February 24th, 2009 by Stinkhead
You may not be familiar with the name Cadaco, but there are some great toys and arts and crafts activities inside. Check out the beginner Magic kits for the very young magicians, and the Enviroblox are actually pretty cool. Check out my pics and write up.
Magic Kits
In my upcoming podcast I’ll have video of Ryan Oaks (a professional magician who credits his Dad for inspiration) demonstrating his line of Magic for kids. I liked how these sets did rely on slight of hand, but more on presentation rather than difficult skill. The trick does more of the “heavy lifting” in pulling off the illusion. Young children will have fun developing their patter, or spiel while performing these tricks.
The first set is the Magic Lunchbox. I like how it’s based on an object a child commonly uses. When I was little, I had the Fisher Price Magic Show. (remember that?) based on a suit case. Anyway, this easy-to-use set features a few illusions that are easy for little ones to get the hang of quickly. I have to admit I got fooled the first time I saw their crayon box trick, so these can prove entertaining. There are a series of sets of varying size and skill level, but this is a great place for budding magicians to start.
Enviroblox
I think this is a clever reimagining on an existing product. We’ve all seen those packing peanuts that dissolve in water (safely, for the environment!) Now they come in colors and patterns to make fun sculptures with. Simply moisten one edge of a “peanut” and it becomes adhesive to other “peanuts.” Repeat this process until you have a fun model of whatever you want to build. Check out the amazing T-Rex they had on display (75 man hours to assemble as they tell it).
I have to give our tour guide, Andrew, credit; I asked him if you could pull them apart and reuse them when you’re done. His response, “It’s amazing, just run your creation under the sink and it’ll disappear like magic!” summed up everything I needed to know, yet kept me excited in the toy. Still I’m anxious to play with these, so stay tuned for an upcoming special video podcast featuring the Enviroblox.
Big Draw Chalk Machine
At first impression, this seemed pretty low tech at a Toy Fair full of teddy bears with embedded USB ports, but this is one of those ah-ha inventions that’s really cool, and stuck with me even after Toy Fair. But here it is! So simple, it’s gotta work… what does it do? Well I’m glad you asked. This toy is for drawing huge large-scale pictures on your driveway with sidewalk chalk. Pick one of the included patterns, and then make a dot on the pavement. Now turn the base to line up the letter, and then extend the tape-measure tab to get the right number, now make another dot. Line up the dome over that dot, get the next coordinate, and repeat. If you do it correctly, you can connect the dots and you’ll have a huge dinosaur or a submarine or whatever. Its the basics behind a plotter printer. You can help the younger ones get the first dots in place, but I bet they’ll have fun figuring out the device like a secret code to get the big mysterious picture at the end, and then have fun coloring it in over the next few hours. I’m not kidding, these pictures will be huge!
There were some other fun games and toys at Cadaco’s booth. Check out our photo gallery for some more pics, and swing by Cadaco‘s web site, and of course stay tuned for our upcoming video podcast covering the 2009 Toy Fair for video demos of some of Cadaco’s toys.
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Posted in 10&up, 5&up, 8&up, Boys, crafts, Girls, kids, Toy Fair, toys | Comments Off on Toy Fair 09: Cadaco
