Toca Hair Salon 2 by Toca Boca -Review and Giveaway

 Reviewed by Mary and Alison

Toca Hair Salon 2 is a universal app from the renowned Swedish digital toy maker, Toca Boca and the sequel to their hugely popular Toca Hair Salon. This is also the first Toca Boca app to be released for the Kindle Fire. For those already familiar with the original Toca Hair Salon you will see a lot of familiar features, but also a whole lot of new ones and four new characters to style. It contains no in-app purchases or 3rd party adverts.

The setting is a new hair salon that looks a lot more modern and trendy than the salon in Toca Hair Salon. There are four different styling stations they can visit in the salon plus a photo booth and 2 places to choose accessories. As you are busy styling your character you can watch the street outside and see cars and other vehicles passing by.

At the first station you have 4 tools to choose from: scissors, a comb, a razor and clippers. You can use these to cut and style the hair, either using a swipe to cut a row of hair, or a tap for a more precise cut. The magic G.R.O.W. lotion is here too so if you want a longer style you can grow the hair.

The second station has some fun tools to play with- a curling iron, a hair straightener and a hair curler. You can experiment to see how they work on different hair types too, as the effect isn’t always the same in different characters.

At the coloring station you can spray on 9 different colors and you can even create graduated effects by spraying the hair different colors in different places.

The final station is the washing station where you can shampoo, rinse (complete with shower on a pull down hose) and then dry with the towel or blow drier. Our testers liked the water flying away when you blow-dried the hair though one of them was disappointed you couldn’t actually rub the hair with the towel when towel drying (the hair moves as if being rubbed but the towel stays on the counter).

Once you are happy with your styling job you can take them to the accessories stations and choose from a range of hats, glasses, and hair decorations. Mary’s daughter especially liked the Toca Boca hair slides.

There is a photo booth too where you can choose from different color backgrounds and take passport style photos of the characters.

Overall, this is a really fun app and great for imaginative, open-ended, creative play. Our children are already big fans of the original Toca Hair Salon and loved trying out all the new tools and accessories. They gave it a big thumbs up. I asked our nine-year-old tester if this would replace the original for him and he said no he wants to keep playing with both. He thinks the new version is really fun and loves all the new features but likes having the different characters in the 2 apps.

This app is on introductory sale until Dec 18th at 99c (full price is $2.99) – it’s a ship at this price – don’t miss it!

Toca Hair Salon 2 by Toca Boca AB Category: Education, Entertainment Requirements: Compatible with iPod Touch (4. Gen.), iPhone4S, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G, iPhone 4, iPad 2 3G, iPodTouchFifthGen, iPadMini4G, iPadThirdGen4G, iPhone5, iPadFourthGen, iPad WiFi, iPod Touch (3. Gen.), iPad 2 WiFI, iPadThirdGen, iPadFourthGen4G, iPadMini Size: 41.1 MB

$FREE

Screenshots

Screenshots for iPad

If you would like to win a copy of the original Toca Hair Salon – please enter via the rafflecopter below. Winners must contact The iMums via FB or info (at) theimum,com within 48hrs of the winners being announced to claim their prize. Must have a United States iTunes account.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Mary

Mary is originally from England but now lives in California with her husband and three children, an 8 year old boy and 5 year old boy/girl twins. Mary and her family love soccer, camping, hiking and playing with their iPad which is also used for therapy for their daughters Apraxia (speech disorder).

Latest posts by Mary (see all)

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You can email me direct at mary(at)theimums.com