While the app-loving world eagerly awaits its arrival on 12/15, we’ve been fortunate enough to be playing Toca Boca’s latest gorgeous, multi-touch iOS iPad/iPhone app Toca Kitchen for a couple of weeks now. Known worldwide already for their dazzling Tea Party, Hair Salon (a 12/9 update of which allows for a shampoo & rinse, and hair clips & bows!) and more recently, the free (and totally ad-free) Christmas Hair Salon in which your child can give Santa, along with a very personable conifer, a show-stopping new do.
In Toca Kitchen, children enjoy a mash-up of sorts between Little Chef and Fruit Ninja, only with more ways to, um, attack the food prep conundrum. Players select a guest for their table – boy/girl/cat/cow-thing – then proceed to serve the cartoon foodies a variety of cuisine ranging from t-bone steak to pear to carrot to hay bale, prepared a number of different ways ranging from boiled to cast-iron-skillet grilled to microwaved, and either chopped in a Cuisinart-esque machine, sliced with a chef’s knife, or served whole. All throughout, your child will be making fun choices, and using their fingers and Toca Boca’s flawless executed touch screen performance to make the quartet of famished characters happy, grumpy, or dreamy for their preferred means of food prep.
One tiny complaint from the Mouse: she’s requested a trash can or compost bin to discard the stem of the tomato and tail of the fish because while these can be cut off, they become reincorporated into the meal when the Cuisinart is used.
No app, regardless of how amazing, should ever replace playing real, um pretend, kitchen or having a real-ish tea party with stuffed animals. But when you wanna snuggle a bit longer in bed on a Saturday morning (hello!), Toca Kitchen and related nuggets of technological wonder are, well, kinda wondrous.
Toca Boca has again delivered a tasty iOS app that cooks up a deliciously good time for children ages 2-7.
Toca Kitchen ($1.99) is available now in the iTunes App store.
*OWTK received a free download of Toca Kitchen to preview the app and facilitate a review. The opinions above are honest and unbiased.
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