Sunday, November 16, 1997

Some toys sold as educational

By The Associated Press

Some examples of items sold in stores specializing in educational entertainment:

-Out to Launch, a kit to help understand aerodynamics with more than 30 experiments on air pressure, Bernoulli's principle of fluid dynamics, paper airplane designs and construction of a water rocket launcher.

-Bones and the Secrets They Tell, encourages the user to learn how "bone detectives" put the pieces together by assembling 171 puzzle pieces into a life-sized model of a Neanderthal skull.

-"Gross Anatomy," an off-color coloring book that includes pages with smoker's lungs and vomitus.

-Dessert molds in the shape of brains, hearts and hands.

-Space Age Crystals, a kit encouraging potential buyers to watch "sparkling geodes grow right before your eyes."

-Micro Mucus, a kit to "make slime, create a starch blob, form a gooey glob combo."

-Phonics Desk, a learning system that brings letters and their phonic sounds to life. Just press the letter "C" for example, and the voice inside pronounces the letter, the phonetic sound "kuh" and says the word "cat" using the letter.

-"Street French," a book promising the best of French slang such as "melon deplume - to be completely bald (lit) to have a plucked melon for a head."

-PBS videos, including "Riverdance," "Russia's War - Blood upon the Snow," the story of the Soviet people during World War II struggling to survive under Joseph Stalin, and the nine-volume "The Civil War."

-A marbling set for paper or fabric.

-A kit to make beeswax candles.

-Games, theater kits, books, videos and stuffed animals based on characters featured on PBS shows, including "Wishbone," "Barney," "Sesame Street" and "Arthur."

End advance for Sunday, Nov. 16