My mom gave my son a new toy the other day. It’s pretty cute, an inflatable remote control dump truck. He loves it, especially since he can use it in the house and not worry much about bumping into walls.

But one part of it comes with a warning to not let children use it. Care to guess which part?

That’s the truck, remote and foot pump. He’s bumped it into walls enough already that I think it has a small leak somewhere. He doesn’t seem to mind.

So…

Which part is too dangerous for children?

Did you guess:

If so, you’re correct! The foot pump is apparently the most dangerous part of this toy! See?

If you can’t read that, it says:

Warning:
This is not a toy and must only be operated by an adult. Keep out of reach of children.

I’m sitting here trying to figure out the danger. I don’t think the accordion folds of it could give so much as a nasty pinch. I don’t think fingers could get badly stuck in it.

About the only danger I can see is a kid toppling over while stomping on it. Maybe I’m a mean mom, but I don’t see that as a problem.

Electric toothbrushes.

No, really. In the things my husband and I gave them, the electric toothbrushes were the biggest hit. Just simple ones, a blue and a pink Crayola electric toothbrush.

It was hilarious how delighted they were.

But the toothbrushes did finally get beaten out by a gift from my mother on Saturday. She gave my daughter an EyeClops BioniCam, and it was a hit all around. Even their 13 year old cousin wants one now.

They’re under $20 right now on Amazon, so a really good deal. How long that will last is up to Amazon, of course.

The kids of course wanted to use it at 400x magnification right away. Well, that’s really, REALLY hard to focus. I mean really.

My daughter was just crushed to find out that her initial images were terrible. You see, she had decided that she was going to make tons of money selling her images. Mommy’s little entrepreneur!

So I switched her on down to 100x magnification, and she’s just delighted with the results. Finding the focus there isn’t too hard, and it holds it pretty well. She still thinks she can sell the images, but that’s the kind of thing you think when you are 6 years old. She figures she can solve all our money problems by doing this. It’s really sweet.

My mother also got one for one of my other nieces who is about my daughter’s age. It was a good thing that I looked at the packaging while we were all there. These come with a 32 Meg USB key for pictures to be saved on. My brother-in-law didn’t notice it at first, stuck in the front of the box, and was grumbling about how the kids couldn’t save the pictures. I had looked at them online, and knew there was something, so I checked our box which hadn’t been opened yet, and told him where to find it.

Somehow he had mistaken it for one of the images on the box, not an actual USB key. Good thing the box hadn’t been thrown out yet.

All the kids were wanting turns. It didn’t matter that all except the 13 year old are under the 8 years of age recommended on the packaging. Once the focus is done, it’s pretty easy to show a child how to save an image. And unlike the original Eyeclops, you aren’t stuck to the television!

We haven’t even tried the movie function yet, although you can take a few seconds of movie to save on the card. Right now the kids are plenty happy just to be able to take interesting pictures.

A fun one was where my niece took a 100x image of her thumb, then washed her hands and repeated. I got to tease her about the two specks of dirt she missed in washing up. A great little lesson in how much dirt there can be on hands that looked reasonably clean.

My daughter is having to share this one with her younger brother, who is also pretty good at taking pictures with it. That’s fine with her, as he has to share his remote controlled car. Fair is fair, after all. They came to an agreement about taking turns every 10th picture taken, which has worked out so far… except for my daughter trying to insist that only 30 pictures be taken a day, and she would take the first turn. Sneaky, sneaky, but oh so cute! We’ve corrected that one, but as my son gets older he’s going to have to learn to watch out for her. She’s good at making deals like that.