Finding The Fun – Hide And Seek Goes Wireless
Combining the ancient art of hide and seek with wireless technology and plush animals equals the Hide and Seek Safari Jr. – fun for kids of all ages.
Kids love hide and seek, but their parents are often less than enthused after hours of hiding in closets and underneath tables waiting to be found. Now, R and R Games has created a new way to play the old game called the Hide and Seek Safari Jr. using a plush stuffed animal and “finding wand” to let kids play to their hearts content and save their parents from cramped backs and sore legs.
R and R has several versions of their Hide and Seek Safari all of which include an animal companion to hide and a wand used to track them down. The older child versions have hard plastic animals that are prone to breaking, while the Jr. iteration comes with a plush Monkey, Lion or Elephant to hide.
The animal can be hidden indoors or out and emits a high-pitched (out of hearing range) sound that is detected by the finding wand. As kids get closer to the hidden animal, LEDs on the wand light up and the wand begins to emit a sound. In the case of the plush elephant, for example, a red button on the bottom of the wand will also make it trumpet when the seeker is close enough, helping to pinpoint its location.
Parents can secret away the plush animals almost anywhere, giving a far broader range of hiding spots than in the traditional hide and seek game, and with addition of multiple finding wands, locating the toy can be a group affair rather than a solitary one, giving parents the sweet relief of knowing they haven’t simply co-opted their child’s play into something exclusively electronic.
Generally, the reviews of the Safari Jr. at Amazon are positive, though there are a few complaints about battery life and the fact that since the toy uses high-frequency sound rather than a dedicated RF transmitter, hiding the animal behind certain objects can cause the signal to be interrupted and the wand to never light up.
On the whole, however, the plush nature of the toy and its inherent fun make it something that kids want to hang on to when they want a cuddle and have well-hidden when they want some fun.
Source: R and R Games