Product Review: athleticBaby Soccer!

We don’t have cable and Cakes doesn’t watch TV, but there have been days when we’ve needed a little downtime and I’ve wished I had something worthwhile she could watch. So, when I was asked if I wanted to review athleticBaby Soccer! for The Parent Bloggers, I was happy to do so.

Kids of all ages, from tots to teens, play soccer, warm up, dance, train, and have a good time. Cakes was entertained. Eddie Coker’s original music is catchy and fun--Cakes was bobbing her head and swaying her butt. More importantly, the music didn’t annoy me like most children’s music does.

Criticisms? A couple of the segments are a little too kinetic. There could be a little more ethnic diversity.

Overall, I like it. It encourages activity (we played along with a couple of balls) unlike those awful videos (that shall remain nameless) of toys being manipulated by eerily disembodied limbs. It’s a great introduction to the sport of soccer.

The video emphasizes the joy of sport; there was no emphasis on winning (except, perhaps, one image of a child waving a trophy).

I also like the fact that the company’s founder and CEO, Karen Foster, is a mother of three who founded athleticBaby with the goal of promoting physical activity to children. Soccer! is the fifth instalment in the series which includes Walk, Run and Play, Golf, Basketball, and athelticBaby All-Star.

All in all, thumbs up. However, I won’t be buying a Hockey! version. I plan to encourage sports selectively: I can picture myself on a sunny summer afternoon, sitting by the soccer field on my folding chair with a cold one in my stainless steel coffee mug. I cannot picture myself sitting in a cold ice rink at five am on a Sunday morning.

Find out more about the athleticBaby series at www.athleticbaby.com.