Zoo Wants a Giveaway?

This may look like a staged photo, but I swear on the face of Brett Favre that this is an actual cabinet in my mom's kitchen.

(Helpful note to mental health care providers in charge of my mom's future case:  This is Exhibit A.)

In her never ending quest to bribe my cousins and their children into loving her the best out of all her siblings and also to guilt my sisters and me into finally giving her grandchildren, my mom keeps a collection of toys at her house.  She has been hinting for months that she had "no good toys" and "boring toys," so when Fisher-Price gave me the opportunity to review a product for them, I knew she would disown me if I said no.

Look at the excitement in her eyes when it arrived!  This was slightly tempered a few minutes later when she discovered it did not come with batteries, which in my opinion was revenge for an awful lot of Christmas mornings that I spent imagining what my gadgets could do if only 4 C batteries could be found.

This weekend, we had a barbecue and my mom proudly pulled out her new toy.  The kids were very impressed.  It really is a very neat toy.  It comes with a couple of animals and a zookeeper.  When you put the animals on the little electronic peg that's built into the base, it tells the name of the animal and the sound that it makes.  There are a bunch of cool little features like a slide, a swing, a secret passageway in the trees and a roaring hippo that makes splashing sounds in the water.  Any kid who is an animal nut would love it.

My cousin Lauren, who is adorable (of course) and sixteen months old, played with this thing for almost an hour.  She launched polar bears down the side, swung monkeys in the tree swing and laughed over and over again as I made explosion noises when the zookeeper fell off the playset.  I'm not sure if she learned anything about zoo noises or habitats, but she sure enjoyed herself.

Fisher-Price is having a contest to celebrate the launch of this zoo set.  You can win $10,000 and a trip to New York by submitting a video of your child making animal noises.  Here's my entry.

I have seen some of your kids and I know that they are cute, so pull a Kate Gosselin and start making some money off of them!

I am also excited to be able to give away another Fisher-Price Little People Zoo Talkers playset.  Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win.  I'll pick a winner on Friday by using random.org.  No, Mom, you can't win another one of these things so please don't bother.

Fisher-Price provided me with two zoo playsets for review purposes but I didn't let that influence my review.