Customer Reviews

Haba Play Food - Cake

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Our kids, after their own birthdays had come and gone, began to throw birthday parties of their own, concocting all manner of imaginary cakes in their little play kitchen. I figured they'd love to have a little birthday cake that they could serve up to their 'guests' as it seems a new animal or doll has a birthday party each day. And why not? Birthdays are fun, even when the cooks are bickering in the kitchen over who gets to make the cake. Anyway...

After looking at wooden cakes from both Haba and Erzi I settled on this one. The diameter is, as the details state 4.2" and the height 1.2", so each piece is a fair size and matches well in scale to our other play foods, Green Toys dishes, etc.

Each of the eight slices of cake measures 1.8" x 1.8" (at the widest point), which is nice. In and of themselves, the pieces are not choking hazards, which is what I was hoping for as we have a two year old in the house. Of course the little .75" blue and yellow embellishments *would* be choking hazards if they were to detach, but they do feel very securely attached, so it's more of a mild supervision toy.

The cake itself is very pretty, and reminds me of unfrosted red velvet. The embellishments look like little M&Ms. The wood is smoothly sanded, stained and varnished in that typical, aesthetically pleasing Haba way.

So, overall I'm pretty pleased with it, and I think the kids are too. My only complaint is that the cake comes in a brown paper bag rather than a little cake box or tin, like many of the other Haba foods. Since the varnished pieces are slippery - for lack of a better word - they are difficult to align with one another to compose the pretty, round, finished cake. What would have made this toy absolutely perfect would have been to have a tin in which they could be assembled, put away, and displayed in. Or, perhaps, making them into them a 'cutting food' that can be assembled with velcro attachments. Maybe I'll attempt the latter fix on my own. In any case the pieces slide about, and they tend to get strewn around our already fully-stocked play kitchen. Eight new pieces make for a lot of new mess, and I can't help but wonder if four slices would have been more appropriate while equally fun, considering the lack of packaging.

Despite those relatively minor issues, I do think that, of the wooden cake options, this was definitely the right one to go for. The price is fair for what you get, the pieces, attractive and seem to be durable as all our other Haba foods are. I wouldn't pass this one up, but would be aware of its drawbacks before you decide to purchase it.