If ever there was a perfect craft ‘toy’ for Lillie then Smooshins Surprise Maker Kit is IT! Lillie definitely takes after me in her love for doing crafts at home, which is good because I may have bought more craft kits over the years that is actually necessary. However, this is one craft kit that I didn’t need to buy as Lillie has been sent it for review.
What are Smooshins?
Smooshins are cute squidgy characters you make yourself and then add changeable head, face and belly pieces to create your own unique characters. There are more than 10,000 characters to create and collect thanks to all of the combinations of characters and accessories. Smooshins are the only cute, collectable fidget toy. Lillie loves slime and all things squidgy so I knew this would be right up her street.
Features
- make your very own squidgy colourful characters
- the Surprise Maker Kit contains everything you need to make 2 characters
- characters can be customised with the accessories provided
- contains 2 character moulds, 4 colour pouches, 4 headpieces, 4 surprise face pieces, 4 belly pieces, 4 character stands and 1 pouch squeezing tool.
- Requires 2 AAA batteries (not included)
Creating the Smooshins
- You begin by popping the colour pouch within the clear gel and ‘cycling’ the pouch to mix the colour and gel together for 1 minute 30 seconds. The trick is to ensure that no clear gel remains, it needs to be fully combined.
- Next, you need to squeeze it into the Surprise Maker. Initially, we really struggled with this part until we realised that you needed to press the light-up button on the top of the surprise maker to effectively open the gel pouch allowing the gel to pour into the mould. Ensure that as much of the gel as possible has been squeezed into the mould.
- You need to leave the Surprise Maker to set for at least four hours or preferably overnight to let your character grow inside.
- The next day careful remove the empty pouch and discard.
- Open the surprise maker and remove the mould from inside the plastic egg. Keep these to re-use when making further characters. To open the mould you need to unlock the catches around the edge and turn the key locks before opening to reveal the character you made!
- Finally, you can customise your characters with the included surprise accessories.
The Results
Lillie’s first Smooshins character didn’t come out very well. We think this is because she didn’t mix the gel and colour well enough which meant the gel didn’t ‘grow’ enough to fill the mould. This didn’t bother Lillie in the slightest as it is only the back of the character which can’t be seen when in the supporting stand anyway.
Later we created a further character together, ensuring that we ‘cycled’ the pouch in our hands for the best possible mix. This time the results were much better, the character had grown fully into the mould so Lillie had a Smooshins character she was extremely proud of. It is worth noting you can purchase Smooshins Colour Refill pouches to use with your Surprise Maker Kit so the fun never stops.
If you liked this post then pop over to Temper and Tantrum to see Jessica’s roundup of the Best Toy and Gift Ideas for 9 year old girls in 2018.
