Casdon Shopping Basket and Casdon Grocery Set Age 2+ Review
DISCLOSURE – THIS ITEM WAS GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW. ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE THE REVIEWER’S OWN.
Reviewed by Michelle
The Casdon shopping basket and Casdon grocery set are perfect sets for pretend play. They could be combined with pretend money and a till to make a perfect shopping set up for pretend play including sneaky maths practice, starting with basic counting and when the children are older addition and subtraction. Having only just turned two my little boy is just learning to count but has showed no interest in counting the packets with me yet.
These toys are labelled as suitable for age two and up and thus I was expecting them to be plastic, a robust material to meet the needs of toddler play. However all the boxes are cardboard and the tin labels are paper. The play food that comes in the grocery set is plastic and so has stood up to the toddlers roughness. Unfortunately within ten minutes of opening the shopping basket we had ripped cardboard boxes and labels already pulled off the tins. We don’t have a pretend kitchen yet so we lost a couple of the food boxes due to the toy box allowing them to get squished when my son tidied his toys away.
The shopping basket came filled to the brim with food tins and some packets. The Grocery set had the food boxes flat packed ready to be put together and contained the pretend fruit and vegetables and four food cans. After seeing that the cardboard wouldn’t hold up to toddler play I set those that survived the initial play session aside for when he is older.
Both sets provide pretend versions of many items that we regularly shop for as well as some common fruits and vegetables. All the items are very easily recognised as things we select and put in our trolley at the the supermarket; for example pasta, tea bags, sugar, banana, grapes. My little boy could easily tell what everything was. The pretend fruit and vegetables are perfect replicas of the real thing. We have had great fun pretending to shop for the plastic food and tins. The shopping basket has been filled and emptied many times over and I have had fun trying to guess what my son has decided the tins are each time. Without the labels it is entirely up to his imagination which tinned food they’re holding each time though peas are a firm favourite.
The shopping basket itself is smaller than I expected but is a really good size for little toddler hands. It is a bright yellow colour with blue handles. Sadly one of the handles comes out very easily when my boy is pulling on it and I’ve had to put it back on quite a few times when it’s been played with. It hasn’t broken completely and has just needed popped back in each time.
As so much of the items in these sets are cardboard and therefore need handled delicately I think they would be much more appropriate for a slightly older child, unless there is two year old who understands that cardboard and paper are delicate and can’t be played with rambunctiously. Unfortunately this child is not my toddler. We will for now continue to have lots of fun playing pretend shopping and pretend cooking with the plastic foodstuffs and the tins. In a year or two when he is less rough on his toys I’ll get the cardboard food packets out and try again with those.
We love to receive toys that have withstood play time for one child and love to pass our toys on as they are outgrown. Whilst cardboard and paper are more environmentally friendly than plastic they don’t have any durability and can’t be passed to another child or a charity shop which is disappointing. I now see that most shopping basket and food set toys are the same as these sets with cardboard packets.
Rating: 4/5
RRP:
Casdon Shopping Basket £8 can be purchased from Casdon here.
Casdon Grocery Set £12 can be purchased from Casdon here.