A friend of my husband’s has a yearly Christmas party. He and his wife are great sports about it and even got little gifts for their guests’ kids last year. Since the kids ranged in age from one year (my daughter) up to around four, our friends simplified their task by buying these Pop-Onz blocks for everyone.

THE BASICS
Pop-Onz Pop ‘n Build Blocks is a starter set for Fisher-Price’s Pop-Onz franchise, which is sort of a variation of Lego Duplo or MegaBloks, where characters and pieces fit together. The Pop-Onz pieces tend to look less like blocks and more like shapes and characters and they’re made of a sturdier plastic. Rather than snapping or fitting together like other blocks, these “pop” into place and stay there. They have multiple-raised textures on dome-shaped pegs and rounded holes in which the pegs fit.

This set comes with 15 pieces: seven blocks (including a triangular piece and a cylinder), two activity blocks (a car that rolls and a flower that spins), three flat blocks (including a roughly 5 by 7 inch base/building surface), and three figures (a squirrel, elephant, and lamb). We received it as a gift but I’ve seen it at K-Mart for $7.99. It is meant for children 18 months and up. Additional sets are sold separately as is a special play mat.

BABY’S VERDICT
When my daughter got these, she was at the height of her “put everything in her mouth” phase. Almost all of her toys and books from then have chew marks. I realized my daughter wouldn’t have the coordination to build with these blocks at that time but they were large enough that I didn’t worry about them being choking hazards. So though she was only 13 months old when she got this set, she was allowed to play with them.

But the only thing she wanted to do with them was suck on them. I caught her doing it once and joked with her that they weren’t meant for eating, and that they didn’t look anything like mommy (she was nursing at the time). Lo and behold, she pulled the dome-shaped peg-topped block out of her mouth and waved it in front of her as if to say, "ha, mom, look again!" In fact, it did somewhat resemble my chest. True, the triangular block was blue and pointy, but the two pegs with what can best be described as nipples at the end do bear a striking resemblance to the female upper anatomy. Of course, I was at a loss for words and had to tell my husband about those crazy male toy designers with sex on their brains. But my daughter found them a lot easier to stick in her mouth than her other blocks.

Though my daughter has had these blocks for almost a year, they really haven’t gotten much use, past the sucking stage, that is. She enjoys stacking her Peek-a-Blocks and building with her MegaBloks, but these Pop-Onz never caught on with her.

Even at almost two, she has trouble popping them together and comes to me to separate them. Honestly, I have trouble separating them. I suppose some people might like that feature, but I find it discouraging and so does my daughter. She can’t easily bash them down and start fresh. She has to either pull with all her might (and sometimes that doesn’t work) or ask for assistance. That’s why she prefers to just play with the included animal characters on their own.

The movable parts do get her attention. She is obsessed with vehicles right now and enjoys the little green car this set came with. But rather than securely popping the animal figures onto the dome peg, she prefers to place her hollow royal court figures or her Cinderella MegaBlok doll on top. This way when she pushes the car, there’s a chance they crash and the little guys fall off. Though that sounds horrid to adult ears, it seems to make for a much more enjoyable playtime.

She does like the included 3-D animal figures, who each hold a ball that can fit together with the rounded peg openings. Those little guys have tagged along with us in the car and in bed. They have cute, easily distinguishable features (white, fluffy-looking lamb; blue, long-trunked, big-eared elephant; and an orange, bushy-tailed, pointy-eared fox/squirrel?). We’ve been calling the orange sylvan one a squirrel since that’s an animal my daughter is more familiar with and I can’t definitively say what creature it most resembles.

MOMMY’S VERDICT
First of all, there’s not much included in this set. It’s very basic and the tiny building surface doesn’t allow very much variation. In fact, it’s almost impossible to fit more than three blocks on it at a time. True, you can stack them on top of each other, but their varied, bulky shapes make it hard to organize them.

Though the spinning flower (it’s a standard peg piece with screwed-on outstretched red petals that can be spun—picture a horizontal windmill) and the car do have appeal, the rest of the static blocks are pretty boring. Because of their varied shapes, they don’t stack well and my daughter can’t build a tower out of them. The two flat pieces (a rooster and a stop sign) are pretty dull, too. Unlike the 3-D animals, these are solid colored and more like outlined figures than characters/items.

I’m not sure how old a child is expected to be to play with these blocks. The box says they’re meant for ages 18 months and up but I even find them difficult to build and tear down. They stick together a little too tightly and seem to deter creativity. What toddler or preschooler do you know who likes to build something and leave it that way for a long period of time, especially if there are figurines involved? I know my little girl loves to rearrange her blocks and move her characters around, which is not something that Pop-Onz blocks seem to encourage.

OVERALL
I’m glad I wasn’t the one who bought these blocks for my daughter. This is a small set with hard to configure blocks that are difficult to pop in and out of place. We’ve gotten some playtime with the three figures and the car, but the rest of this starter set was a dud. My daughter still has trouble popping the pieces into place and I have trouble pulling them apart. At least it was a gift and I didn’t spend any money on it.

FROM THE MANUFACTURER
Kids will love Pop-Onz—It’s the building system with pieces that clip so easily on the pegs, even the youngest builders will be successful from the start. So they can concentrate on building creativity as Pop-Onz and their imaginations help them build just about anything!

www.fisherprice.com

Thank you marytara for adding this product!


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): gift
Type of Toy: Blocks
Age Range of Child: 12 to 36 Months