Availability: Online and off.
Average Cost: $37.00
Found At: http://kushies.com/
Rating:

The Zolo Boa is a quirky offbeat soft fabric stacking ring toy that makes a variety of cute animal sounds. Not your garden-variety stacking toy, this toy from Kushies has a lot to offer.

AGE RANGE

This toy is rated from 6 months up. Younger children will find the noises that it makes amusing, and will enjoy the textures and colors. As they get older they’ll have fun first dismantling the toy and then gradually putting it back together. My fourteen month old has yet to discover the joy of re-assembly, but enjoys all other aspects of the toy, and is frequently seen carrying the head around by one of the eyes.

ENTERTAINMENT & EDUCATIONAL VALUE

This toy offers tactile stimulation with the different fabrics and textures, recognition of sounds, dexterity, exploratory play, fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination. It can also be used to introduce children to new words and concepts such as “soft” “fuzzy” “striped” “polka-dotted” “small” “large”, and a long list of other words and concepts. The child can play with stacking the rings from small to large, or see what types of quirky character they can build by stacking the shapes out of order. The child is encouraged to feel the rings and hunt for the sound making device, and are rewarded when they find it and press it hard enough to make the sound. It has a leg-up on most stacking toys because of its quirkiness and because of the noises that it makes.

THE RINGS

Each ring is made of two different types of fabric, one on the top and a different one on the bottom. Around each ring is a decorative fringe. The rings are stuffed with what feels like cotton batting and each has a hard plastic sound making element about the size of a plastic soda cap. When pressed, it makes a sound.

The rings are brightly colored have a wide variety of textures.

The largest ring on the bottom has one side with a rougher lavender colored fabric with pairs of yellow eyes that have orange pupils. The top is made of a silky green fabric that has silver dots and that vaguely resembles snakeskin. Around the perimeter of this ring is a magenta triangular felt fringe remniscent of a jester’s hat, tipped with pink circles. This ring also has two white “informational” tags that list country of origin (China), copyrights, and care instructions, and a ridged black tag printed with a white Kushies logo on one side and Zolo on the other.

The second largest ring is a soft pink/soft black and white cow patterned ring with a 1920’s “flapper” style looped black fringe.

The third combines red velvet with an orange satin with large pink polkadots, and a cyan satin middle band that has a twisty yellow ribbon that weaves in and out of the middle of the ring.

The fourth and smallest ring has soft black velvet, with cyan that has tiny pink, yellow, black, white and lavendar polka dots. The fringe on this ring is alternating white and black “tag” style loops.

On the top of the stacker is a light blue and green striped head with black eye stalks that are two different lengths and that are topped with puffy white eyes that have pinpoint black pupils. The head has a large red felt clown’s nose, and a small round black stick-on felt mouth.

The whole shebang is stacked together on a black and white striped fabric pole printed with Kushies and Zolo copyright information.

THE SOUNDS

The sound is made by locating the plastic sound-maker that is in each ring and pressing it. Some of the rings require a little bit more pressure than the others, and may be hard for a younger child to master. My fourteen month old still hands me each ring with an emphatic “DAH!” meaning “please make it make that cool sound mommy.” Each ring makes the sound three times. “MOOO (pause) MOOO (pause) MOOO. From bottom to top, the rings chirp like a bird, moo like a cow, oink like a pig, ribbit like a frog, and the head on top giggles. (Tip: Press the top of the head between the eyes to get the sound. Pressing around the perimeter won’t get you anything other than an odd plastic clicking sound.) Some of the sound making mechanisms are harder to activate than others. My “Ribbit” takes a little bit of working to get it to play, and at first I thought that I had broken it when I pulled out the plastic tab. It’s a little bit more difficult to locate the sounds and get them to play than I would have expected from a children’s toy… One COULD say that is a good thing, after all it earns you some peace and quiet while your child hunts for the sound. At least until they become annoyed and bring it over to you demanding that you make it work.

BATTERY LIFE

Each sound-making toy has a little strip of plastic that says “please pull out the tape to play”. This must be removed before the sound toy works. This is great for preserving the non-replaceable batteries.

PACKAGING

The Zolo Boa is packaged in a round clear plastic box that is capped with black plastic on each end. The box is re-usable for storage if you want. There is a removable printed cardboard insert that wraps around the inside and that talks about the features of the product. I ended up using mine to store miscellaneous diaper ointments and supplies.

QUALITY

The sound quality is better than I expected to get out of a sound-making plush toy that uses this type of “squeeze to get the sound” mechanism which usually sound tinny and plastic. The plastic of the sound toy feels a little bit fragile inside of the ring, and the fact that some of the sounds are hard to play makes me wonder if they could be of higher quality.

The fabric is all of very good quality, and the rings are very densely stuffed so they hold their shape well even when tossed around, sat on, and a variety of other mistreatments that they’re sure to suffer as a play thing.

CARE

The rings can be washed with a damp cloth. Machine washing or submerging in water is not a good idea because of the sound making mechanisms, and because it would probably alter the shape of the different parts making it more difficult to fit them together.

CONCLUSION

Overall this is a very well made toy that does a variety of fun things. Your child may not like it if he’s plush-avoidant the way some children are, but even then the sound making may draw him in to play. Its fun quirky colors and textures are a great addition to the nursery and are a fun change from traditional child-like pastels or primary colors.