Don’t Want Your Kids To Grow Up Talking Like Elmo? Better Check Out This List of Best Educational Toys from Parenting Expert Sherry Artemenko.

Parenting expert Sherry Younger Artemenko and I bonded over Mattel’s talking-doll-classic, Chatty Cathy, a zillion years ago. Sherry’s Cathy was pristine; its blonde hair curled, coiffed and Christmas-present perfect. (My Cathy’s hair had been ‘re-styled’ by my brothers.) Her Cathy’s outfit was still neat and clean. (No comment.) Her Cathy still had its patent leather shoes. (I was simply glad my Cathy still had a foot.)

So it was no surprise that over the years, Sherry has morphed into a primo parenting expert, with a string of prestigious degrees (M.A., C.C.) and robust experience working with children to improve their speech and language, serving as a speech language pathologist in both the public and private school systems and private practice.

To help parents navigate the chaos known as the holiday shopping season, she’s released this carefully researched list of Best Educational Toys to Build Language. The list is a savvy blend of age-specific new and old favorites accompanied by Sherry’s educational tips.

Here is a sample — visit Sherry’s parent-friendly, content-rich site, Playonwords.com, to read the whole list.

Birth-1 years and up

eebee’s Adventure Play Mat and Play House (6 months to 3 years): Every now and then a toy comes along that I get really excited about. This is one. Maybe because I had an older brother and he was always making forts out of our couch cushions and planting me inside with a bowl of popcorn! This colorful set of foam sections, attachable with Velcro strips, invites your child to make a house and climb right in. Every day he can make a new creation, lift the curtain to peek out the window, catch a glimpse in the mirror, crawl through the circular hole or have a chat with a eebee’s life size face. crawling babies enjoy exploring the vibrant, textured panels even when they are laid out flat.

Language Building Tips: Follow your child’s interest and describe the colors, textures, and features of the panels. Use action verbs to name what your child is doing such as going “in” “out” or “through.” Provide a few additional props for an older toddler such as a play dishes for a picnic or tea party.

Guru’s Note: Pictured above is the toy *I* want. It’s called Chocolate Fix and I need it now. Hear that, Santa?

Sherry says:
Chocolate Fix by ThinkFun Inc (8 and up): This gold award winner from Parents Choice is a feast of fun! Take turns filling your customer’s orders at the chocolate shoppe. Flip to the page of visual clues on where to put your 9 tempting treats in three flavors and three shapes. Let’s see, the pink square chocolate is next to the dark circle chocolate. In the grid of nine positions, the chocolatier has to solve all the clues to place the pieces in just the right spot. With several levels of play, kids and adults are entertained. An added language building value is that kids love to role-play as the chocolatier and the customer.

HandMeDowns.com. Now The Mommalution Has Its Own Classifieds.

Handmedowns.com is a perfect example of what Web 2.0 does best. The site takes a highly relatable concept — hand me downs – and upgrades it for today. It’s a great example of what today’s Mommalution is all about — taking that powerful VOM (Voice of Moms) and putting it to savvy, sensible good use.

Here’s what the site says:

Handmedowns is a new online classifieds site for moms where you can buy, sell, give away or donate your new and “gently used” baby gear, toys, clothes, childcare services and more in a family friendly atmosphere.

We pull together and organize the best baby/child/mom listings from around the web AND combine them with handmedowns.com listings posted on our site to create a one-stop destination for busy moms.

Handmedowns.com’s CEO and founder, Norah Weinstein, who is a lawyer and founded The Hollywood Reporter, ESQ., is a mom who was frustrated with searching online for much needed items for her 14-month-old daughter. “The classified sites that were available had some great listings, but were not designed with parents in mind. Moms are too busy to sift through thousands of listings to find the items they need, especially those in good enough condition for their children. Our goal is to raise the bar for baby & kids classifieds.”

Guru’s Take: There are a couple of notable adds that make this site particularly Mom-friendly. Love the Eco focus. Love the Mom Police, a system for moms to flag any listing that appears unsafe or inappropriate. Love the focus on product safety, including a link to recalls. All right on. But those buttons at the top, which let users choose whether they’d like to Buy, Sell, Give Away Free, or Donate. Smart. That’s how we roll these days, managing our stuff in every permutation known to momhood.

MotrinGate: Twitter Moms Abuzz Over Motrin Video.

At times like this, I am resoundingly thrilled with my decision to leave traditional advertising oh-so-many-moons ago at the dawn of the digital age.

Apparently, they still don’t ‘get it.’ At least whoever created Motrin’s ‘Wearing Your Baby’ video doesn’t get it. And this corporate cluelessness has now exploded into MotrinGate, thanks to legions of Twitter Moms who have been tweeting upthewazoo all weekend. Pity the poor Motrin exec who shows up to Monday morning’s firestorm. Of course, if they had they had the customer service smarts of Zappos, JetBlue, ComcastCares, etc. they would already know about this Mom-fueled fury and they would have apologized, explained or waved a white eco- diaper.

The video “Wearing Your Baby” is still up and running on the official Motrin website. The video claims that this supposed ‘fashion trend’ of carrying baby in a sling causes ‘extreme pain’ — and thus merits Motrin. Not only is the voice-over whiny, annoying and inauthentic but their ‘facts’ are dicey.

Considering how many zillions of Mom marketing firms there out clamoring to help corporate America, (I spent a chunk of this week’s hugely useful WOMMA conference with Mom-savvy Stacy DeBroff of MomCentral) it seems pretty clear that as one tweeter said: “There’s no way a Mom was involved, or if she was, she was ignored.”

Part of the copy: “If I look tired and crazy people will understand.”

If you’d like to follow MotrinGate on Twitter, simply use #MotrinMoms. Currently MotrinMoms is trending #1 on Twitter — and social media mavens are splashing across all media from new to traditional.

As a Springspotter, I’m pinging Liesbeth in Amsterdam with this trend that shows off the incredible power of mobilized Don’t-Mess-With-Me-Moms.

And here’s one of the videos created in response to Motrin’s original video.

Guru’s Take: The lesson here for corporate America? This didn’t have to happen. All you have to do is ask and Moms will help — with your creative, your research, your buzz. We’ve been having Twitter Product Parties – a nifty way to do Social Media Research — and this 21st century style focus group could easily have prevented this corporate boo-boo. Motrin apparently didn’t ask — and now they’re getting stung bigtime.

Guru’s Take #2: Okay, have been researching and from what I can tell, McNeil (maker of Motrin) is a division of Johnson and Johnson . . . and J&J owns the #1 parenting site on the web: Babycenter. So I am wondering why they couldn’t have tapped into that multi-million strong BabyCenter Mom-community?

Guru’s Take #3: Okay, finally a response from the VP at McNeil.  (Thank you, Katja, for the post and all your hard work.)  Amazing that this semi mea culpa took this long. Amazing that no one from McNeil or the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies appears to be tweeting on the weekend. Even for a complete Twitter newbie, it would have taken all of about a minute for the outraged Motrin tweets to have bubbled up; it was that fast and furious. This whole thing could have been prevented if:

• Someone, anyone, at McNeil (or its agencies) had a clue about social media
• Someone, anyone, at McNeil had a clue about the importance of respecting the VOM (Voice-of-Moms). I’m a veteran market researcher and I cannot imagine letting my clients go without either exploratory pre-production research or post-production eval — hopefully both. I always tell them that research is essentially insurance — it would have prevented McNeil’s 4-Motrin-Migraine.

American Girl Retires The Classic Samantha Doll.

Dear American Girl fan,

We’re writing with important news about an American Girl original, Samantha Parkington®. Soon, Samantha’s complete collection—including Nellie® and her accessories—will be moving into the American Girl Archives™. While Samantha™ has been one of American Girl’s most popular historical characters since her introduction in 1986, we felt the timing was right to preserve her place in American Girl’s history, making it possible to introduce new characters and time periods for our customers to enjoy.

When my daughter was young, I did a couple of projects for The Pleasant Company, the original creators of the American Girl dolls. Jaded as I was after working in Manhattan’s ad biz, this Wisconsin-based company knocked my socks off, especially the new product rooms with their authentic doll-sized toys and accessories. Think Project Runway for Kids. As is my way, I tested everything from the doll to the dresses on my own personal focus group — my own American Girl. Her Samantha doll traveled the world with us. Our version’s not quite been retired — but she may be sound asleep in my daughter’s closet, right next to that Back Street Boys poster.

 

Kid-Friendly Web Browser KidZui Launches Social Networking Features.

From what I can tell so far, Kidzui is doing everything right. What may be ‘wrong’ at least in the eyes of a gaggle of commenters on TechCrunch is the concept.

As we used to say in the ad biz “bad concept, great execution.”

KidZui is a kid-friendly web browser that recently introduced a suite of social networking features designed for kids aged 3-12.

Yup, that’s right. Ages 3-12. Add Kidzui to the growing list of kid-centric social networking sites: TotSpot, L’ilgrams, Kidmondo, Odadeo, most of which are designed for Mom and Dad’s fervent desires for tweeting, posting and friend requesting about their kids.

According to TechCrunch, KidZui launched last March as a subscription service but switched over to a freemium model just a few months later. So far, 1.5 million objects (videos, pages, photos, etc) have been whitelisted and “hundreds of thousands” of kids and parents have started to use the service. KidZui’s conversion rate for website visitors has doubled since switching over to a freemium model in June. And the average user watches 80 videos per week - a much greater number than an average of 21 photos, which suggests that KidZui is starting youth off early for YouTube as well.

Guru’s Take: Aside from the obvious safety concerns over an online area aimed at kidlets, and which Kidzui seems to be managing well, much of the controversy centers on the same-old issue: how young is too young for kids to be online? Given the state of obesity in our country, shouldn’t these pinging and posting 4 year olds be outside playing Capture the Flag and sweating off their Hot Pockets? And what about socialization? Shouldn’t the rough n tumble be face to face, rather than virtual? Does electronic socialization have the same play value? And what about Mom and Dad simply parking their 6 year old in front of the (unsupervised) computer to meet up with his e-friends? I’d love to hear what you think. (And are those 80 videos per week all talking cats?)

Walmart Bans ‘Islam is the Light’ Doll. You Decide What It Says.

From Barbie to Bratz to the supposedly gay purple Teletubby, dolls are often the subject of controversy. Toys are more than merely cute and playful; they are uniquely powerful teaching tools for our most vulnerable students. So when a grandparent in Owasso, Oklahoma bought Fisher Price’s Little Mommy Real Loving Baby Cuddle and Coo doll and heard, instead of ‘Mama’, something that sounded like ‘Islam is the light’, he was mad. The Walmart in Owasso is taking the complaints seriously — they’ve pulled the doll from their shelves.

Fisher Price says the doll was designed to only say one word: Mama. The rest of the sounds are just typical cooing and giggling baby sounds. But click below and listen for yourself:

You decide!

Celebrity-Warrior-Mom Jenny McCarthy Launches New Lifestyle Brand for Children.

Fresh from her compelling video appearance at Tech Crunch 50 in San Francisco for social media connector and start-up CauseCast, celebrity-warrior-Mom Jenny McCarthy is also busily launching a new lifestyle brand for children based on her experiences in combating her son Evan’s autism. Too Good by Jenny is a line of “affordable, safe, nontoxic and healthy products.” The line will include non-toxic bedding, apparel, feeding products, toys/activity sets, cleaning products, bathroom textiles, gluten-free food and beverages, all intended to be affordable for all parents.

Since her son’s diagnosis in 2005, the author and activist has been vocal about such causes as staggering immunizations, adhering to a gluten-free diet and eliminating chemicals in everyday products, such as lead paint in toys or BPA plastic in baby bottles. She is also a spokesperson for an organization called Talk About Curing Autism.

The launch for Too Good by Jenny is planned for next spring or summer.

WALL-E Packs A Real Wallop for Grown-Ups.

Like a gazillion other Americans trying to beat the heat this weekend (and in our case, the smoke from the Big Sur wildfires), I had to go see the latest Pixar mechanical-marvel, WALL-E. The critically praised film is now a box office wonder as well, with domestic grosses of $103,876,000 a mere 8 days after release.

I knew I would fall madly in love with the 2008 version of E.T. and R2D2, all digi-designed into one heart-rending creature who babbled adorably electronic coos, blips and bleeps. I also knew I would love the sweetly weird love story between the cutely-clunky WALL-E and ever-so-estro-oval EVE.

But what I didn’t expect was the absolute wallop of its powerful environmental message, delivered by a chilling look at what passes for humankind 800 years in the future. Not only did I want to sprint out of the theater and head for the closest treadmill but I also wanted to crush any cup in the vicinity.

And then there were my feet. I wanted to rush out and buy new shoes, simply to reassure myself that I still wear them.

I am fantasizing a dream triple bill at my local theater:

WALL-E
An Inconvenient Truth

The Church of Apple Gets A New iPod Bible: iLounge Launches The Free iPod + iPhone Book 4.

Now this is droolworthy.
If you worship all things Apple, this brand new version of what has been called the iPod ‘bible’ is bound to ramp up your religiousity a few notches. With 268 pages of bleeding edge content from hot website iLounge.com, this free book is likely to set another record for mondo-millions of downloads. Packed with juicy new information about the iPod, iPhone and iTunes, this sleekly designed and streamlined fourth-edition is, only hours after its launch, already being dubbed iLounge’s best pub yet.

Along with in-depth guides and ratings of more than 1,800 iPod and iPhone-related products, readers will find new cool features like “iDesign Retrospective,” a look at how talented designers created the world’s most impressive iPod accessories, “Sneak Peeks” , exclusive world premieres of 20+ new accessories and even the inevitable “iPhone Baby”, outlining the ways expectant Moms and Dads can get baby hooked on Apple while in utero. 150 iTunes Answers has been reorged and updated, with 100 pages of tips, tricks and pix.

Another inevitable in these days of user-generated-content, but still compelling nonetheless: The Next-Generation iPhone and Photo Galleries: luscious photographs and images submitted by iLounge readers that depict the past, present, and future of Apple’s iPhone family, as well as the latest globe-trotting iPods.

And even better, iLounge made their instant classic hassle-free as well. When you go to the site to download it, you will find a wide variety of options for easy viewing: from desktop to laptop or smaller pocket-size screens, including the iPhone and iPod touch.

Download The Free iPod + iPhone Book 4 in Adobe PDF format at http://www.ilounge.com/book4/.

“Getting” The Mom Market: Three Winners

It’s my daughter’s birthday today.  Which means that my Momhood is front and center this morning, as I scroll back, way back to the day before being a Mom was rockstar cool and wearing your kids on your hips is hipper than Prada’s latest.

I remember the day a senior executive (and Mom) took me aside at my new job and whispered: “Never talk about your daughter. Don’t post her pictures. Don’t bring her to the office. No one should even know you have a kid.”

Nowdays, Momism is not only a badge of honor but also a booming business, thanks to some 83 million U.S. Moms who are spending 2 trillion + dollars a year on everything from baby spas www.skinspababy.com to NASCAR umbrella strollers.  Although the whisper in the VC world in Silicon Valley may be that the ‘Mom market is saturated’, the Guru thinks that conversely, the marketplace is going to continue to grow right along with every toddling step these kids take.  

Here are a couple of winners:

www.cubesandcrayons.com Cubes and Crayons, ‘office space and kid space’ is a concept well worth watching.  Launched in January 2008 by frustrated Mom and Founder MF Chapman, this savvy combination of full-time, flexible childcare and office space is already a hit and sure to spawn more mini-Mom communities where both Mom and kidlet benefit.

http://maternalinstinct.net/   Just up the road from Menlo Park’s Cubes and Crayons is Mom-marketing powerhouse Maternal Instinct. The brainchild of award-winning creative marketer, Kat Gordon, this talented team of Creative Problem Solvers knows exactly how to tap into the growing band of Mom Influencers.  Check out ‘What’s My Blanket’ for tips.

And finally, we Moms know that each and every one of our offspring is a creative genius.  Check out this latest winner, where self-publishing meets kids, Tikatok: beta.tikatok.net.