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. 

Really, I have been so busy with web design stuff, that I haven’t taken the time to draw, and that’s just sad.  So I’ve had this robotic rooster in my head (he’s eventually going to be a big piece) and here’s my first attempt at a sketch of him.  Doesn’t it look like he’s just launched a football into the air?

I really like this sketch so much I don’t want to mess it up by adding more…  but alas I need to keep working on it!  Does that ever happen to anyone else?

Oh! Foodwhirl giveaway ends today! Go enter quick!

Here is the ballooning robot in the early morning light.  I imagine he got up early, and just headed out on an adventure.  Not quite sure where the winds will take him, as his craft has very little ability to steer. (Maybe he’ll see the Ship of Gnomes!)

Cute huh?  Well, I think so at least :)

I just posted a recap of last week’s recipes on Foodwhirl: Poured Sugar Icing, Lentil Soup, Bunny Treats, Summer Salads, Rhubarb & more! And enter to win a $80 prize, yay! http://ht.ly/1P7NQ

And I’m trying to be more social ;)—  You can go Like Dabbled on Facebook and/or Foodwhirl on Facebook!  And Twitter, of course–if you friend me on Twitter be sure to send me an @ message so I know you’re from Dabbled, not a spammer!

Ciao!

I have been so slack at drawing lately, even sketching—and I haven’t done an illustration friday in weeks! So, here’s a quick pencil drawing I did at The Boy’s Kung Fu class Tuesday night. I MIGHT get around to a colored version eventually….

(I should color last week‘s like this, when I have a chance)

Dabbled

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I was playing around with a fun little online drawing tool called Harmony that I found via Drawn.ca.

So I sketched part of the idea I had for illustration friday this week!  I really like the sparse feel to this… and it was fun :)  I’ll probably do another IF for Subterranean, but if not, here are these two!

Speaking of robots.. check out my news from yesterday about my robot cake being featured on MSNBC :)

About the project at Super Punch:

So, about this project. I wanted to do something special for the third anniversary of Super Punch, and three weeks or so ago, the idea popped into my head of inviting my favorite artists to create tarot cards.

See all the fabulous cards thus far at Super Punch.  There are some incredibly cool ones, from some very cool artists, and I’m honored to be part of the group!

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Like Food?  Go check out Foodwhirl.com!  It’s our awesome new team food blog.

This seemed to be begging for a caption, this was the one I came up with… any better ideas?

If you missed it..Earlier today: Clothes Tutorials – recycle your wardrobe!

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