Our Skylander party, talkative children and bonding over video games #Ad

The children in our neighborhood like us.  I sent out the call that I needed guests to play Skylanders SWAP Force.  The parents must have thought I was trying to open up my own daddy day camp, but I assured them that I just wanted the kids to come over and play Skylanders.  Win/win, the kids go someplace so the adults can relax and the kids get to have fun. 

After hanging out with a variety of children and talking about Skylanders at our Skylander party here are some things that I learned from our young video game players.

They like to fly.

Whenever there was a chance for their character to fly they jumped on it.  Even if they were aimlessly flying through hoops when they could’ve taken the shorter route, they flew.

The parents liked hearing about the $100K scholarship that Skylanders is giving away, but the kids had suddenly tuned me out now that the game was on.

Coins are currency

One reason that the kids loved any figure that could fly is because they could get more coins that way.  They then showed me how to cash in those coins to supercharge your power.  Kids and video games, I tell ya.  I don’t remember being that knowledgeable about Robotron back in the day.

Kids love to share knowledge

If you want to know something about your kid ask them when they’re going to sleep or when they’re playing a video game.  Presuming they aren’t too into the game-or you can focus the conversation around the game, then it’s like Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth talk.  They were telling us about their friends, who they really liked, what they found annoying and pretty much anything else we wanted to know.  We’ll remember this little trick when they get to their teen years.

Plastic cups are great

Chips, kids playing video games and more mean that something will get spilled.  The dogs will chase the chips, the kids will spill something getting too animated while playing or dad will leave his beverage too close to his feet.   Either way, plastic cups go a long way towards making the party fun, but not crazy.  See also: Plastic cutlery is awesome.

By the end of our Skylanders SWAP Force video game session I had learned how to pause the game, correctly switch out the bases and tops for the most efficient game play and how to do lots of things within the game I hadn’t figured out yet.   The adults were still curious about the $100,000 scholarship and the kids wanted to borrow some of our Skylanders SWAP Force characters to continue playing at home.

Unfortunately for them, borrowing Skylanders and our Doritos chips have the same policy.  Hands off.

Don’t forget, now through June 13, 2014, fans 13 years and older can vote for their favorite of the three finalist names, and the winning character will come to life in Skylanders Trap Team™ Video Game; The person who receives the most fan votes will get a $100,000 Scholarship. Go vote!

 

This is a sponsored post by Frito-Lay, all opinions are my own.