James S
Flashlight Enthusiast
with the birth of our second child immanent now we have begun to receive gifts from friends in the hope that when we come out of the first few months and see the light of day again that we might remember who our friends are /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Today we were given this Calypso Mobile which is actually pretty cool!
Like so many baby toys I discovered the first time around, it requires C batteries. But it said that batteries were not included, even though it was clearly making noise and doing it's little light show through the packaging. When I opened the battery compartment I was surprised to see these:
Little plastic carriers that let them put a couple of really cheap AA cells in there instead. Another interesting detail is the little tab on the bottom:
this pushed into a switch in the bottom of the battery compartment and locks the thing into demo mode where it won't run for very long and doesn't use the brighter light bulbs so as to make the "heavy duty" batteries work longer.
Fascinating huh? There is also a little icon on the batteries of a garbage can with a line through it telling me I shouldn't throw them away /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Guess I'll have to keep them forever then... I'll be holding onto the little sleds though, just in case I ever need to emergency power something on a couple of AA's instead of C's. Gotta try them in a 2C Mag or something /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
If anyone else with very small children is interested, we had great success with the "peaceful planet" aquarium with the first child (also ran on C batteries) and this one looks to be even better. Hopefully it will hold his attention for at least a few minutes...
A soon to be very sleep deprived James...
Today we were given this Calypso Mobile which is actually pretty cool!
Like so many baby toys I discovered the first time around, it requires C batteries. But it said that batteries were not included, even though it was clearly making noise and doing it's little light show through the packaging. When I opened the battery compartment I was surprised to see these:
Little plastic carriers that let them put a couple of really cheap AA cells in there instead. Another interesting detail is the little tab on the bottom:
this pushed into a switch in the bottom of the battery compartment and locks the thing into demo mode where it won't run for very long and doesn't use the brighter light bulbs so as to make the "heavy duty" batteries work longer.
Fascinating huh? There is also a little icon on the batteries of a garbage can with a line through it telling me I shouldn't throw them away /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif Guess I'll have to keep them forever then... I'll be holding onto the little sleds though, just in case I ever need to emergency power something on a couple of AA's instead of C's. Gotta try them in a 2C Mag or something /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
If anyone else with very small children is interested, we had great success with the "peaceful planet" aquarium with the first child (also ran on C batteries) and this one looks to be even better. Hopefully it will hold his attention for at least a few minutes...
A soon to be very sleep deprived James...
