V-Smile should be a hit

(I’d like to preface this by saying for the record that this is not a paid review!)

My oldest daughter is five and unlike all her friends, there’s no particular toy that she’s into playing with. Although she’ll play with them at a friend’s house, she’s not actually interested in Polly Pocket, Barbie, Bratz (yay, thank God!), or Littlest Pet Shop. She’s fickle with her stuffed animals, picking a favorite and then dropping it the next week, etc. She has no particular must-have toy collection.

On the one hand, that’s good because it means my home isn’t overrun with eight billion Polly Pocket pieces. On the other hand, it makes it really hard to think of good gifts to buy.

One thing she loves is games. We have a stack of kid-friendly board games in our hall closet and she enjoys them all. She also loves computers, playing happily on sites like Nickjr.com until we pry the mouse out of her fingers and tell her it’s time to go blink and get some fresh air.

While exploring Toys R Us, we came across the V-Smile game console. I was actually looking for a laptop-type of system with games built into it, thinking that would be cool because she could play and it would look just like my real laptop. Alas, they were sold out. Then I spotted the V-Smile and realized it may be even better because once you get through the laptop games, there’s no expansion, but the V-Smile has a gazillion game cartridges that you can get once one has been played enough that it’s lost its appeal for awhile.

Because I live in the province of Quebec, anything that will talk to you must come in a French version to be sold here; they also tend to stock the shelves with about 95% French versions to 5% English ones. There were no English consoles left, but I bought the French one and an English game (Little Mermaid), thinking that logically it should be the game language that matters most.

(She hasn’t gotten far enough into French immersion yet to really appreciate a French game.)

Then it was bugging me that it might not work properly so tonight, before wrapping it, I opened it all up, hooked it up to the television, and turned it on. The unit greeted me in French. I put the English game in, and lo and behold, yes it worked properly! Yay!

Except then I started playing games and I couldn’t stop. I tried all the different games on the cartridge and they’re cute and fun while being educational! I can definitely see how it teaches kids about spelling and math while making it entertaining for them. It comes with one joystick but I may have to get a second one in the new year so we can play it together.

Eventually I had to put it all away so I could wrap it up, but it definitely gets an A from me. I have a feeling that my daughter will love it too!

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