Price Tag: $14.99-19.99
Official URL: http://www.crayola.com
Age Range: 6m+
Rating:

The Tadoodles Rainbow Tower combines stacking, nesting, colorful lights, and sounds. It encourages the child to play with color mixing using light, and is an early introduction to primary and secondary colors.

EDUCATIONAL & ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

This toy has a lot to teach a younger child. Motor skills, eye-hand coordination, distinguishing different sounds, size perception, visual stimulation, cause & effect, color recognition, and color mixing. Your child can also learn to distinguish “puppy”, “cat” and “mouse” cartoon faces from one another, and learn that dogs are bigger than cats and cats are bigger than mice.

As your child stacks the toys, a variety of sounds play to keep the child engaged. The sounds are somewhat random and don’t seem to be related to any particular action other than the cups touching the base and applying pressure.

QUALITY & CONSTRUCTION

The base is made of a heavier opaque plastic with “rims” that the different stacking cups lock down onto.  There are three different “rings” that correspond with the different sizes of the stacking tadoodles cups. The transparent “tadoodles” cups are made of transparent yellow, red and blue plastic.  The yellow cup has a puppy on it, the red cup has a kitten, and the blue cup has a mouse. The cups can be nested so that the cups go from smallest to largest, or they can be stacked from largest to smallest to form a tower. A switch allows you to turn the unit on or off.  When the toy is “nested” it’s very compact and easy to store.

The base has a light built in so the cups light up. This makes it easy to see that blue and yellow make green, red and blue make purple, and yellow and red make orange. Because the colors don’t mix “perfectly” your child can simultaneously see the original colors, and how they mix together to form secondary colors.

PACKAGING

The packaging is basic: A box and twist ties. It’s not too difficult to get the toy out of the packaging. It requires 3AA batteries which are not included. Installation of the batteries requires a screwdriver (for safety purposes), but is quick and easy to do. The battery compartment is well designed and batteries are simple to pop in or remove.

BOTTOM LINE

I’m not usually a fan of plastic toys and look for wood versions wherever I can, but this little toy has a reason to be plastic: the plastic allows the light to mix the colors. It’s a cute little idea that combines a traditional stacking and nesting toy with a tool that your child can use to learn about color.