Toca Kitchen - Muslim Friendly Apps

Toca Kitchen Dec 4, 2011

Toca Boca does it again. What can I say? They are rock stars in the childrens app world and we are huge fans! We were super lucky to get an early preview of Toca Kitchen and review it for you, it officially launches on December 15th (so if you are celebrating this holiday season, it would make a great gift for the little iLoving person in your life!).

You have 4 characters to choose from, once you’ve chosen your character you are shown a fridge full of food (all healthy options I might add) and you select what your character will eat. You then have a kitchen full of appliances and cooking implements with which to prepare your food.

You have multiple ways to prepare your food, you can cut it, blend it, fry it, boil it, microwave it or all of the above, all of which have very cool affects on the food. I would love to be able to shake the pan and move the food around that way, but you can stir it with your finger while it’s frying in the pan or boiling in the pot which is fun.

Each character has different preferences and will respond differently to the food depending on what it is and how it’s prepared (I noticed the cat drooling when I put the fish on its plate). A fun observation exercise with the kids, see what each character likes and doesn’t like by preparing several different things for them, will they eat everything you prepare?

As with all of the Toca Boca apps, it is fairly open ended, more of a toy than a game, which is one of the things I love about them! This style of app seems to be very engaging and has the kids actively playing with the device rather than just using it for entertainment. The app is very new (ok, it isn’t even out yet) and I have no real criticisms but there are a few things we’d love to see in the future: At this point you can only cut a given piece of food 3 times (so 3 slices), we’d love to see that opened up. My 4 year old wanted to cut the string off the hay but needed more than 3 cuts so had to restart several times with a new bale of hay, which is not really a problem (lessons in perseverance are good) but it would be nice if you could cut things more if you wanted to. Another thing I’d like to see is the ability to ‘cook’ or ‘prepare’ more than one food item at a time, at this point you can only prepare one item at a time (you can have multiple on the plate, but not in the cooking implements) which unfortunately doesn’t give us a whole lot of meal options.

With all that being said, my kids have moved on from playing Toca Robot non stop, to playing what they lovingly call “Toca Feed” non stop, I haven’t heard any complaints from them. I think this app has great potential for picky eaters and feeding therapy as well (hopefully the fridge will fill up some more in future updates too), my kids are relatively picky eaters but tonight I was able to get them to eat much more chicken than usual because they were pretending to be in Toca Kitchen, I thought that was VERY cool, especially for only having the app 2 days! So thanks for that Toca Boca.

There is music in the background which can’t be turned off separate from the sound affects, but you can turn all sound off from your device settings app or mute it while you play – do not let this stop you from getting this app. I tagged it no violence even though you can cut up the fish, he is already dead and apparently gutted so I wouldn’t let that stop you either.

If you can’t wait until the 15th, Toca Boca also released a FREE Toca Hair Salon Christmas Gift in which you cut and style Santa’s hair and beard and also cut, style and decorate a Christmas tree! We don’t celebrate Christmas here, but we couldn’t resist and the kids are having huge amounts of fun with Santa and the Tree!

In Short

Toca Boca scores another perfect with their new Toca Kitchen digital toy. Great for picky eaters, budding chefs or a safe and mess free way to let the little ones help in the kitchen.

Developer Mention

Toca Boca is truly top of the class in children's toy/game apps. They are very interactive and down to earth with their fans and reviewers and are just a pleasure to have anything to do with.