Categories
Children Highly Recommended

Buy your child a Christmas Pudding hat from The CobWeb Company — their mother will love you forever

The Christmas Pudding Hat from The CobWeb Company

We got the Christmas Pudding Hat (made by The CobWeb Company) as a gift last year, if memory serves. We’ve been deploying it every time there’s been a cold spell this year and as Christmas approaches, it’s certainly making Archie look on trend (that’s him in the photo above).

The most important feature of this particular hat is the reaction it generates. Believe me, it’s shocking. Women melt. I do mean melt. I think it’s the fact that most people see a wooly hat first and then they see that it’s actually a Christmas Pudding. And you’ve ideally got a smiling (or at least, content) child underneath it to add to the effect. At minimum you’ll get a smile from passers by. At maximum, you’ll have folk stop in their tracks, point and exclaim “AWWWWWWWH” whilst pointing. Highly recommended.

Now, the second feature is — well, it’s a hat. It’s warm. From my rather masculine, utilitarian viewpoint, it does the job properly. It looks well made, it’s been through quite a lot with Archie in terms of having buggys squeezing it into the mud and so on. It’s still going strong. It costs just £15.95 (or £18.95 for the larger toddler version). Or, consider going the whole hog and getting the ‘set’ which includes the hat and the body suit at a highly reasonable £24.95. If you’re thinking about a little bit more luxury, think about the Cashmere version.

The CobWeb Company don’t stop at Christmas Pudding hats though. They’ve got a whole seasonal range for you to browse. My wife’s eyes were lighting up at this even before she saw the little baby in the tea cup on the frontpage. (Do, seriously, click through to the frontpage and prepare to be awwwed, especially with image 3 and 4.) My favourite other seasonal hat? Definitely the Banana one. You can’t go wrong with the stripy range either.

I think I’m right in asserting that if you’re the dad who happened to buy this for his child, then the mothers in your community will think you’re spectacular. And your partner should be suitable impressed as a result.

Here’s a photo of the Christmas Pudding had sans child:

I’ve put this one into the Highly Recommended category. It’s the first product I’ve assigned to that and it’s a testament to my experience with the hat. Looking at him wearing it makes me smile.

Thanks to Su and the team at The CobWeb Company for the imaginative concepts. I’m going to give some thought as to what we should be buying for our friends and family. We’ve a few babies due next year.

One final point, I think it’s rather difficult to underscore for all the male readers just how good a Cob Web hat is for a baby present. I wish I’d known. So if you’re ever stuck needing something for a friend’s baby and you haven’t outsourced that to “control” (i.e. partner/girlfriend), you can’t go wrong with one of The CobWeb Company hats.

[Update: If you’d like to find out more about founder Su Cowell and the background to the company, check out this link.]

Categories
Must Have Technology

Why you definitely need to buy the 3M Camcorder Projector

You definitely need one of these for Christmas.

Set aside your top of the range Nexus Prime, or your shiny iPhone 4S. The rest of the family don’t care about that. Granny doesn’t want to admire the latest capabilities of Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich. No. You need one of these to wow the family and friends this holiday season.

It’s from 3M and it’s their latest gizmo that’s going to make you really popular with your wife — because it promises endless hours of entertainment for even the most trying guests.

The name says it all: 3M Camcorder Projector CP45 (Amazon link). Yup. It’s a camcorder and it projects photos and video on to any surface. Think of it like a Flip camera with a super-high-quality projector directly integrated. The intent is simple: You film the children’s football game in the morning and then everyone can watch it later on projected on to your living room wall. Or, anywhere.

I haven’t had hands-on but the projection definition looks really, really smart. It takes photo and HD video. It’s got 2GB of memory on-board, enough for 1,000 photos and 25 minutes of HD video, plus the battery will last for 1.5 hours — enough to capture a lot of action. (You can, by the way, expand the memory dramatically with the MicroSD card slot — up to 32GB). There’s a built-in speaker and microphone and you can connect to some speakers if you really want to show a nice instant-replay.

The projector will display up to 65″ on almost any flat surface — don’t be surprised if your children take to shining it at themselves as it’ll work on clothing too. Ideal conditions obviously call for a bit of a darkened environment so you can see the output in full clarity.

The goodness doesn’t stop there though. You can connect your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone to the CP45 and it’ll project output from there. Plus it’ll do the same for games consoles and laptops. (Provided you get the right connectors). Absolute genius.

That’s the overview. Now have a watch of the funky video and it’ll show you just how the CP45 works:

Sold?

The RRP is £299. You can now pick it up from an array of retailers online.

I recommend Amazon myself:

I think this is one of those products that you should have in your arsenal, especially with the holidays coming up. All you need to do is show your significant other (i.e. wife/girlfriend) the projection bit and I reckon they’ll be sold. That’s what granny is going to want to see and everyone will have a super time playing with it on Boxing Day. And of course it’s got a heck of a lot of potential beyond Christmas, especially when it comes to the children: Football games, rugby games, school plays, concerts, weddings.

It’s the immediate replay function that knocks this into the must-have-now category. You know when you film something (or take a photo of something) and then everyone else wants to see it? Rubbish. Because they typically have to look at a small screen. How cool will it be to actually say, “No, hold on, let me show you properly.”

Yup. I like this a lot. I’m pleased 3M have brought this to market. I hope to get a look at one shortly.

And here’s the CP45 spec sheet: