to have a Mechatar to play the online game, and syncing isn’t a real big deal if you’re not doing a bunch of offline battles, it hasn’t been a big problem with the way the The Boy is playing the game.

But all in all, The Boy is really enjoying the toy, and definitely recommends it. He loved the battling, but he did wish there were more mechs to battle, not just the 3 styles.

See the video below to see the toy in action, and to see the video game in action!

Giveaway!

So, wanna win one for yourself?

Here’s the rules:

• Visit www.Mechatars.com
• Review the Mechatar lineup and check out which one you think your kid would like.  (To see the Mechatar line up, click on “play now” then “register” but no information needs to be submitted)
• Leave a comment on this post with which Mechatar you’d most like to win!
• See?  Easy Peasy.

Leave your comment, following the rules above, and I’ll pick a winner this Friday!

Small Print

I was selected to participate in this sponsored post series by Clever Girls Collective.  I was compensated for my time for  this review, but my opinions are always my own. 

Congrats to Alexia who wins the 500 Free Business Cards.   And thanks to the rest of you for entering (especially JPIC who said he reads Dabbled because I’m cute!) and for reading… you’re the reason I do this stuff anyway, ya know!

Now back to your regularly scheduled Dabbled.  Go check out the latest:  Iced Tea Gelato, and more Summer Recipes!

500 Business Cards, Full color on both sides!  I can think of tons of things to do with these…  Use them for your art or crafty biz would be an obvious choice, or if you have no business, how about your kids pic on there for play date cards.  Or customized gift tags.  Anyways, I figured Dabbled readers could find a good use for them, and I get a prize for hosting the contest, so it’s a win-win!

Just leave a comment over here at the giveaway post to enter!

Giveaway Prize:

500 Premium Business Cards
2 x 3.5”, 2 x 2” (square card) or 1.75 x 3.5” (slim card)
14 pt gloss cardstock, 14 pt matte cardstock or 13 pt recycled uncoated cardstock
Full Color Both Sides
Limited to US residents only  18 years old and above

So how do you win?  Well, leave a comment telling me why you read Dabbled and/or your favorite project.  Or even your favorite recipe on Foodwhirl.com. I’ll be posting the winner next week, so be sure to sign up for our Feed (RSS) or Get Dabbled via Email so you don’t miss it!

Giveaway details:

• Sponsor:  UPrinting Printing Company
• Prize:  500 die cut business cards

PS, for an extra entry, go “Like” Dabbled in Facebook, and leave a comment over there too!