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Angry Birds Star Wars Toys Are Awesome

Apr. 29 Family no comments

For the unlucky few out there who aren’t aware, May 4th is officially known as Star Wars Day. Why the 4th? It’s a play on words, of course. “May the 4th Be With You”.

Additionally, there is some history to it beyond just that convenient tidbit of word play. From the official Star Wars website:

One of the earliest known records of “May the 4th” used in popular culture is in 1979, as described here by author Alan Arnold while he was chronicling the making of The Empire Strikes Back for Lucasfilm:

Friday, May 4

“Margaret Thatcher has won the election and become Britain’s first woman prime minister. To celebrate their victory her party took a half page of advertising space in the London Evening News. This message, referring to the day of victory, was ‘May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations,’ further proof of the extent to which Star Wars has influenced us all.”

Once the Internet allowed Star Wars fans around the world to connect with one another, May the 4th soon became a grassroots tradition each year, with fans online and offline proclaiming it “Star Wars Day.”

See? It’s almost as ingrained in our culture as Christmas and, dare I say, Arbor Day!

So what’s this got to do with toys? I’m glad you asked, anonymous internet visitor. It seems that somewhere along the way Angry Birds, a game some of you may be familiar with, and Star Wars got together and put out a special edition of the ever popular app for smart phones. Interestingly enough, they called it “Angry Birds, Star Wars Edition”.

Anyways, in addition to the video version of the game, Hasbro has just released a slew of great new toys that you and your kids can actually interact with on your own. I was fortunate enough to receive a few of them in return for sharing my thoughts with you on these toys. Read on for my findings.

Angry Birds Star Wars Millennium Falcon Bounce Game

Now, I’m sure some of you parents might remember a game in college called Beer Pong. And now that you’re a responsible adult who doesn’t have time for such silliness and irresponsible behavior, you’re thinking that all those hours of effort are going to forever go to waste. WRONG!

Hasbro developed this very Kid-Friendly version of the game, in which the Millennium Falcon becomes your target and you attempt to knock Star Wars themed pigs off of the ship, land your Chewbacca (or other Star Wars Character) Ping Pong ball in the ship itself for bonus points. This game is an absolute blast with your kids.

In my house, my three boys aged 13, 10 and 8, sat at the kitchen table playing this one for a very long time. I had to muscle my way in to get a few shots myself. I was skeptical that it would hold their attention at first, seeing as how it wasn’t digital and on a big screen in front of them, but surprisingly they found the challenge of landing that ball just right to be fascinating. Also, you can purchase additional, collectible bouncers to add to the fun.

If I were to grade this toy, I’d have to give it a solid B+. The rules and gameplay are simple enough that even the youngest member of the family can participate, but the challenge is great enough that the adults are all going to want to show off who’s still the Fraternity Champ after all these years. If there was one negative I found, it is that sometimes the target birds slide into the ship and it makes it difficult for large fingers (Dad fingers) to retrieve the pieces. That’s a very minor knock on a very fun little game.

Angry Birds Star Wars AT AT Attack Battle Game

For play value, you’re not going to beat this game. This was the second game I received to try out, and let me tell you, even Mom insisted on launching a miniature bird-shaped Han Solo across the room. Full disclosure: Mom tolerates (barely) Dad’s love of Star Wars.

This game is part model building, part catapult strategy and 100% fun! You build up the AT AT and place your Empirical Pigs around the target. Then you grab your Light Saber catapult, a handful of Rebel Birds and take aim.

My youngest son spent an entire afternoon building new AT ATs and taking different approaches to attacking it. I even spent a good part of the day building and demolishing the invading forces. Hasbro has also created other play sets in this same game style. You can choose from the AT AT, Jabba’s Palace and Battle at Tatooine. There may be more than that, but those are the ones I know of for certain.

If I were to grade this toy? It’s absolutely an A+ in our home. It’s interactive, it teaches motor skills and best of all, it’s supposed to get destroyed when you play with it. I have a feeling we’ll be hosting a tournament version here very shortly.

Angry Birds Star Wars Foam Flyers

I’m going to apologize in advance to the good people at Hasbro. These lightweight, super squishy and extra soft Foam Flyers may be meant to play a larger version of Angry Birds with your other toys, or they may be intended to play a safe game of indoor catch. At my house, it immediately became a projectile weapon to attack my unsuspecting kids with.

It’s soft. It’s safe. It’s about the size of a baseball, and when you have kids you know they’re going to throw something at each other eventually. Given a choice, I’d rather it be this Foam Flyer than their commemorative baseball from the Minor League baseball team.

Any toy you can throw and not break something while indoors gets high marks in my book. We have fun ambushing each other throughout the day, and while I only received the Stormtrooper to try out, I’m heading out to the store this weekend to pick up the rest.

What? A Dad has a right to defend himself in his own home.

Final Thoughts

Normally, we don’t rush out to buy the latest “themed” toys because many of them seem rushed to market to capitalize simply on the theme’s fleeting fame. Any number of super hero toys that we’ve owned have inevitably fallen short of the mark.

My honest impression of these Angry Birds Star Wars toys is that they put a lot of thought into making something that won’t be played with one time and then relegated to the top shelf of the closet, never to be seen again until it’s Yard Sale time. These two games that I received will get a lot of use in the coming months.

Image source: starwars.com

Camping With Kids – The Maiden Voyage

Mar. 11 Family no comments

You may recall that I posted a quick entry here about us becoming the proud new owners of an old camper. Well, after about a month of off and on work, I finally got all the repairs taken care of, reassembled the camper and we got stocked up on some essentials to help us make roughing it a little less rough.

This weekend coming up will be our maiden voyage. My father and his lady friend have invited us to come camping with them in Sycamore Lodge, an RV park in North Carolina. Having never been there before, we’re really looking forward to this trip.

The kids are excited about finally getting to camp out and we’re just counting down the days. This will be our first trip, although it won’t be my first trip.

You see, when I was a kid, my parents and I used to go camping every month from April to November. When I say camping, I don’t mean in tents and sleeping bags, but rather in a large travel trailer that was more like a rolling hotel. But that was fine by us. We didn’t want to rough it so much as we just wanted to get away from life’s responsibilities for a little while.

Mostly it was fun. We belonged to a camping club with other families and we traveled all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The club was full of people who were mostly pushing retirement age, their children had long ago grown up and moved on with their lives and I often found myself as the only child among them. So it wasn’t great in a sense that I had a lot of friends to hang out with every trip, but the people were an eclectic and fun bunch never the less.

There was a group of men who were in a band together. They played mostly country music and would typically get together every Saturday night and play for all of us to enjoy. When my parents were voted to be the leaders of the club for two years, we had even more fun. We’d organize game days, yard sales, events, etc. And it was a blast.

I always hated to go, but usually found a way to have fun after we got there. There were campfires, playgrounds, arcades, mini golf, visits to the local area to tour what they had to offer. The older men were always willing to teach me something if I was so inclined to learn it from them. The jokes and the stories were always a blast.

While we don’t have a club that we belong to (yet), we’re still going to try to make the most out of every trip with the boys. We’ll only be taking three of them with us, as the oldest son is 19 and in the National Guard, and working on getting full time employment as well. Plus, he doesn’t want to hang with Mom and Dad and his brothers if he doesn’t absolutely have to.

For this trip, we’re just going to see how it goes, celebrate my father’s 75th birthday in style and enjoy ourselves. The next trip is already planned for Lake Hartwell during Spring Break. By then, we’ll have the kids’ fishing poles and we get to spend a day or three learning the fine art of patience on the water. I mostly remember having fun with my parents on our trips and I’m really looking forward to sharing that same experience with my children.

Do any of you camp or have fond memories of camping? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

We’re Officially “Campers” Now

Feb. 19 Family no comments

Last week, thanks to a very generous Grandfather, we are now the proud owners of this:

Yep, that right there is a 1988 Jayco JayDove 6 PopUp camper. It’s not fancy, it certainly needs some work, but it was acquired at less than $700 and any problems it has are simply cosmetic. Structurally speaking, it’s in primo shape!

This is a big deal to us, because as any family with multiple children can tell you, travelling expenses are ridiculous when you want to take a weekend trip. Hotels are typically around a minimum $100/night if you want an efficiency where you can cook your own meals at the room as opposed to dropping $100 per day on eating out.

Additionally, we’ve been wanting to get the boys out fishing and hiking, and basically just get them the hell away from video screens. Now, we can.

I remember when I was a boy growing up, my parents owned travel trailers (much nicer than this one, almost like a hotel on wheels) and we would camp out (or RV if you’re a purist I guess) at least one weekend per month from April to October and we’d take a week long vacation every Summer as well. Campgrounds charge considerably less for a site per night than you can expect to pay for a hotel room, and many campgrounds have pools, recreation centers, miniature golf courses, and other activities so that you always have something to keep the kids busy.

So yes, we’re finally going to be campers. It’s a step up from having to sleep on the ground and that’s a huge plus in my book. I did my share of tent camping as a teenager with my friends, and even back in my younger and more limber days, I would wake up stiff and sore from sleeping on the ground. Perhaps, I’m just not built for true roughing it.

As a bonus, I have this set up in the yard right now while I figure out what I need to do to fix up the looks and the kids have already spent two nights camping out in it. It’s almost like having a babysitter built in. They’re not more than 30 yards from the front door, and we can leave a window open to keep an eye on them all night long. A little alone time with Momma goes a LONG way.

Farts in Cars in the Smoky Mountains

Feb. 07 Family no comments

What is it about a fart that just reduces boys into quivering, convulsing mounds of raucous laughter? I mean, I’m a guy so I absolutely get why a fart in and of itself is funny. I’m not completely stupid. But the amount of joy that a poot can bring to a young boy is immeasurable.

Girls don’t see the humor.

My kids, they’re all fart ninjas. It’s like their sole function in life is to either produce gas or to point it out and die from the absurdity of it all. We took them on a Christmas vacation to Gatlinburg Tennessee this past year and our 13 year old, Jesse, tried to kill us with chemical warfare the entire time. And the other two, well, they alternated between asphyxiation by way of methane and asphyxiation by way of laughter.

Myself and their mother, however, failed to see too much humor in being shut up tight in a Dodge Durango, in freezing temperatures and having to endure the most eye-watering, throat closing, noxious gas ever created by a living creature. Seriously, dogs eating Hormel chili don’t smell this bad. I am truly of the opinion that something crawled up inside my son, died and then something else crawled in there, ate the first dead thing and died as a result of it. Either that, or he’s got some Dark Side force gas that shouldn’t be possible in nature.

You see, when it’s near freezing outside we typically try to keep the heat running the car and the windows up to preserve the heat that we have. As one would typically do in such conditions. Normally, it works out just as you would expect it to.

However, on this particular trek into the Smoky Mountains, we wound up with a visit from the swampy ass of a pre-teen. He was truly in rare form. And it seemed that just as soon as one violent attack on our olfactory senses would dissipate, he’d unleash another round of carpet bombs, designed solely to test our wills.

It’s doubtful this would have helped in the least.

Finally, after trying in vain to suffer through it in silence and disgust, we relented and put down the windows. If you’ve never been to Gatlinburg, there is a two-lane road that runs through the town and sidewalks crammed with tourists on either side. At best, you move at the blistering pace of 3 miles an hour. What I’m saying is, there wasn’t a lot of wind being generated to help remove the stench.

Welcome to the Smoky Moun…JEEEEZUS What’s that smell?

As we rolled down the windows, Aaron said through his shirt covered face, “We’re going to have to apologize to everyone on the sidewalk when that leaks out of here!”.

And that, friends, is the story of our Smoky Mountain Christmas vacation. Do you have anyone in your family that just lights up a room with the thickest, most despicable odors? How do you deal with it?

Kids and Eyeglasses; A Constant Struggle

Feb. 07 Family 1 comment

Do your kids wear glasses? No? Then move along, this post isn’t for you. However, if you’re one of the lucky parents whose children need corrective eye wear, then you probably have experienced my pain.

You see, in our family of six, only one doesn’t need glasses to see more than a foot in front of them. I’m not sure how he won the genetic lottery, but I despise him for it. For the rest of us though, it’s eyeglasses all day, every day. And that means a trip to the optometrist to get exams.

Exams aren’t so bad, by themselves. Sure, they’re $60 and sure it’s inconvenient to have the angry little Vietnamese eye doctor scream at you not to blink as she drops dilation solution into your eyes. She’s a great doctor, she’s just angry all the time. But that’s getting away from my greater point here.

Even if you or your kids only need single vision lenses, you’re presented with so many options for coatings and colorings, frames and styles, lens materials and for some reason a garbage disposal option, that you get easily confused. You think your vision insurance is going to take care of you, right? WRONG. The frames and lenses they pay for aren’t fit for your worst enemy.

Your insurance company, if you’re fortunate enough to have one, only cares about function. So what if the glasses are made from asbestos and weigh about 10 pounds? They correct your vision, it’s up to your plastic surgeon to take care of your permanently smashed in nose. And if you don’t like what you can get on your insurance, you can choose from the other ten thousand choices they have available on the racks.

My parents truly hate me

Only, you can’t choose that unless you’re willing to take a second mortgage on your home. Frames cost anywhere from $100 to $holyshitareyouinsane? It’s crazy. And when it’s a kid getting glasses, you’d be better off taking $300 and wiping your butt with it. At least that provides you some modicum of temporary relief.

Kids and glasses. It’s a perfect storm of tearing into your life savings. My boys can break a pair of glasses faster than you can say “Don’t clamp your brother’s head in the wood vise until he takes his glasses off!” It’s a common occurrence around here to replace glasses quarterly. And frankly, it’s getting expensive.

brokenglasses2

We found a few online retailers of glasses though, and through them, we’ve whittled down the cost from $holyshit, to $damn. It doesn’t seem like much, but I’ll take a dozen “damns” over one “holy shit” any day. We alternately choose between Coastal and Eye Buy Direct. Neither of those links are affiliate links, just two companies we use to keep the costs down. All you need is your prescription and you’re good to go ordering a backup or replacement pair of specs.

What about you? Do your kids destroy eye wear like it’s their job? What have you done to keep both your savings and your sanity?

Toilet Paper Is A Precious Commodity In Our House

Feb. 06 Family no comments

I don’t know how it is in your house, but in our house the one crisis that continually arises is a lack of toilet paper at the absolute most inopportune moments. That’s not to say there isn’t any in the house at all, it’s that it never seems to be in the bathroom that someone happens to need it in at the moment. I’m still baffled as to how this happens on such a regular and reliable basis.

You see, there are six people in our home. Myself, my beautiful bride, and our four offspring. As you can probably figure, there are a lot of butts in need of servicing by way of double-quilted softness. And as I would hope you could imagine, we buy copious amounts of this stuff on a weekly basis. In fact, if Charmin or Northern or any of the other major butt care companies happen across this post, we would not be against a little sponsorship. We’re probably responsible for a good 10% of your annual earnings alone. Read more

Working on Getting Healthier

Feb. 05 Family no comments

With my 38th birthday approaching soon, I’ve decided that while I enjoy my terrible-for-you foods, beer and cigarettes, that I’m going to try to start taking a little better care of myself. Mainly because I want to reach 39, but also because being a fat-ass isn’t necessarily a lofty goal for a person.

So over the course of this year, I hope to be updating the site with healthier recipes, status checks on my personal progress and how the family is adjusting to eating better as a whole.

Anyone who’d like to join me on this journey is absolutely welcome aboard. Your own thoughts, experiences and stories will always be welcome here at This Dad Cooks. And don’t worry, it’s not going to be all bean sprouts and tofu. In fact, it’s NEVER going to be tofu. I will eat a tractor tire before I will eat Tofu.