Toca Tea Party – Stunning, awesome, fun, cute and the PERFECT social party app for kids.
Wow. Okay, so this might be a spoiler for this review, but wow. I have a LOT of apps and books for my daughters. A lot. They like a lot of them. They keep coming back to a lot of them, talking about a lot of them, etc.None have had the kind of impact Toca Tea party has.I contacted the developer about this because I’d seen it review a few places.
Because my daughters are 6, I thought they would be an interesting demographic for this, as they’re a bit older than what I believe the app is designed for. But they’re girly girls, and they enjoy tea parties.I sat them down with it, laid out a little blanket on the floor and gently placed the iPad on it.
Within a minute, they jumped into the game. Like that, the entire afternoon was sucked into the fun of them having a tea party with each other and their stuffed animals.
Now, this app isn’t going to teach your children how to read or how to do quadratic equations, but that’s fine with me.
What it will do is create a world of imagination for children. You have a simple, clean and perfect way of setting up a tea party for 3 people.
The process to set up the tea party is simple and ANYONE can do it. This is how the app can appeal to children starting at the age of 2, possibly even younger.
When you load up the app, all you have to do is start it up and click the “Play” button.
Once you’ve done that, your child’s imagination can run free. They can keep it as a tea party for themselves, or grab their best toy friends to sit at each of the 3 spots. Once everything is set up, the drinking and eating is super simple. Just tap on the food to eat and tap on the drinks to drink. You’ve got a radio that has 2 stations of looping background music, it’s not much but it’s better than nothing!
Be careful, if you’re not – You’ll spill your drink! But no need to cry over spilled Lemonade, Coffee or Tea! Just grab a tissue and wipe it on up.
You get unlimited refills on your drinks, which is only fair because it’s a shame when you spill them. As for the food, you get a total of 4 sweets to eat.
One of my favorite aspects of the app are the sound effects as you eat and drink. They’re incredibly cute and add to the whole “adorable” atmosphere.
Multitouch is enabled, so if you’ve got a few kids going at a time, you can have each dragging a snack onto each plate. While you’re cleaning up a spill, someone can munch on a donut.
My only issue comes up when you finish up the snacks. The second they’re gone, the Toca Tea Party comes to an end. I’d like to see it leave it up, or provide a choice to keep going and refill. But, again, to keep it simple for users of all ages, it simply resets so you can do it again. I can’t fault the design for that.
And of course, once cleaning time comes up, the screen shifts and you can either drag your dishes into the wash, or let your iPad’s accelerometer do the work and let them drop straight into the sink. Either way is fine.
Once done, everyone gets a round of applause and a simple menu pops up to reset everything and start over or to go back to the home screen!
Anyway, I could go on and on, but I’m going to toss in a video to show just how much fun my kids had. This was their first time touching the app.
I think that says it all. They continued to play it after this until I finally forced them to stop. They could easily have kept going on and on.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itDVveAxrjg&w=640&h=385]
Speaking of going on and on, I’m going to stop here and get on to the summary 
What’s Great
- Simple enough for a 2 year old to use with limited adult interaction.
- So cute that it makes Hello Kitty look boring and bland in comparison.
- Bright, colorful and engaging artwork, animations and sounds. If you don’t find yourself smiling after hearing the “Munch, munch, munch” sounds as your little one taps on the snacks, you’ve got no heart!
- Multiple snacks, drinks, tablecloths and plate designs to choose from
- Encourages imagination and social interaction
- Completely closed design, no IAPS, no “sharing to Facebook”. The only thing close to this you’ll find is a link for parents to find other apps by Toca Boca. Perfect for parents who want to keep commercialization to a minimum.
What Could be Better
- Forcing the tea party participants to “clean up” after they’ve eaten the snacks is a bit of a buzz-kill.
- Other than eating, drinking or cleaning, you won’t find anything else here. No mini-games or anything. This isn’t an issue, as the app doesn’t promise any of that, but just be forewarned that it is a tea party and nothing more.
- It wouldn’t hurt to have a bit more option for the snacks and plates.
- More music! The 2 choices are okay, but it’s a little kitschy for my likes, and it wouldn’t hurt to have something else, or a bit more “cute”.
- More spots. At least do a full 4 table settings. My daughters just played the part of their stuffed animals on the first run through, but the more they played with it, the more they were having their “friends” play, one more setting would just even things out.
My Summary
I had to struggle to fill out the section of what could be better. I can usually see both sides of the coin when I’m reviewing an app, but that was tough here. Toca Boca has provided an app that is simply fantastic. It does everything it says it does, and in such a incredibly cute and classy way. The way it promotes imagination and helps build social skills is something so rarely seen these days. Your child will get their hands on Toca Tea Party and it will change the way they interact with the iPad. There’s a chance it won’t enchant them the way it has my daughters, but assuming they’re under 7 and like having social tea party events, they’ll love this. No mess, self-cleaning and a magnificent app that I’m proud to keep on my iPad. In the future, I would like to see a full 4 settings, but there might be a reason there are only 3. I’d also like to see something that would be more “Boy” oriented, simply because this doesn’t NEED to be a girl-only app. Boys these days are playing with things that they enjoy, and that doesn’t necessarily mean trucks and monsters. I know if I had a boy, I’d encourage him to get in on the tea party action, as well. Having something a bit less “frilly” would be great. But these would just be the icing on a very tasty cake
| Review Overview | |
|---|---|
| Fun Factor |  |
| Tons of choices on your tablecloths, easy ways to munch on snacks and slurp up drinks, and a simple easy interface make this great for even the youngest, yet still appealing to older children | |
| Sound | |
| Incredibly cute, enjoyable sounds and music | |
| Replay | |
| With multiple tablecloths, snacks, cups, drinks to choose from, this shold keep your little ones busy for quite some time! | |
| Overall | |
|---|---|
Simply amazing. A charming and endearing app that will transform your iPad into an adorable tea party for 3. I cannot recommend this app higly enough, it's worth every penny, a must have for girls (or boys, if they're cool enough  ) to have a simple, fun and cute tea party with siblings and/or some close imaginary friends. | |
Price: $2.99
iTunes Link – iPad ONLY
**Tested on a 1st and 2nd Generation iPad WiFi model.**NOTE – This is for the iPad ONLY! This will not work on the iPhone. It is NOT universal so please, please do not go in expecting this to work on your iPhone or iPod touch.
