Busy Tot Box

This is one of those things that’s heavily marketed to parents as a way to “nurture young minds, hearts, and bodies” (per the company’s web site). And what parent can resist that? Well….you. Because this box really isn’t worth the money or the hassle. The Busy Tot Box bills itself as an “all-inclusive” box-o-fun, complete with crafts, snacks, recipe ideas, and a “surprise gift” that arrives on your doorstep once a month. To be honest, we were really excited about this product. Until it arrived. Then we were just frustrated. The subscription price includes only enough supplies for one child. So if you’re hoping to sneak another kid in on the arts & crafts action (as we were), you can just forget about that right now (crafts for additional kids are $5 per kid per month). The other thing that peeved us was that the art projects required way too much supervision for our 4.5-year-old tester kid — despite the fact that the box is intended exactly for that age. Worse, the crafts in the box we tested were kind of junky: the self adhesive on one of the products was completely dried up so we resorted to glue. Not a big deal — except that the instructions extolled the virtues of not having to use glue. So much for that. In the end, we all decided that the excitement of getting a box in the mail did not trump the sad reality of the actual box. If your kids really want the postal excitement, we recommend you buy crafts and snacks for less someplace else, stick ’em in a box, and mail ’em to your kid. All in all, the Busy Tot Box isn’t crummy, but neither is it cool. So we’re sticking it in the Kinda column with the caveat that we wouldn’t waste the money on it ourselves.