Toyologist Review: Littlest Pet Shop Jet

Launching July at Toys R Us.

I am not a girl. I've been called a Big Girl at times, but I'm almost certain that's not the same.  My boys are not girls. I have a daughter, but she can barely roll over. My friend has a niece, but she lives miles away and, you know, postage costs and all that. There's a school across the road, but I have a suspicion I'd get arrested if I stood at the gate handing out toys to young girls.

What I'm trying to say is I don't know any girls.

So who was going to review Blythe's Jet for me?

I can't deny that it was tempting to raid my wife's wardrobe and find out how the other half lives, but I ultimately decided that some things ought to remain a mystery. My boys were actually quite keen to rip the box open, but I figured that's mostly because they like destroying things. Giving it to them seemed a bit of a waste.

Finally, after much thought, we came up with my mum's neighbour's granddaughter. I don't know her name, so I shall refer to her as 'Mary' because Mary is a girl's name. Mary is 4 years old and coincidently has just come back from her first holiday abroad on a plane.

I'll cover the basics before we get to Mary's opinion. The jet belongs to the 'updated' Littlest Pet Shop introduced in 2005 by Hasbro. The cool girls refer to it as 'LPS' - or at least that's how they referred to it in the advert I just watched on the official website. I don't really know whether LPS is big with girls at the moment. I assume if you're reading this review you know a small girl somehow, so you should probably ask her.

Like my wife keeps telling me: women know best.

The box for this item is Big, with the capital well earned, and it contains all sorts of little bits and bobs as shown in the photos. There is, however, quite a lot of empty space in the box. A couple of things that upon first glance look as though they're toy accessories turn out to just be bits of the packaging.

This bit is just card.

I know from experience it can be a little disheartening when you're given a giant box, only to have a not-quite-so giant thing at the end of it.

So very quickly, we turn to what Mary thought, relayed back up the chain from Mary to her grandfather to his neighbour (my mum) to me.

See that cat-thing? Just a bit of card.

Mary was given the toy the day after she arrived back from her plane trip, so was very excited to receive it. Generally she was very impressed with it, and liked it enough that she wanted to take it with her when she went home from her grandparents.

There were a few niggles though.

Monkey-thing in the back? Just a bit of card again.
Dog-creature is real though. Well, not really real - it's plastic.

The door on the plane comes off very easily. It pops back on again very easily too, but this is for exactly the same reason it comes off with so little effort - the clips holding it on are a bit rubbish. While the plane itself is very solid, the other bits & bobs are on the flimsy side. Mary was disappointed that only 1 pet was included, and her parents were upset that they now have to go out and buy more. The toy is for '4 & up', however as a 4 year old Mary had trouble using the seatbelts and generally it was a bit fiddly for her.

I suppose the conclusion is: quite a good toy, but more suitable for slightly older girls.


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