Casdon Supermarket Till

Role play is an important part of learning about the world around us. Children learn through play. Role play or pretend play allows children to act out a role in a fun way. It develops communication and social skills as children interact with each other, it boosts imagination and creativity and allows kids to explore and discover. Casdon, inventors of fun and play, realise the importance of role play. Their range of educational toys is varied and extensive.
Casdon Supermarket Till is a new fun educational set. I remember similar till sets in both nurseries and Reception classes my children went to, but they were much more basic in comparison.
This till is a super modern updated version. You will need to install three AA batteries.

It comes with a touch-sensitive screen, a working calculator and a microphone. There is a scanner, a chip and pin feature, opening cash till and a selection of branded play food.
The supermarket till can teach children about money - you get a selection of plastic coins to play with.

The food items come without labels, so you will need to attach the stickers yourselves. This was pretty straightforward and easy.

How does the toy operate? Chip and pin unit can be swivelled. To operate you push your cash card and press the small keypad four times.
There is a pretend weighing scale and control panel as well as a pretend produce shelf.
The calculator has a keypad with an LCD display. There is a power on/off button. You will also find food and produce short cut buttons; when pressed they add a predetermined values to the calculator.
The microphone at the top is flexible and is supposed to amplify voice.
The scanner gun bleeps and adds a random value to the calculator.

The food and drink items represent familiar brands including some British classics like Hovis bread or Birds Eye Arctic Roll. Cute Baxters soup tins were my personal favourites.

This fun educational toy set - which is a great source of role play - will make a wonderful gift for children aged 3-8 years. It also has a great potential for classes with special needs children.

The only criticism I'm raising is that while installing the batteries, I really struggled with the fixing screw. I have tried a selection of screwdriver head attachments to move it open, none of which seemed to work. By the time I managed to open it and close the lid back, the actual screw got almost shapeless. I think changing the batteries again will be an issue. It's not just this toy. I have noticed many toys which require batteries have tricky screws. Or is it just me?

We also thought that the added values were too random and didn't quite reflect the realistic prices of the real life products. I appreciate this is a toy, and is not meant to be too realistic. This didn't stop my son from enjoying the set.
I was wondering if he would think himself too "grown-up" for the supermarket till, but he seemed to be engrossed in the play. And when I asked him if we might take the set to school to give away to the Reception class, he asked me "Mummy, could we keep it?".

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Disclosure: We received this toy set for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are ours.