Sunday Surprise: Li'l Woodzeez Mini Acorn House and Babeez by Battat!

I can't believe that we're almost a week away from Thanksgiving.  It just won't sink into my brain.  Part of the problem is the weather here in New Jersey.  For example, yesterday I was walking in the sun in a tee shirt, and then a few hours later there was a thunderstorm.  A thunderstorm!  In mid-November!  It still feels so much like summer to me.  It feels like Christmas when I go into Target, though.  The toy aisles are packed with stuff, and holiday trimmings are filling up the rest of the store.  Even though I'm in a perpetual state of confusion about what time of year it is, I've been enjoying my research missions to Target more than usual with all of the new stock!

During one of my recent trips to Target I focused on looking at what surprise-themed toys are available these days.  There are a lot of them!  I picked a few of my favorites to share with you over the coming months, and right at the top of my list is an old favorite: the Li'l Woodzeez.

Li'l Woodzeez continue to stand out to me because of the high cuteness factor and low price.  They're still selling the adorable Tickle Your Tastebuds bakery play set (seemingly unchanged from the one I reviewed in 2012) for the same $20 price.  And I picked up this whole collection of surprises for $11: 

Li'l Woodzeez Mini Acorn House Surprise ($4.99) and two Surprise Babeez ($2.99 each).

I like these sets because each one has a surprise (which character you'll get), each character has a name (I love names!), and the packaging adds to the play potential of the toy.  The Babeez come in cribs, and the larger animal comes with its own little house.

Let's take a look at the Mini Acorn House Surprise set first:

The presentation of this set is so fun and colorful.  There's no excessive packaging--just the house itself and a bright, information-packed tag:

Each set includes a mystery character, an outfit, and a toy.  I think the toy accessory could be counted as a second surprise, since those items are not shown on the tag.  A bonus surprise!

The back of the tag shows the different characters that you can get.  There aren't very many options, which is a problem because it increases the risk of duplicates.

I like all of these characters and didn't care which one I got.  Ok, maybe Chuck and Hazel are slightly cuter than the other two, but I would have been happy with any of them.

The back of the tag also advertises a Li'l Woozeez game.  This was free on the App Store, so I tried it out. The game is for little kids (4 and up), and it involves playing out the lives of the characters in the Tippytail fox family.  You can direct the characters to do little activities, like build a treehouse, bang on the piano, cook dinner, or plant in the garden.  There are also special group activities like eating dinner (a little tedious), playing hide and seek (cute), or releasing lanterns into the night sky (pretty).

If the Mini Acorn House toy is any fun, though, there should be no need for an online game!

The house itself is in the shape of an acorn shell with a roof made out of leaves.

The molded details on the house are nice, like these flowering vines that are on either side of the door:

There's also a little ladybug climbing up the back of the house:

There are so many ways to get hung up on scale with this set (that's a super-tiny ladybug if the house is made out of an acorn...and also how do these animals live inside of acorns??) but perhaps it's best if I don't dwell on any of that.

There's another ladybug climbing on the roof, too.  This reminds me of the last time I went to get my hair cut.  Part way through the appointment, my stylist and I noticed that the ceiling lights were covered in ladybugs!  There must have been a hundred of them.  I really like ladybugs because they're pretty and they eat aphids, but that was a lot of them all at once.  I've never seen anything like it.  Perhaps it's another quirk of living in New Jersey?

Anyway, the house was held together with a single band of plastic.  I removed the plastic:

The detail in the vinyl roof is nice, too.  It looks like four or five leaves were tied together at their stems in order to make a roof shape:

Like a little leaf hat.

The roof is removable:

And inside the house is a green plastic bag with all of the surprises:

The front door of the house opens, too, although it opens down like a drawbridge, not like a regular door.  That was a bit of a disappointment.

The house is great.  Several of these toys could be combined to make a little village, or a single house could be added to something like the Honeysuckle Hillside Cottage as a playhouse for the yard.

All right!  Let's see what surprises are hidden inside the green bag:

The plastic is slightly transparent, so I could already see that I was going to get...

...Hazel Healthnuggle!  The name Healthnuggle makes me laugh.  It sounds like something Buddy the Elf would say.

Hazel is a little brown bear.  I assumed that she was the mother character in the Healthnuggle family, but playing the Woodzeez game actually taught me that she's the big sister.  The mother is a doctor named Barb.  She's taller and has a more detailed dress.

Now we know that the surprise character is Hazel, but we don't know what her mystery toy is yet!

After I pulled everything out of the bag, I could see that Hazel actually comes with three toys: a teapot, cup, and saucer:

Score!

After this reveal, I got really curious about what toys the other three characters come with.  You can see pictures of those toys on the Target website if you want.  Mini spoiler: Hazel has the best toy. 

At first I had a really hard time balancing Hazel.  She looks ok in the previous picture, but only because I positioned the camera above her head and angled the shot downwards.

She was actually standing like this:

The animals do not come with underwear...

I'd forgotten that these little animals are so articulated, though!  It's been a few years since I've played with one.  All I had to do is move Hazel's legs a bit, and she could stand up normally:

That's better.

She's wearing a collared pink dress with an attached green print apron.  The collar of the dress has simple unfinished edges and the apron is a bit lopsided, but overall it's a sweet little dress, especially for something so tiny.

The dress closes in the back with velcro:

As I was photographing Hazel's dress, I thought I noticed a bare patch in the flocking of her left cheek:

But up close you can see that it's just a patch of pinkish-white flocking--like the bear version of blush, I suppose.  There's a similar patch on the other side of Hazel's face:

The blush isn't particularly symmetric, but this isn't something I notice when I'm interacting with Hazel.

Here's the dress by itself:

There are some stray threads in a few places, but look at those tiny, neat little hemmed edges!

Underneath her dress, Hazel has a fully-flocked body with a lighter area of fur on her belly:

She's a teddy bear!

I prefer this fuzzy body to the plastic-bodied bobblehead surprise Woodzeez that I reviewed in 2017.  Those come in plastic acorns and cost $2.99 (and are still available at that price).

Hazel's eyes are plain black ovals, and the left eye is slightly askew:

She has five points of rotating articulation (neck, shoulders, hips) and so she can sit, look from side-to-side, and lift her arms up and down:

Her front paws are molded into a gripping pose, so presumably she can hold some of the Woodzeez accessories.

Hazel has a few minor defects in the flocking on her body.  There's a tiny bare patch on her right shoulder:

And a larger bare patch on the left side of her neck:

I don't think any of Hazel's minor flaws are a big deal, and they probably wouldn't bother a child at all.

Here's a closer look at Hazel's tea set accessory:

The teapot is all one piece, but the cup and saucer are separate.  This is why the toy could be a choking hazard for kids under 3.  

The bottom of the teapot is hollow, so it kind of looks like it should be the top of the teapot:

Sadly, Hazel's gripping hands can't hold onto the handle of the teapot:

Or to any part of the cup:

I just want a sip of tea!

Hazel is 2.75 inches tall--about the size that a Build-A-Bear would be for a Barbie doll.  Here's Lina with Hazel to demonstrate:

I think Hazel's size is not too big and not too small--it's just right.  Goldilocks would approve. 

Hazel and I were both very excited to see who her younger siblings would be, so let's get on with the next surprise!

The first Woodzeez baby came in a blue crib:

The packaging on these toys is so simple. The cribs have a colorful piece of cardboard wrapped around the entire crib to keep the items inside secure:

Each set comes with a Babeez (oh, how I wish they didn't spell it that way...), a bib, a bottle, and a diaper.

The fun thing is that there are two sets of twins that can be found in these cribs--raccoons and pigs.  I really wanted the twins (especially the pigs!) so I compared the weights of all of the cribs that were in stock and picked the heaviest ones!

The cardboard packaging can easily be unfastened from the bottom of the crib:

Would it say "this includes 2 baby characters" if I'd gotten the twins? Probably not.

This simple action frees up all of the goodies inside!

There's a green bag with the baby inside, and a large collector's sheet:

There are so many more options here than there were with the acorn house sets!

30 options total.

Here's a closer look at all of the little characters:

They are all adorable!  I was interested in getting Chip, the baby bear, and I also think Dab the cow is amazing.

Here's the lower portion of the sheet:

Pod and Pad the pigs are the prize.  I really wanted to get them!

Let's see who I got.  I could tell right away that it wasn't twins:

I see a yellow bib and a pink diaper...

It's a...sheep?

Sheep don't have whiskers, Emily.

It's hard to tell anything with that huge vinyl bib in the way.

Oh, wait--no.  It has a shell on its back:

And the shell looks like it's covered with...bubbles?

A turtle with ears?  A hedgehog?  An echidna?  I was perplexed.  I had to resort to looking at the character sheet again:

It's Zaza the hedgehog!

Obviously.

Zaza has a shell on her back, though, like the turtle characters, and this shell can be removed:

It falls off a lot, too.

The diaper can also be removed:

Zaza is flocked from head to toe, just like Hazel.

She has all of the same articulation as the larger figures, too, which is great!  She can sit down, look around, and raise her arms:

Maybe we can even count the removable back as a sixth point of articulation?

Zaza has pink cheeks, pink ears, and a slightly darker patch of yellow on the middle of her belly.

Zaza also has some droopy whiskers on her left side:

I thought that these whiskers might perk up over time, but they did not.

Zaza is cute (all of the Woodzeez are cute), but her coloring is really strange.  She's bright yellow, which is not a thing with hedgehogs...unless they've consumed the seven Chaos Emeralds, of course.

The closest a real hedgehog gets to yellow is if it's albino, like this one:

I have to say, Battat made some strange choices with Zaza's character.

Here she is in her blue crib:

The crib is a great size for Zaza, and it's very solidly constructed, but it's a little stark.  It could use some comfy bedding!

Hazel was pretty excited to have a sibling:

Zaza is 1.75 inches tall, so an inch shorter than Hazel:

They can almost hold hands, which would be adorable.

The cuteness factor is high in the little Babeez, but Hazel's size makes her easier to manipulate and play with.

Well, there's only one surprise left--and one last chance to get the cow twins!

I ripped into this packaging pretty quickly...

And I found another green bag that definitely doesn't have twins in it.  Too small:

Bummer.

I can see a bit through the bag...

Another shell?

I think this is a legitimate turtle!

Yay!

I love the Woodzeez turtles!!

I realized at this point that the turtle, Pif, came with a bottle:

But I didn't see a bottle for Zaza.

I hunted through the garbage and realized that Zaza's bottle had gotten stuck in the bag.  The two bottles are identical:

Pif has a removable pink bib and a removable blue diaper:

The bib is made of vinyl and can overwhelm Pif a bit.  The diaper also looks scruffy and is not as well-constructed as Zaza's diaper.  I like the clothing on the larger Woodzeez, but I tend to remove it on the Babeez; it gets in the way.

Pif's shell is also removable, and falls off every other second:

A dab of glue would hold the shell in place nicely, but then it'd be hard to change the diaper.  That's ok with me because I think the Babeez are cuter without their diapers, but for those who enjoy the diapers, gluing the shell might not be a good idea.

Zaza and Pif can swap shells!

A hedgurtle and a turtlehog!

Here's Pif without a diaper:

So cute.

Look at that happy, fuzzy little face!

I didn't feel like I needed another size comparison shot for the smaller Woodzeez, but Lina fell in love with Pif, so I figured I should get a shot with the two of them:

Here's Pif snuggled in for a nap:

Playing with Pif in the crib reminded me of a story I've been wanting to tell you: I was at a high school football game the other weekend, and I spent most of my time watching a little girl (maybe three years old?) play on the bleacher in front of me.  She had only a naked Barbie doll and a used dryer sheet, but she played with these items for over 30 minutes with complete focus.  She'd smooth out the dryer sheet, arrange her Barbie on the bleacher, and then lovingly spread the sheet over the doll like a blanket, tucking her in and speaking softly to her.  It was one of the most tender things I've ever seen--and so much more interesting than football.

Anyway, I guess that's my long-winded way of saying that a simple blanket in this set could make a huge difference in the play value...although any scrap of fabric from home (or a used dryer sheet) would work, too.

Here are all three of my lovely Woodzeez together!

I left Hazel in charge of the little ones for a while while I cleaned up some of the mess in my studio.

Hazel put Zaza down for a nap and set out some tea for herself.  Pif was hungry for a bottle, though:

Hazel happily got the bottle...

But Pif can't hold a bottle, so was unable to get a drink!  Zaza watched Pif's struggles and decided that she wanted her bottle, too:

Things quickly deteriorated as Hazel remembered that she can't hold onto her teacup, so she decided to drink straight from the pot.

Zaza landed on her head and Pif lost his shell (again), but at least Hazel got a nice swig of tea!

I think this little family is happier when I take their beverages away.

When my trio of Woodzeez is done with their shenanigans for the day, they all fit perfectly into the acorn house for storage:

Or, alternatively, the little house can be used as a storage box to pack them all up for an outdoor adventure!

I figured that these critters might enjoy some time out in their natural habitat.  So, taking advantage of another 70-degree November day in New Jersey, we headed into the woods.

Hazel was immediately at home in this setting:

She found these cool shelf fungi growing on an old tree stump:

And thought this was the perfect location to set up her acorn house!

I agree:

If only this little house had a door that hinged open from side to side, it would be perfect:

Meanwhile, Pif was captivated by these unusual tree roots:

But of course turtles are naturally drawn to water, and so we ended up wandering along this rocky stream bed, looking for more turtles:

There are lots of turtles in New Jersey.

Zaza was more nervous about being in the wild than her siblings were.  I think she was concerned that her bright yellow coloring would attract the attention of the local predators--like the pair of bald eagles that frequent this area.

So, we found a cozy little hole in the roots of a tree where she could hide out and feel safe:

Bottom line?  I'm glad I got both of the different Li'l Woodzeez surprise toys that Target had to offer, because each has a different set of pros and cons.

The Mini Acorn House set is great because it includes a nicely-sized, fully-flocked figure with an outfit.  I could nitpick a few things about Hazel's dress, but overall it's cute and easy to use.  I wish Hazel's tea set accessories had been designed so that they could fit into her gripping hands, but those little items were a nice extra surprise.  The house itself is good for play or display, and is perfect for storage and transportation of a small group of Woodzeez.  I wish the door of the house operated in a more realistic way, but at least it isn't molded into a closed position.  Because not all of the acorn sets look the same (there's a range of color schemes) it would be fun to collect multiple houses and make a little village.  The biggest drawback with these sets is that there are only four characters available in the series, so the odds of getting a duplicate are high.  There might be a way of determining which character is inside each house, but I'm not aware of it.

The Babeez sets have a lot more variety (30 options), and so the risk of duplicates is lower.  Duplicates don't seem as bad with these toys, though, because the price is low and duplicate babies could always be used as twins.  As with the acorn house set, the packaging on these Babeez is part of the toy, which I love.  The cribs are a good size with a cute design, and I think kids would have fun tucking their baby critters into bed--perhaps more so if a little blanket had been included.  To me, a blanket would have been a better accessory than a bib.  The bibs are cumbersome and can overwhelm the tiny figures.  The diapers are also tricky to use (especially on characters with shells) but they look cute.  I love Pif, and the turtle shell attachment is adorable, but it falls off all of the time.  I'd have to glue the shell in place before giving Pif to a child.  Zaza's shell stays on better than Pif's, but I don't understand why she has a shell in the first place.  Overall, Zaza's design is just not as good as Pif's.  She doesn't have as much personality in her face, her species is ambiguous, and her coloring is strange...but I love her anyway.

Navigating the toy aisles with a small child can be stressful: kids always want to bring a toy home, and parents want to avoid spending a lot of money on something that will have no lasting appeal.  I remember this dynamic with my own kids very well.  These Woodzeez sets might get lost among the glitter and bling of the newer L.O.L. Surprise toys, but they have a lot to offer for a toy that costs under $5.  And the packaging adds to the fun--not the landfill.  The surprise element in these sets is a nice bonus, but the sweet and timeless Woodzeez characters don't really need a gimmick in order to spark some wonderful games and adventures.

Update 11/17: at Target today they had new Woodzeez stock, and some of the characters are not flocked!  Ack!

These elephants are really cute:

But there's no flocking whatsoever.  I rode an elephant when I was a teenager, and it was definitely fuzzy!  Also, a lot of the appeal of these toys is in how they feel cuddled into your hand.  This is not a good development in my eyes...and yet the characters' faces are too cute for words.

I coveted this set while also being disappointed by it.

I also saw this cow family where the bodies are flocked, but the noses are bare plastic:

Again, the animals are very sweet, but the uneven paint (or scuffed paint) cheapens the appearance, if you ask me.

That said, when I took my little trio of Woodzeez on their outdoor adventure, both Hazel and Pif got dirty from falling into a wet area of stones or grass.  Perhaps the smooth characters are better for outdoor or rigorous play?  Anyway, I wanted to pop back in and alert you to this update: the characters are less appealing to me with no fur, but might be better for some kinds of play.