November 2010 – All The Best Toys

Dance Star Mickey

The Dance Star Mickey by Fisher Price may end up being one of the “hard to find Hot Toys of 2010”. As if Mickey Mouse isn’t cute enough already, Fisher Price has turned up the cuteness even more with the new Dance Star Mickey. He walks, he talks, he dances! Mickey has multiple songs and each song has it’s own unique dance.

Dance Star Mickey is perfect for kids 18 months old up to around 6 years old.

We did a little “in store testing” with one of our favorite 3 year olds. Watch the video and see for yourself as her face lights up as she dances along with Mickey!

Win a $50 Gift Card to Amazon During Cyber Week 2010

We are running a Contest this week and will be giving away a $50 Gift Card to Amazon to one lucky winner. Who couldn’t use an extra $50 gift card during the Holidays?

Update 12/4/2010
Congratulations to our winner, Kathy @ House of Hills! Thanks to everyone who entered!

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We decided to do something new here at AllTheBestToys.com to celebrate “Cyber Shopping Week” and to reward our many loyal readers who use this site to help find the best toys for the kids in their lives.

We are running a Contest this week and will be giving away a $50 Gift Card to Amazon to one lucky winner. Who couldn’t use an extra $50 gift card during the Holidays?

How to Enter

There are 2 ways to enter.
1. All you have to do is go to our List of the Top 20 Toys of 2010 and leave a Comment at the bottom of the post. Your comment needs to answer this question, “What do YOU think is the best toy of 2010?”.
or
2. If you are on Twitter, you can ReTweet a link to this Post and include the Hashtag #AllTheBestToys

Each person can enter up to 2 times, once via Twitter and once by leaving a comment on the post.

When does the Contest Start and End?

The Contest starts on “Cyber Monday” November 29, 2010 and will run until 11:59pm CDT Friday, December 3, 2010.

How is the winner picked?

We will pick one winner at random and the winner will be notified via email or via Direct Message on Twitter. The $50 Amazon Gift Card will also be delivered via email. The winner will be notified and awarded their prize within a few days after the contest ends.

Rules and stuff

The winner will be picked at random from among the eligible entries. All comments must be approved by our Admin before they will appear on the site. Comments may be denied entry into this contest and not published if they don’t follow any of these rules. Comments may not include web links or links to other URL’s within the comment. The decision about what is or is not allowed is made at the sole discretion of the Administrators of AllTheBestToys.com using their best judgement.

I’m confused, sum it all up for me real quick

It’s simple.
1. Go to our list of the Hot 20 Toys of 2010 and leave a comment at the bottom of that post. http://www.allthebesttoys.com/2010/10/the-top-20-hot-toys-for-christmas-2010.html
2. Or you can go to Twitter and Retweet our link to this post and include the hashtag #AllTheBestToys
3. Tell your friends and family about this contest!
4. Wait until the weekend to find out if you’ve won the $50 Gift Card to Amazon.
5. Happy shopping and Happy Holidays to you!

Crayola Crayon Town Large Mat Zoo Set

This 2010 Toy of the Year award winning set is perfect for a rainy day or indoor play. It is sure to spark creative and imaginary play for your kids. Kids can use the crayons not only to color the three-dimensional zoo scenes, but they can also use the crayons to build animals and other zoo components, which they can then play with.

This play set is designed to last for a long time. You can buy any standard pack of Crayola Crayons to use with this set, so if the crayons from the set break or wear out, then they can easily be replaced. Crayola makes replacement color pages available online for a free download, so even once all the pages in the set have been colored, the fun keeps going with new coloring pages.

This toy comes with plastic figurines including the zoo keeper, monkey, giraffe, alligator, lion, and a polar bear. Also paper figurines including an all-terrain vehicle and wagon, a tree, the “Fold & Build” polar bear cave, a lion’s den, and a monkey tree. There are 2 coloring mats and 8 crayons.

Wii Party Video Game

Wii Party is a very popular video game for the Nintendo Wii. It’s multi player fun for the whole family. Try Wii Party for a whole new kind of family “game night”.

Wii Party is a video game for use with the Nintendo Wii.

(If your family doesn’t have a Nintendo Wii and instead has an Xbox 360, then you should check out the new Kinect and see our list of all the video games available for Kinect on Xbox360).

With Wii Party, the whole family stars in its own electronic board game. Games are fun for 1 to 4 players. Most video games have you focused on the TV screen but with Wii Party Players have to interact with one another in real life to get the results they want in the game. The Wii Party game is a game that changes the way people interact with other players.

Some games require cooperation and others are competitive. There are 13 different party game modes and 70+ minigames, Wii Party can be enjoyed by everyone in the family, regardless of age. This can be lots of fun at parties and gatherings. Even people who are not your “typical video gamer” can get into the fun. Many of the games are simple to learn and a game can last as short as a few minutes if people don’t want to commit to “hours of gaming”. At the same time, with over 70 mini games included, there’s plenty of variety and fun to go around if you want to game for hours.

Infantino Activity Triangle

Babies love toys that can spin, rattle and have bright colors. The Infantino Activity Triangle is sure to delight!

Your baby will stay busy learning and having fun with this toy! It’s a great toy because it promotes important skills through exploration by sight, touch and sound.

Each side has multiple different actions, shapes, colors and activities, and there are spinners, rattles and mirrors too. In essence, you gain five sides of activity, and can extend the entertainment value of the toy by periodically rotating it for your baby so that it always presents something new. As they become stronger, they begin to discover that it can be picked up and shook for added interaction.

This toy is sure to be a favorite toy for your curious baby.

Charity: Compassion International

Every year since we started this website in 2008, I like to take a day during the Holiday Shopping Season to highlight a worthy charity. During this season of shopping and giving, I think it’s important to remember that there are people in the world who cannot afford the life style that many of us lead. Today I want to encourage you to learn about Compassion International.

Every year since we started this website in 2008, I like to take a day during the Holiday Shopping Season to take a break from talking about the best toys and instead highlight a worthy charity. You can see a listing of all our previous Charity posts here.

During this season of shopping and giving, I think it’s important to remember that there are people in the world who cannot afford the life style that many of us lead.

Today I want to encourage you to learn about Compassion International. Compassion International is a Christian child advocacy group that seeks to break the cycle of poverty by providing resources to children such as food, shelter, education, and health care. Founded in 1952, Compassion currently helps more than 1 million children in 26 countries.

Compassion provides the opportunity to sponsor a child for $38 per month. This is a unique opportunity to radically change the life of a child whom you will never meet in person.

Letter from our Compassion Child — A Letter from our Sponsored Child

My family started sponsoring 2 children through Compassion over a year ago. It’s been great. Our sponsor children write letters to us and tell us about their family and what they are learning in school. Both of our sponsor kids happen to live in Haiti, so when the earthquake struck in January 2010, we were concerned about our kids. It took several months after the earthquake until we received a letter from our children letting us know that they were ok. It was a big relief for sure.

If you would like to learn more about sponsoring a child, you can learn more about that on the Compassion site here.

If you are not ready to sponsor a child at this time, but would still like to make a one time financial donation to this organization, you can learn more about that here.