Cost: $5.99
Official URL: playskool.com
Age Range: 2 and up
Rating:

This Halloween rendition of the popular Mr. Potato Head is a fun treat that comes with his own ghost costume. It’s a great way to get your toddler worked up about Halloween and the excitement of dressing up.

EDUCATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

This toy encourages creativity when the child realizes that Mr. Potato Head takes on different personality attributes depending on the rotation of its different features. When combined with other Mr. Potato Head playsets it allows for even more mix-and-match fun.

A very young child can learn about the different body parts, how they are arranged on the body, and even about emotions by seeing how the character looks different while smiling and while frowning. As they reach the recommended age range for this toy (2+) they can start assembling the toy which exercises fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and general “insert tab a into slot b” skills that will be useful throughout life. Different parts have different unique challenges that the child must overcome, from making sure that they are rotated to fit in with other parts, to making sure that they are fitting snugly onto the character, and figuring out how to position the arms so that Mr. Potato Head can hold his jack-o-lantern without it falling.

The Mr. Potato Head concept is a tried-and-true classic dating back to the 1950’s.

CONSTRUCTION & QUALITY

This toy comes with the following parts: One potato body, 1 ghost sheet, 1 set of glow in the dark eyes, one set of fangs, one hat,  2 vampire ears, one nose, 2 arms, and one pair of shoes. It is 8″ tall fully assembled and weighs 8.8 ounces with all of its parts and the costume.

The potato body is standard Mr. Potato Head fare. A lightweight hollow 6″ tall body made of a light brown plastic. It has the contours of a potato, with one additional detail: the front of it has the curve of a mouth and the slight rise of smiling cheeks that serve as a gentle reminder of where the potato’s mouth is and to help your child orient the potato figure properly. The front of the potato has three rounded holes where your child can insert a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The top of the potato head has a hole that is curved with a flat side, sort of like a “u”. On the left and right sides are two holes for ears and arms, and on the bottom of the potato is a groove that is about 1 1/2″ long. You insert the feet here and you can move the potato into different positions, from leaning slightly backwards, standing straight up, or bending over as if to look at something on the ground. On the back of the potato you will find a storage compartment that flips open.  You can fit every single part of this playset into the potato body including the feet (although I had to remove the storage door in order for them to fit). The storage area is easy to open with a recessed area on the body of the spud and a tab on the door. The hinge is easy to pull off and put back into place making it simple to stash the parts and for your child to pull them back out.

The accessories all have pegs attached to allow you to insert them into the potato body. These pegs vary in length from the ears that have pegs that are less than a half inch long, to the the eyes and teeth whose pegs are longer than an inch. The different parts seem to be made of two different types of plastic: a harder rigid plastic (hat, jack-o-lantern, nose, eyes) and a more rubbery plastic (teeth, arms, shoes, and ears.). The pegs attached are all slightly on the rubbery and flexible side, allowing you to insert them into the potato body easily.

The eyes are a simple rounded hollow set of eyes. They are white with large black irises and are symmetrical so that they look the same whether upside down or rightside up. These eyes are the standard Mr. Potato Head eyes that come with every other Mr. Potato Head set. They have one fun twist, though. They glow in the dark!

The nose is also a standard Mr. Potato head part, oval and bulbous, it can be rotated to either be a wide nose, or a long and narrow one. It is a bright orange.

The shoes are black and stand with the heels together and the toes spread wide apart to give stability to the Potato body. The top of the shoes is contoured to fit snugly to the bottom of the spud no matter how they are placed. . These shoes can either be black sneakers or dress shoes, as the details are ambiguous enough to allow for freedom of imagination. The shoes are hollow but have reinforcing walls on the underside for strength.

The arms are all-white and rubbery. Both are bent at the elbow at a similar angle, but the hands are flexed differently with one jutting the heel of the palm out with a straight thumb, and the other cupping it in with a bent thumb. They come out of the body about 4″ and can be rotated into a variety of different positions from hands-over the head, to down by the side of the potato.

The mouth is a toothy vampire smile (or scowl depending on how your child rotates the teeth) These fangs consist of 6 teeth that are shorter in the middle and that turn into long vampire fangs on the sides.

The ears are pointed green vampire (or elfen) ears. The jaggedy inlaid center part of the ears is suggestive of fur, and one ear has a cute little worm hiding in it. The ears are about 2″ tall and can be pointed upwards or downwards to create different characters.

The hat is a simple black derby that can be worn cocked to the side, brim low over Mr. Potato Head’s eyes, or snugly tilted backwards. (The hat really only fits snugly when tilted backwards, although your children can place the hat into all of the other positions.)

The jack-o-lantern is a basic rounded hollow shape with a carry handle. It has triangular eyes, a triangle nose and a toothy grin. It works best on the “cupped” hand arm of this set when the arm is slightly raised.

The costume is a round piece of white fabric about 14″ in diameter. It has one hole in the center and another about 2 1/2″ away. These holes fit over the top hole (hat hole) and eye hole and allow you to place the eyes and hat onto the character with the costume in place. The costume works best if you remove the nose and ears. The costume is flocked and soft on one side, and smooth on the inside.

All of the parts of this toy are well made and seem unlikely to break or shatter even when treated roughly.

SAFETY

The rubberized pegs make injury less likely, and the parts are all sized largely enough to avoid choking hazards. This toy is very well designed with safety in mind.

This toy is made in China, but conforms to safety standards. Toy industry giant Playskool/Hasbro stays on top of product recalls and is dedicated to the safety of its toys.

BOTTOM LINE

Mr. Potato Head encourages creative mix-and-match play while reinforcing concepts such as the arrangement of facial features and body parts. Its educational and entertainment aspects are tightly integrated so that a younger child can’t help but learn a lot of valuable skills and lessons by simply interacting with this toy. The halloween aspect is a fun twist, and it already has my 21 month old son excited about the concept of dress-up. This toy is a great addition to your child’s existing collection of Mr. Potato Head toys, or an introduction to the Potato Head line. It’s an inexpensive and fun Halloween purchase and makes an ideal toy for the dentist-inspired practice of trading your kids for their unhealthy cavity-causing candies.