16 Jun 2018

Hasbro Lost Kitties blind bag series 1

So Hasbro finally got in on the "blind bags that aren't MLP" thing.
A bit late to the party but hey, new blind bag toys are interesting.

These are currently on special promotional offer most places, buy 1 get 1 free as part of their launch. They retail at £5 so that's £2:50 each on special offer, which was too tempting to pass up so yeah... they came home with me lol.


This won't be a long review but i'll dive right in with these.




The toys come in milk cartons, small single serving sized milk cartons rather like the ones in American schools (the UK ones look more like juice boxes)

It's cute, but not overly universal as few other countries actually HAVE milk served in cartons like this.
But hey, whatever.

they're quite heavy, which was the first thing that struck me when I picked one up.
The box doesn't give much away. It says there's a cat, some er... accessories? and a tray of... god knows what. Is that a tv dinner? a litter tray? Chinese takeout? Who knows.

Note: Contains wheat - this had me scratching my head all the more. Was there food in there?


There isn't a huge amount of info online about these, a few videos on youtube and that's about it. I hadn't watched any before buying these so I was pretty much in the dark grabbing these.

The last curiousity was the Littlest Pet Shop logo on the bottom of the box. So... these are part of the LPS line? It's so tiny and out of the way it's like an afterthought. Weird.


Also worth noting, they all seem to have a serial number on the side of them. Is this related to the contents? like the lego minifigures?

For those who can't see, the code on one reads 80791 047, I didn't get a picture of the other one's side so i'm sorry. I didn't notice it till I started deboxing. The other one reads: 80741 029.

So let's open these suckers.


I opened 047 first because it was closest.

The carton opens up and inside there's a poster, a large sheet of paper instructions in multiple languages that doesn't seem to say much (it's copyright info by the looks, really uninteresting) and then under all that a heavy tub of.. uh..


Pink crap.

Is it putty? Is it play dough?


The back of the poster calls is "shaping compound" and shows a cat playing in what looks like a sand pit, which had me thinking it was something like Kinetic sand. It isn't. 

Unpeeling the lid and sniffing it didn't help much. It doesn't smell like play dough, it lacks that plasticky aroma, it smells.. weird though. Not unpleasant, just.. weird. Doughy I suppose.

So the idea is that INSIDE this gloop are the surprise toys. So.. I have to dig around in the mystery goo? Great.

It feels like play-doh, maybe a little more squishy, but it's some sort of modelling dough that's for sure. Wtf does "Shaping compound" mean anyway? What, they couldn't call it "modelling dough"? Heck, Hasbro OWN Play-doh so why the hell didn't they just call it fricken play-doh? I mean it's not play doh, it smells different, but why use a different generic dough and  not just use a product they already own? I don't get it.

It's also really sticky and not that easy to remove from the tiny carton.

At the bottom, under the dough was a sticker. INSIDE the dough there were two plastic accessories and a blue bag presumably containing the kitty.


Everything is COVERED in dough. I'm not sure burying everything in dough is really a wise idea. I mean, the sticker has a protective plastic baggie, as does the cat, but the sax and ball of wool? Just rammed in there randomly.


The sticker it turns out, gives the whole game away. The figure in the bag matches the sticker, so you don't actually have to even open the blue bag to work out who you got, just lift the dough out and see what  the sticker is.


This guy is called Meowzart apparently, he has a pink droplet next to his name but there's no key to tell me what the droplets signify. There's white, pink and brown (uh.. strawberry, vanilla and chocolate milk? I hope. Brown dough seems... worrying. Hey kids, have some poop dough! Niiice)

 Why Hasbro? Why no key?


Counting the droplets up suggests that white is common (18/36), brown might be uncommon (12/36) and pink might be rare? (6/36) but i'm not 100% sure. WHY DID THEY NOT INCLUDE A KEY!!????

Eugh.

Anyway,

Mewozart is from the Workinit set, which looks to have two rares in it. Random.

Each of them is supposedly based on some meme or something, though I can't honestly recognize 90% of them. I think they're just random "cute cat things" and Hasbro is using the term "meme" to be "cool and hip with the kids" without actually knowing wtf it actually is. 

there's one that looks like it's puking!? Ew. And one apparently drowning in a toilet? Er.. .you okay Hasbro?


The little dude came with a green sax and a purple ball of wool, but i'm not certain these are at all related to the cat or it's just a fluke he came with a musical instrument.


There's a few paint defects here and there, especially on the lighter sections like the tail tip.


Under his molded on keyboard there's a giant musical note indent. Is this for the not-play-doh?


The ball of wool is hollow, which is a problem. It was absolutely STUFFED full of dough when I extracted it and I can't get all the doughy crap out. I'm just not convinced this was a great idea. It's very messy and means everything ends up with dough residue everywhere.

My youngest stole the dough as soon as he could grab it, and ran off with it. *sigh* He loves play doh stuff. 


I opened 029 next, and it's white!

Well, it's a kinda creamy white colour, a bit like milk which I assume is what they were going for.
Not sure what the swirly splat is meant to be though.


Inside the white goo was all this.

Again, covered in sticky doughy gloop.


This guy is a common (white droplet) called Captain Kitteh.

On his sticker he's gaming so I assume the controller is his... isn't it?

Not sure what the rocket is about.

Or what the hell that is on his head. A wig? A helmet? An onion? Nobody in the family can decide. We're all just bewildered by this thing.


The rocket didn't end up with too much dough inside it, but the controller is covered.

It has some sort of pixel cat indent in the back of it.


I think Meowzart is cuter. I like his closed smug eyes.


For scale, the Lost Kitties are just a little shorter than a lego minifigure.


And slightly larger than a Hatchimal Colleggtable.

They're made of hard, solid, plastic.


I got the dough back, but only after youngest had smooshed both lots into one big pile.

Looking at promo pics, it looks like you're supposed to do this with it and I don't really know why. I mean ramming stuff artistically into it is kinda amusing, but you can't leave them like that because the putty will dry out.

Also, I assume this is the thing that contained wheat, which makes me wonder quite how long the dough will last before turning moldy and starting to smell bad, like home made dough made with flour often does. Hmmm. Apparently actual play doh contains wheat and masses of salt as well though, and it lasts forever. So who the heck knows? The fact nowhere on the packaging tells me what this stuff even IS makes me a bit... unhappy as a parent. I kinda want to know what mysterious squishy substance my child is playing with you know?


The indents in the accessories and such DO leave patterns in the dough, but I don't think it's overly exciting. Maybe because i'm not 5.


I mean, it's play doh like stuff, what more can you say about it?


Shoving kitties into dough was fun for about 5 minutes but being unable to display them like this for any length of time is limiting I think. I mean, kids love displaying stuff don't they? Will they really want to have to put the dough back into an airtight box every time?
No, they'll leave it out like this, and then it'll dry up and the pieces will have to be chipped out again.

And the packaging doesn't even come with a sealable lid so you have to go obtain a separate airtight box for this stuff. Better I think to just buy some play doh, which comes with a sealable container and in more attractive colours than brown. Who wants brown play doh?

Are they worth £5? I don't think they really are. I mean the little toy is a £3 blind bag toy and the extra addition of Dough doesn't really, imo add much. It'll all just get wadded into a big gross brown ball and then it'll either dry up or turn funny.

It's interesting to note that the colour of the dough seems to directly related to the rarity of the figure inside (so if you get pink dough, you know it's a rare) but how much play doh stuff do you need around the house? I mean this stuff gets ground into carpets, sofas, family pets... as a parent I hate the stuff. It's messy and hard to get out of stuff. I've had to wash play doh out of the cat AND youngest son's hair before now, and it's not an easy task (especially not with a pissed off cat who's mad the kid wadded dough into them in the first place)

I wonder if maybe these would have done better were they just the figure and done away with the extra price adding dough crap.
But maybe some people really really can't get enough of not-play-doh?

At their current bogof price they're not bad, but once they shoot up to full price? I'm not convinced they're bringing enough NEW or interesting to the table to really justify the high price tag.
Especially not when I could buy a Hatchimal or a Flush Force or literally any other similar blind bag toy for half the price.

They'll be releasing multipacks as well, in full size milk cartons, but it remains to be seen what sort of price point those have.
Or how much random not-play-doh.


8 comments:

  1. I think Captain Kitteh is supposed to be a gamer. His hat reminds me of the one worn by Monster High's resident gamer, Kjersti Trollson.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. what a bobblehat? It doesn't really look like a bobblehat though, which is why i'm so confused.

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  2. Captain Kitteh has based off of Lime Cat, he's wearing a cut up lime.

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    Replies
    1. that actually... yes, you're right. Though why did Hasbro make it purple? Is it actually an onion then? Rather than a lime.

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    2. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get permission from the owners of those photos to make the figurines, so they made some changes for legal purposes.

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  3. I think the goo colors are meant to represent milk flavors, plain, chocolate, and strawberry, though translated into semisolid form changes the inference drastically.

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  4. If you still have captain Kitteh, would you sell him?

    ReplyDelete