Mermaid Magic Fizz and Surprise Review

You may remember that Findmeagift.com very kindly sent me LBG a lovely gardening set last summer. It has been put to very good, almost daily use, at least until the recent rainfall. When they got in touch again asking if she would care to review something, LBG opted for the Mermaid Magic Fizz and Surprise. I assume she was entranced by the words ‘mermaid’ ‘magic’ and ‘surprise‘, added to the good chance of something pink and sparkly. It arrived a mere day later. You can’t fault the service of those findmeagift.com people.

You can, sadly, fault the Mermaid Magic Fizz and Surprise. Once you have wrangled the ‘shell’ from the package, you discover a label stating that you need to remove the two plastic layers before use. Which plastic layers? The pink covering on the shell. Which has been vacuum sealed and requires a trip down to the kitchen to find a pair of scissors (at last minute I remembered the childrens’ nail scissors in the hall cupboard.) Back in the bathroom I set to. A few minutes later, the shell was successfully stripped. By this time The Girls were in the bath tub waiting patiently. Sort of.

Under the coloured plastic was another layer of plastic, so once again I got out the scissors. This time I ended up carving chunks from the brittle peach coloured and scented ‘shell’. Only one more Mermaid Shell to unseal and we were good to go a mere twelve minutes after we started. By this point The Girls were ready to burst. Anyhow. Into the tub went the ‘shells’, which fizzed and popped whilst the girls alternated between looking amused and bemused. Maybe a little confused too. A couple of minutes after that and the surprise contents of the shell were revealed to be mermaids. Sadly for us, one was pink and one was green, which is not good, although of course that is the nature of surprise.

From the back of the ample packaging I deduced that these mermaids had colour-change tails. I dutifully supplied a separate vessel  filled with cold water and behold the best bit of the exercise- the tails did indeed change colour. And The Girls happily spent the next ten minutes dipping them first in the bath tub and then in the cold water. It was hilarious. But it was the only entertaining bit. After they got out of the bath, they declared that they didn’t want the mermaids any more. Ho hum.

Obviously part of this review is in the hands of fickle children who choose something that they assure you they will like and then don’t. But from a parental point of view, I really found the Mermaid Magic Fizz and Surprise to be annoying. The amount of packaging that it created was, frankly, unacceptable. The length of time it took you to make the product bath-ready was annoying. And the end result was not that exciting, if  am honest. There is no doubt that the colour-change element of the toy is thrilling and astonishing to children, but I don’t know that this is enough. There are twelve of these mermaids to collect but you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s broken out of it’s shell- you could spend a fortune and never get the full set.

I appreciate that reviews like this are very subjective. Perhaps at 3-and-50-weeks LBG is too young for the 4+ product. Perhaps she is too fussy. Or perhaps it’s just not our thing. Whatever the reason, we are very grateful to findmeagift.com for giving us a chance to try it out.

*disclosure: findmeagift.com kindly sent LBG her Mermaid Surprise without any expectations. The opinions in this post are our own- although I may have paraphrased LBG a bit. She tends to go on.