Christmas came right on time this year.  I was lucky enough to get one of these babies from my girlfriend’s parents.

This is My Little Sandbox: Space Patrol, a play toy for children aged 3-10.  Since I have the mentality of a nine-year-old, this was the perfect gift for me.  This sandbox from BE Good Company was rated the number one toy of 2007 by Creative Child Online, if that means anything to you.

Let’s see if it lives up to the hype.

The cover of the box is pretty awesome.    It paints a very good picture of what is inside the box.  They don’t try to screw you over, is what I’m saying.

I always carefully inspect the box before opening.  I need to observe every little detail so that I know what I’m getting into.

The back of the box.  It looks like this thing comes with a lot of sweet little toys to play with.  The starry background is also pretty cool.  It does, however, look like it contains many choking hazards.  I’ll have to be extra careful when playing with this one.

The box promises some pretty cool stuff.  “Moon rocks?”  Hell yeah.   I remember seeing moon rocks for sale when I visited the Kennedy Space Center back in elementary school.  The rocks there cost one hundred dollars or something.  I hope the moon rocks in this sandbox are high-caliber and not watered down.

I think what I’m most excited for is the “space bucket.”  I hope that it’s some high-tech robotic bucket, that fills itself with dirt on command.  I have a feeling I might be disappointed.

As for a “grooming rake,” I’m not sure what that is.

Here we go!

Wow this is a jumbled mess.  It looks like the bag of sand broke open already.  That’s fine though.  It saves me the hassle of opening it myself.

The big plastic sheet thing was on top, so I guess I’ll set that up first.  The box says it is a 20″ by 20″ no-mess play mat.  I assume you are supposed to spread it underneath the sandbox to prevent spilled sand from getting in the carpet.

The play mat looks pretty sweet actually.  It definitely reminds me of a 1950s movie poster for sci-fi flicks like Forbidden Planet or The Day The Earth Stood Still.  I’m not sure if little kids will appreciate it, but I sure do.  I’m glad they went with an older look, and not some stupid new age “cool” moon surface.

Let’s see what else we got here.

The astronauts look fantastic.  Biff and Gordon Jr. both seem to be fully stocked with all the state-of-the-art astro gear.  Biff’s carrying some sort of boxy communication device (probably for moon experiments) and Gordon Jr. is carrying a laser gun and rope.  These astronauts kick ass.

My Little Sandbox also gets points for calling them “astronauts” and not “spacemen.”  I hate the phrase spacemen because it reminds me of the movie “Space Chimps,” and I hated that movie.

Biff and Gordon Jr. need some wheels, so let’s check out the moon rover.

Here is the moon rover.  It definately doesn’t look like a moon rover.  The only space-age thing about it is the satellite dish on the front.  My grandpa’s barn also has a satellite dish on the front.  Lame.

The chairs and floor of the moon rover look like they are made of wood.  I guess NASA had a little bit of a budget problem and cut some corners while building this thing.

How am I supposed to be sure the satellite dish even works?  This moon rover sucks.  Also, it’s too small for the astronauts to fit into.  That means that you can’t put the astronauts inside it and drive them around.  What’s the point in playing with the moon rover if there aren’t any passengers?  My Little Sandbox really screwed up here.

The box mentioned asteroids…

These are two asteroids, and they are both pretty cool.  They are a lot lighter than I thought they would be.  I expected them to weigh as much as an actual rock.  Instead they are about as light as ping pong balls.  Some people would say this is a negative.  I view this with indifference.

My only real gripe with the asteroids is that they do not break apart easily.  This makes it tough to stage realistic asteroid impacts (asteroids would not stay in one piece after hitting the ground!).  Maybe next year’s version will include destructible asteroids (I can only hope).  It would be cool to throw an asteroid at the sandbox and see it break apart on impact.

Asteroids create craters, so a crater is included in the box.

I’m very glad this was included because a crater is very hard to make on your own.

The crater is made from actual plastic, and not rock.  This is definitely a positive.  The paint job looks pretty good too, and when it’s actually in the sand the crater looks great.

The crater sort of reminds me of the old board game, It From the Pit.

That’s a picture of It From the Pit.  That game was hella tight.  The object of the game was to make it all the way around the pit, without the monster grabbing you.  It made for some great evenings.  The motor inside the pit was really loud and it broke easily.  Overall it was good times all around.

Anyway, back to the My Little Sandbox: Space Patrol.  It also comes with an American Flag, a shovel, and the famous “grooming rake” and “space bucket.”

There they are, all packaged together.  The flag looks pretty great.  So does the shovel.

I am, however, a little disappointed with the space bucket and grooming rake.  The grooming rake is basically just a pitchfork.  They don’t use pitchforks on the moon.

The space bucket also has nothing spacey about it.  It’s just a blue bucket.  That’s stupid.

The box states that the sand is ultra fine.  And indeed, it is.  The sand was so smooth that it easily got caught under my fingernails.  With each word I type, more sand falls out from under my nails and into the keyboard.  This is a negative for sure.

Also the sand stained my fingers black.  I’m not sure why that is.  I think maybe the black dye on the sand is what caused it.  That would be the most likely cause.  Or I suppose it could be from something else I touched.

The last thing included is the moon rocks, which were in a plastic bag but I opened it because I got too excited.  The moon rocks are by far the best thing in the sandbox kit.  They look like they might be real moon rocks.  I estimate that there were about 25 moon rocks included, which is a lot.  I say “were” because I lost some of them shortly after opening the plastic bag.

Let’s set up a muthafludgin space patrol.

First I smoothed out all the sand with my shovel.  It took a long time and I wish I hadn’t spent so long doing it.  However, I did have a very nice looking lunar surface.

The space shovel worked pretty well.  It worked almost as well as an Earth shovel.

Next, I scattered a few moon rocks and put down the crater.  The crater looks pretty cool when it’s surrounded by black sand.  If you want to save this picture, right click on it with your mouse and select “Save Image As.”

My favorite part was placing the astronauts.  I figured that Biff wanted to stand next to the crater because he was collecting crater samples for his experiment.

The astronaut figures reminded me of Army Men, which gave me the idea of creating Space Army Men and Space Aliens that they would fight against.  That would be pretty cool, and I would prefer it to the Army Men, and the Cowboys and Indians.  Perhaps I should email a toy company…

Here’s what my setup is so far.  You can see that Biff and Gordan Jr. tried to jump the crater in the moon rover, but it got stuck, so they ditched it.

I think that this is turning into a pretty great toy.  Already there are tons of scenarios to play through.  Let’s throw in that shovel, pitchfork, flag, and the stupid bucket.

I gave the shovel to Biff just because he seemed to be the shoveling type.  The shovel is obviously out of proportion.  It’s a good thing there is no gravity on the moon, because otherwise I bet that thing would be too heavy to use efficiently.

I decided to give the bucket one more go, but I still didn’t like it.  I ended up just setting it down in some sand.

Biff got the grooming rake because he’s raking in the moon rocks.  This tool is also way out of proportion.  Biff’s hands are full so I’m not sure how he’s capable of using it.  Some sort of space age technology I suppose.

Here is the beautiful American Flag, waving in the wind.  I know there actually isn’t any wind on the moon, but a guy can pretend right?  This is my favorite picture by the way.

This is what my set up ended up looking like.  I think it’s pretty cool.  The sandbox sure does look great on that no-mess play mat.  That bucket looks really big from all the way back here.  I guess space buckets are just bigger than what I’m used to.

The ingenuity of the My Little Sandbox is that when you are done playing with it, all you have to do is fold up the play mat, put it inside the box, and close the lid.  And that’s it.  It’s very portable,  which is important these days, and I love it.  If I’ve got to go to class, and can just load it up into my backpack and head out.   The box is pretty durable because it is lined with wood.

Other than the sand that stained my fingers black, I’d say this sandbox is pretty clean.

Jack’s Take

The My Little Sandbox: Space Patrol is a solid toy.  If I was aged 3-10, I could see myself playing with it for weeks, months, or even a year.  But no longer.  The astronauts are awesome and fun to play with.  However, some of the pieces are very disproportionate and bring down the sense of realism.  A lack of an alien action figure also hurts.  The ultra fine sand is neat and refreshing to the touch.

A-

A pretty damn good toy.  Congrats to BE Good Company for a great plaything.