So I'm somewhat addicted to Woot.com. One deal every day, until it sells out. Well, now they've added Kids.Woot.com... Great. At least now I can blame TheBoy for my addiction. I haven't purchased that much from them really, and just because it's a good deal, doesn't always mean I can afford it, and rarely does it mean I need it. 

The Zing! Home Sweet Foam Playhouse retails for $200. KidsWoot had it for $80 + $5 shipping. It looks huge and fun, so I had to have it. (With HisMother's permission of course. I'm a man, but I'm not stupid.)

The box is pretty big. It has it's own carry/storage bag, that's a big plus. It has 23 steps in the instructions. And of course, the first piece for the first instruction, is on the BOTTOM! Not exactly genius packaging planning. But my neurosis would have had all of the pieces out first anyway. 

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Once TheBoy finished his lunch and realized what was going on behind him (and Phineas&Ferb was over), he jumped in to help.


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And by help I mean clean the chalk board. Sorry DadLabs.


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It goes together fairly simply, and jumping ahead in the sequence isn't gonna mess you up. It'd be cooler if the walls were as thick as the floor foam, as they are a little flimsy during construction, especially with the weight of thick 2 year old leaning on them. But once all 4 walls are up, it's ok. I like that it's a very porous "plastic" foam, not styrofoam. The pieces will bend, not break or crack.


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The walls are a lil' tough to push into the floor, particularly at the corners where you have to also join the vertical corners. Nothing an adult can't easily handle. I imagine a 6 or 7 year old could build this virtually on their own.


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(I also suspect that as is, it's a lil' 'babyish' for a 7 year old, but they have bigger imaginations and it would be a good starting point for a fort/hideout/tent/compound, and equally good for destruction play.) But for constructing, any one younger just isn't gonna have enough 'umph' to futz with the foam. The slats/slots are supposed to be tight. I believe these will get looser over time, but with everything connected, I think the overall structural integrity will be fine.


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It took me about 40 minutes from box to completed house. I imagine that will be about 20 minutes next time, as it will be floor/walls/roof and done. I won't be building the planter boxes or mailbox, nor futzing with the lil' awning pieces above the windows and flowers. TheBoy just doesn't care about them at this point. The window panes do seem to add some wall stability, so those will probably still go on. And I won't be so neurotic about the directions either. ;) Upon deconstruction, I packed it in a way that will make reconstruction fast and simple.


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It's the perfect size for his lil' chair, or his big Elmo couch. We mostly crawled around it and played peek-a-boo (also known as "Holy Crap You Scared the Turdlets Outta Me Daddy!") through the windows and "sky light."


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At one point, he sat in the doorway and watched TV (Hey, it's PBS, get off my back).


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And with a bit of coaxing, I got him to take a nap inside, but I think that had more to do with the Elmo couch than the playhouse. (I just really wanted to get a butt-in-air nap photo to share with his girlfriends when he's 17.)


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So, after a couple of days, here's my assessment: It's not quite $85 worth of cool... YET. But I believe we will get a couple of years outta this thing and we will get our money's worth. It is definitely NOT $200 worth of cool. It would need to be built out of wood and come with all the required hardware for that. (You could easily build a 'permanent' play house this size, or even bigger, for around $200, but it wouldn't be portable.)

It's light weight, water resistant, and fairly portable. It packs up flat, but it's still a big flat bag. It can go outside easily and is weather resistant (but don't expect it not to kill the grass or not fade if ya leave it out there too long). It's soft. So when TheBoy trips over the 3/4 inch "front lawn" of it, he won't crack his melon on the doorway, nor will he 'break' the foam wall. And it looks like duct tape will make any tear repairs easy.

If you could buy this foam in uncut sheets somewhere, the possibilities would only be limited by your floorspace (and your budget). Even if both of those are small, you could do a lot with this stuff.

Awesome. Though we may need a sit down with TheBoy to figure out what the erasure was all about. Hostility over time dad spends online watching goofballs?

I just signed up for Woot and even got an iPhone app. More for Wine.Woot than Kid.Woot, sad to say. I hold you directly responsible.

I'm also impressed you took the thing down when you were done. If I set that thing up, it would be a feature of the living room until the kid graduated HS.

Nice, Nik.

I set up our PeaPod Toddler tent for an experiment yesterday. We need him to be willing to sleep in it at night when we travel. I'd love to see him nap in it, too.

Play space is the new real estate bubble on our block these days. Pack & Play, PeaPod, baby swing, baby bouncer, and kid furniture that were gifts from the In-Laws which we have no room for (neither the furniture nor the in-Laws) have taken away nearly 500 sf of our floor space!

I don't think it's DL hostility, I'm just generally not allowed to write on the chalkboard (though he didn't see me do it - he just knew HE didn't)...

DC, your forthcoming Woot problem is yours Holmes. I din't even mention WineWoot! That's all you.

And the house stayed up for 2 days... I just couldn't handle it anymore, as after that first day, he'd just walk around it and look inside... I think he really is kinda young for it as far as imaginative play, but he'll get there. But it came down more because it takes up half the floor space in the living room. It just had to go for awhile. We'll build/destroy it again on DadNights (when HisMother is in class).

Ben, we currently have the problem of what to do with the stuff he's outgrown... don't really wanna chuck it, even to others with new munchkins, 'cause we know we're not done yet... So I don't suspect the kidchit proliferation problem is going away anytime soon... Though I hope you get to bounce the inlaws soon.

Not to worry, the MiL is gone. At this point, I don't think we could inflate the aero bed anyway.

We are going to have to add a room to the house just to be a full-time GeoTrax warehouse, though.