Sunday, May 18, 2008

Childhood is Calling

Childhood is Calling is the official Rice Krispies Web site that I was asked to do a review for. I'll admit that I was pretty cynical as I set out to review this site as I HATE the Rice Krispies commercial. True, I hate about 99% of the commercials on TV but there's something about the woman Ohhhhhhh ohhhhhing in the background as they try to promote eating Rice Kripsies as a family bonding activity that really grates on my nerves.

But, being the fair person that I am I decided to put aside my dislike for the commercial and give the website an unbiased review. Joseph helped me out and gave me his opinions.

It's actually a pretty cute site. It has games for kids, recipes, nutritional information, music and more. Joseph tried out several of the games and liked most of them. His favorite was the one where you could decorate your own virtual rice krispie treat, as strange as that sounds. One feature that he really like about the games was that a lot of them could be played with two people. Joseph is still small enough to sit on my lap so we sat together and played some of the turn based games several times.

In addition to the recipes from the good folks at Kellogg's, you can find recipes submitted by "people like you". I guess people like you like a lot of dessert because that's what all the recipes are. I'm seriously considering trying to come up with a dinner recipe using Rice Krispies and seeing if they'll put it on the site. (Baked chicken with a rice Krispie coating perhaps?)

Like all websites that are designed to promote a specific product, the marketing is pretty heavy handed. I mean, a game where you decorate a Rice Krispie treat? Not exactly subtle. Still, Joseph enjoyed the games (in fact, he asked me to mark the site as one of his favorites) and it's totally child-safe so I would feel ok with him visiting it without me hovering over his shoulder. If nothing else it's a good way to kill 15 minutes or so. And if there's one thing that kids need, it's a way to spend more time on the Internet (says the lady who just let her kids spend time on the site so that he could help her with a review.)

A final note, right now on the site you can get a coupon for $1 off Rice Krispies with Strawberries. Not a bad deal.

This compensated (yet entirely honest) review has been cross posted at Problem Girl Shops. That's where posts of this nature will usually go from here on out.

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