Toca Boca apps are usually an instant buy for us, so as soon as a new one hits the app store, we'll usually download it sight unseen. Toca Cars sounded, on paper, like the perfect little digital app toy to us. Cardboard cars racing around a fabulous cut-out landscape, reminding us of the car mats we had when we were kids - and reminding Charlotte of her favourite huge lego road system that she loves building vehicles and houses for.

There are essentially two modes here, and two vehicles to choose from. One mode lets you loose in a pre-built landscape, scooting around in your car (which follows your finger around the screen - drag and drive!) the other mode lets you place objects onto the road map yourself, so you can put up houses, traffic signs and even other non-playable characters to drive around or interact with.

That is pretty much it. There seems to be something rather odd going on with Toca apps lately - perhaps it's just us though. They seem to be a little on the shallow side of late, and though we had fun with the last app (Toca Builder) we felt that it had limited appeal once you'd got past its 'Minecraft Builder Lite' gameplay.

The same is true here. Placing objects on the road system (which you can't actually change or tweak), only racing two cars (not together either so no actual racing), putting scenery up then knocking it down. It felt like there was a ton of potential here that was frittered away on tweaking the game to feel right, without actually having a game in there at all. It was very unusual to see Charlotte getting frustrated and disappointed with the game so quickly, and it didn't take long before she quit and went straight back to the other Toca apps she's been playing with for ages (Toca Hair Salon 1 and 2 and Toca Tailor).

Bit of a crushing disappointment really - and something that'll have us thinking twice before we buy before reading reviews or watching trailers in future. Hmmm!


Charlotte's best bit: Putting things up, knocking them down with the car

Daddy's Favourite bit: Fairly simplistic and shallow. It still has all the trademark slickness you expect from Toca Boca, but there's something missing - it all feels a bit lightweight and shallow.

Need to build something tall? Use Connie the Crane!

The release of a new TOCA BOCA app is always cause for excitement at home. TOCA BOCA have been producing some of the best children's 'toy' apps for a long time now, and so we were extremely excited to hear that TOCA Builders would be next.

Having already dipped our dainty toes into the intricate world of Minecraft, with Charlotte telling me what to do (as usual) and me trying to work out in my head how to build "A love heart shaped house with a princess bed in it", I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to let Charlotte loose with something similar - but slightly simpler for her age range.

Actually, describing TOCA Builders as being like Minecraft is a bit unfair. It's more like a digital set of Hama beads - and in fact the principle of creating anything that "looks like anything" is the same.

Initially you're given a blank 'sandbox' to play in, and you're introduced to the builders themselves...

Meet the TOCA Builders Team. Not a sweaty bum crack in sight!

Connie (The crane), Blox (basher and builder), Cooper (he rolls paint around with his fab rollerball), Stretch (useful for reaching high places), Jum Jum (she's static but is a dab hand with her paint squirter) and Vex (who is deft and agile enough to climb up on blocks and lay down blocks too).

If you imagine TOCA Builders as being like a Heath-Robinson pixel art tool, you're pretty much bang on the nail. The thing is, despite appearing a bit fiddly and convoluted at first, you can leave your children to discover themselves what the on-screen controls do, what each builder is capable of - then sit back and watch their imaginations spark up and see what happens when they realise the best way to place, manipulate and paint blocks.

Charlotte, admittedly, spent a lot of time running around with Blox, just mindlessly building little fenced-off areas. Soon though she'd worked out how the game's rotate controls (to spin your characters on the spot) worked, and how those delicious rollerball controls worked (for Cooper and Jum-Jum - App developers take note, that is a BRILLIANT control system but TOCA did it first so no stealing, OK?)

Once Charlotte was tucked up in bed, I sneaked out the iPad for a bit more of a go myself and managed to knock up a crazy looking Easter Island head. More dextrous kids will find it a breeze but younger children may well struggle a bit until they get into their groove. It's certainly a TOCA app that demands a little bit more thought and a huge amount more time than their others.

That said, you'll find hours slipping away to it. It's as addictive as a bag of strawberry bon-bons, it's utterly beautifully produced and slick (as you'd expect from the team) and with the picture snapping tools (which I actually think could've been a LOT better - you're limited to taking snaps of the immediate area surrounding the character you last controlled rather than snapping an overview of a chosen chunk of your scene) your children can share their creations with the world.

Falling in love with Volcanoes!

Charlotte is hooked, even though she's still at the stage of experimenting with it all, but in her mind she is swiftly getting a handle on how to produce something cool from her world of coloured blocks. Maybe one day the old man will have to show her how to get cracking with some pixel art too!

Charlotte's best bit: Splattering a scene with paint using Jum Jum!

Daddy's favourite bit: Slick controls, brilliant presentation, a few disappointing bits (the camera capture really could've been better and sometimes the rotate controls for characters are a bit too quick) but as addictive and vital to your iPad collection as everything else TOCA BOCA do!

TOCA Builders is available from iTunes for 69p for a limited time so get in quick!

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/toca-builders/id652077009?mt=8

One of the things Toca Boca do well is respinning the sort of apps that are extremely common on the app store with the 'Toca Boca' take on things. This usually means high production values and hour after hour of your little ones being totally absorbed in their brightly coloured world.

Toca Tailor is no exception. We've seen a million and one dress-up apps, and most like to ensure that though you get a free app, you pay through the nose for content.

Toca Tailor draws a line neatly through this by having fairly well-defined boundaries, within which you are free to create some of the wildest and whackiest fashion creations for your cute and appealing Toca characters.

First, you start by discretely adjusting the length of your character's dress /shirt and sleeves. Then you can begin to accessorise with a range of hair decorations, jewellery and other goodies. Last but by no means least you can pick through different types of shoes and boots for your character.

So far, so good, it all sounds pretty standard but there's a neat twist to proceedings when you realise that you aren't limited to the built-in patterns on offer here. In fact, with the aid of your iPad (or iPhone) camera, you can sample textures and patterns from the real world.

Quickly grab a pattern with the camera, move it and size it on your character's dress (or sleeves) and then add buttons, clips and all sorts of other little touches to truly make your design stand out (Charlotte drew the line at the game's rather brilliant selection of buttons - she still has that button phobia, even when you're talking about a virtual set!)

Once you've finished creating a fashion masterpiece, you can take a photo of your character AR-style. Place her in your room, next to you, even standing on your shoulder.

Like most of the Toca Boca apps, children can lose themselves for hours in something that is, in essence, a fairly simple core idea given some serious window dressing.

We picked the app up when it was at its introductory price (69p) and Toca Boca stuff can go as high as £2.49 so grab it while you can while it's still cheap.

Charlotte's best bit: Taking photos of her characters 'cuddling' her, and taking a photo of her T Shirt design so her character and her can be "Twins, Identical Twins!"

Daddy's favourite bit: A very slick take on the 'dress up' genre. As great as this is, it does lay down some fairly rigid parameters early on (like most Toca Boca apps seem to) - that said, it does keep Charlotte occupied for ages so a big thumbs up.

• TOCA Monsters Kitchen (Free)  - Well this one's not in the sale obviously but this was the first TOCA app we played and absolutely fell in love with it. Monsters, a fridge full of food and lots of ways to prepare it. What does your monster like best? Broccoli and lemons? Om Nom!

• TOCA Hair Salon Christmas (Free) - It's festive, it's fun and it's frizzy! Test out a trial version of TOCA Hair Salon with everyone's favourite yuletide dude and a happy Christmas Tree. Cut hair, grow hair (I wish!), dry hair with a hair dryer and colour hair. Awesome!

• TOCA Hair Salon (69p) - More hairy antics this time with the full version of the free trial. More tools, more hair decorations and a lovely selection of crazy characters to play with. Get snipping!

• TOCA Robot Lab (69p) - Get Robot, Build Robot, Fly Robot! Put together robot parts in your lab for the ultimate robotic buddy. 

• TOCA Kitchen (69p) - The full version of the Kitchen / Food app. More characters, more food and more fun ways to dish up a tasty treat, TOCA style!

• TOCA Train (69p) - Tootle around your very own island on a cute little train. Pick up passengers and cargo and drive through beautiful scenery but don't go too fast!

• TOCA House (69p) - It's like a mini, cute version of the Big Brother house without the wannabe celebrities, the catfights, the rude bits, or in fact any of the other Big Brother bits. Alright, it's better than that - you get to share a house with crazy TOCA characters who all like doing different things to help out. Hang out the washing, hoover the carpets, sort the mail and mow the lawn. Far better than doing any of this for real. 

• TOCA Store (69p) - Run your own little shop by laying out your goods, then encouraging customers to come in to spend their hard earned cash on lovely TOCA merchandise. Oh and robots, and lollies don't forget the lollies. 

• TOCA Doctor HD Lite (Free) - A free trial of TOCA Doctor. Which as it just so happens...

• TOCA Doctor Full Version (69p) - ...is also in the sale! For 69p! Heal your patients, fix their broken limbs and give them plenty of TLC TOCA Doctor stylee!

• Paint My Wings (69p) - A lovely interactive creative app that lets children decorate beautiful butterflies. Great fun for younger iPadders. 

• TOCA Tea Party (69p) - Oh my goodness, the TOCA fun never seems to end. Host tea parties for you and your furry friends at home (yes I'm talking about Dad) - All sorts of tasty and tempting treats are available for you to play with. Save a coconut macaroon for me!

• Parenting Guide's Birthday Party Play (69p) - A bit like the tea party but this time you can throw a full-scale birthday bash! Cake, lemonade, sandwiches and other treats to share and play with. 

• TOCA Band (69p) - Only just released and it's already on sale. You lucky lucky people! Make your own sounds and tunes with some of TOCA's wildest character creations yet!

A brief look at the top selling children's iPhone and iPad app chart is a sobering experience. Those of us lucky enough to have a shiny new tablet device costing hundreds of pounds, which we then let our sticky-fingered little mites onto for a moment's peace and quiet are, it seems, a fairly unimaginative lot when it comes to searching out apps.

A recent Guardian article highlighted the plight of app studios who consistently knock it out of the park when it comes to producing children's games and storytelling apps (or even e-books) that put the current licensed dreck to shame. Apps strung together lazily, by the numbers, in order to make a quick buck seem to be the favourites whereas others just disappear without a trace, languishing in the nether regions of the app charts and never seeing the light of day.

So without further ado, here's a dream top ten list (in no particular order) of apps and developers that you really ought to investigate instead of those dreadful Peppa Pig / Barbie dress-up games. Full links are provided for the UK iTunes Store and versions for the iPad.

1) Mademoiselle Daisy's New Friends (Developed by Square Igloo - £2.49)

Square Igloo absolutely 'get it' when it comes to kid's storytelling apps. They don't mess around with horrible Flash animations, they don't get their next door neighbour to lazily dub over their dialogue in a broad Glaswegian accent and they don't get their kids to bang out horrible tinny little tunes on a Casio keyboard for their apps. They employ professional voice actors, they produce proper soundtracks and - best of all - they produce rich, colourful and engaging visuals to accompany their beautifully written stories. Basically, if you're an app developer and you can nod to each of the items I've just listed, you're probably still not good enough to lick the boots of Square Igloo (but please, try at least!)

Mademoiselle Daisy's New Friends is the story of a lovely old lady who is moving into a new apartment. She's a little lost and lonely at first, but hits on a brilliant idea that will help her become a social gadfly.

The story's panels are so richly designed and beautiful that you'd almost wish (if you're a hoary old traditionalist like me) that they'd produce a printed picture book version of the stories. As they are though, as interactive apps, the Square Igloo stories are sumptuous and luxurious. Parents might baulk at the app prices but consider this: Where else could you get a deliciously illustrated and engaging children's picture book reeking of this sort of quality for £2.49?


2) The Crowing Poodle (Developed by FeeFiFoFun, Catherine Brickman and Suzanne Conway)

FeeFiFoFun are app developers, avid kickstarters and a collective with a whole brace of great ideas and stories to tell. "The Crowing Poodle" is the cute tale of a doggy with an identity crisis, who is driving everyone slightly mad by behaving like a cockerel first thing in the morning.

Catherine Brickman and Suzanne Conway's picture book is presented as a freebie interactive web resource, and as it stands, it puts a whole lot of paid-for children's e-books to shame with an entertaining story accompanied by top notch artwork.

The FeeFiFoFun Website is definitely worth a visit to see what they're up to and see other apps and stories that are available. They're currently trying to get funding for various kickstarter projects so if you're feeling generous, drop a few quid in their kickstarter pot and see what grows from your donation.

3) Dandelion (Developed by Protein One - £2.99)

This is really something special. An anti-bully app that delivers an interactive story that is presented in a really unique way. The hero of the story, a young lad named Benjanim, is specifically designed so that children can identify with him wholly throughout the story. Starting off as a rather forlorn and stooped figure, Benjamin's confidence and stature grows as the story progresses.

The way you interact with the app is really quite something, and it encourages a child's natural sense of curiosity and their need to explore.

The message behind the story is serious and weighty but if I had my way, this would be hard-wired into every single tablet device in every single school.


4) Me Books (Developed by Made in Me)

Now this is a genius idea, and one that could revolutionise the way authors get their books into electronic formats. Me Books is a fairly simple idea. Make some of the greatest children's books available via a clever portal store. Nothing new there so far, right? But the genius here is that the books are read by celebrities AND also tailored so that children can read, record and re-play their favourite books using their own voice. New and Old books can be retrofitted with 'hotspots' - little snippets of sound effects or children's dialogue that they make up themselves to make the books more interactive and fun.

It's such a simple idea, and the intuitive user interface on MeBooks is also a winner. It's not yet available but expect a HECK of a lot of fuss about this when it launches. It might not be popular with publishers (I'm still not exactly sure how this is going to work if you want to bring in your own books to digitise, the legal ramifications could give anyone a serious ulcer) but if it's successful, it could pave the way for great things.


5) The Ogress (Developed by La Souris Qui Raconte - £2.49)

The French are seriously leading the charge when it comes to developing brilliant story apps for tablet devices. There are so many brilliant studios in France, tapping into the rich vein of creativity and artistic innovation that sizzles in French art colleges and design houses.

La Souris Qui Raconte develop a series of dual-language storytelling apps including this stunner, The Ogress (La Ogresse) which tells a wonderful tale in the style of classics like those by The Brothers Grimm. Girls will love the (rather naughty) Princess Occidane and all the trouble she causes her two Fairy Godmothers - who get rather fed up with her bad behaviour and decide to teach her a lesson.

Beautifully illustrated and intuitive to control, The Ogress is one of many story apps by La Souris so definitely check out their iTunes Store Front.


6) Cinderella (Developed by Nosy Crow - £1.99)

There's a really good reason why Nosy Crow win so many awards and are heaped with praise by parents and children alike. Their apps and stories are absolutely brilliant. It comes as no surprise to know that one of their developers used to work at Rare (the ex Nintendo developers who were also Ultimate: Play the Game at one time). Nosy Crow have a knack of taking standard stories (like Cinderella) and turning them into interactive adventures par excellence.

Putting the kids into the story (with clever use of the iPad's cameras) is a genius idea. The apps are easy to control and ridiculously good value for money. With Nosy Crow making a lot of noise in publishing and in electronic form, they're the go-to for the publishing industry when it comes to seeing just how it should be done (Check out their freebie "Twits: Beard of Bees" app for some addictive score-setting fun too!)


7) Table Tots (Developed by Spinlight Studios - 69p)

 Parents know only too well the sort of chaos that ensues at home as soon as the kids get home from nursery or school, and start pulling all their toys out, playing with them for 5 minutes, then wandering off to do something else leaving a trail of devastation in their wake.

Table Tots is a bit like that. An app that allows children to play with various educational games and fun that soon descends into manic messiness and busy fun on screen. The beauty of Table Tots is that it's far easier to tidy up afterwards!

Spinlight Studios have developed a whole range of apps, from educational stuff like Table Tots to storytelling and interactive fiction like their brilliant Pixel and Parker stories. Engaging sound effects, bright colours and excellent artwork abound in their apps and they're extremely reasonably priced so if you're looking for games and stories to progress to after you've hoovered up all the free stuff your iPad can possibly hold, these are a good stepping stone to encourage you to dig your loose change out of your wallet and spend it on something a little more satisfying than a skinny latte.

8) Toca Store (Developed by Toca Boca / Bonnier Digital - £1.49)

No list of key children's app developers would be complete without mentioning the mighty Toca Boca / Bonnier Digital. They have the knack of producing interactive games and apps that can keep children absolutely absorbed and hooked for hour after hour. Consider how much it's worth to you to get a golden hour of absolute peace and quiet where your child is deeply involved and intrigued by something if you think Toca Boca's apps are costly! If you missed out on Toca Store being offered free recently, don't despair. It's still cheap enough and offers enough entertainment to warrant a look.

The key here is open-ended play. Toca Store lets children set up shop, set out their wares and then invite customers (usually mummy and daddy, or long-suffering siblings) to come and buy them.

With intuitive drag and drop controls, entertaining sounds and music, and the sort of flair for art and design we've come to expect from Toca Boca, Toca Store is simply excellent and excellently simple. Check out Toca Band too while you're at it, the latest release from Toca Boca - which is getting some seriously rave reviews.

9) Icky Fox and the Rainbow (Developed by Ickypen.co.uk - Coming Soon)

The requirements for children's stories don't change, no matter what the medium of delivery. Print books need engaging stories with great artwork, and something to spur a child's imagination. Interactive stories on tablet devices are exactly the same and this is something that publishers aren't quite getting to grips with. Thankfully Icky Pen understand this fully, and their range of children's interactive fiction absolutely epitomises how you can stretch the media to create a unique interface between your authors, illustrators and their intended audience. Keep an eye out for upcoming release "Icky Fox and the Rainbow" which is a fantastic, funny and sometimes rather mischievous story featuring a dubious fox and his food-hunting adventures.

10) Collins Big Cat Storytelling Apps (Developed by Collins Publishing - Free Downloads)

"Free" is the toughest price to match in any electronic market and "Free" is the price that causes developers, publishers and authors / illustrators to grow more grey hairs than any other price point. The problem is the expectation that once parents have spent a small fortune on a tablet device (which, thankfully, is becoming a thing of the past thanks to high powered cheap tablets hitting the market courtesy of Google and Amazon), you really don't want to shell out more money on expensive apps that might only provide an hour or so's entertainment.

Collins Big Cat Storytelling Apps are great, they're free, but more importantly they draw attention to what the publisher is doing elsewhere in its electronic publishing business. When you see a really good free app that is excellent quality, you're probably more likely to look to that developer / publisher in future to see what else they offer, and if they offer reasonably priced apps that lift the bar a notch more, then it's a relatively safe purchase.

The problem with "Free" on the app store in particular, is that it's often used as a way to drive premium-priced microcontent through to consumers via in-app purchases (which any sensible parent will instantly switch off on day one of ownership of any new tablet!) In the case of the Big Cat Storytelling apps, you can grab 8 brilliant fully-fledged storytelling apps for 0 pounds and 0 pence without having to worry that you're being stealthily fleeced. The decision is up to you whether you'll want to pay for Collins other superb paid-for apps and with the sheer quality of what's on offer, you will definitely be more inclined to. Letting kids' imaginations loose and involving them in the story telling process with their own creations is part and parcel of what Collins are doing. The more developers that get this message, the better and the more developers that adopt the approach of putting out excellent quality free apps alongside their paid-for stuff, the more likely we are to get past this crazy mentality of reaming the customer for all their worth or being a cheapskate customer when it comes to shelling out real money for really good quality apps.

Phew! That's the end of our article. I hope some of the links and apps mentioned give you food for thought next time you switch on the iPad or Android Device and start trawling the e-stores.

TOCA Boca / Bonnier Digital are our new favourite publisher when it comes to fun and beautifully made iOS distractions. Each and every new TOCA app we install on the iPad is met by squeals of delight, followed by mesmerised immersion by Charlotte who absolutely loves everything they do.

Plumping for TOCA House as our first paid-for TOCA App (You can get TOCA Store, TOCA Doctor, TOCA Hair Salon and TOCA Kitchen Monsters as freebie trials) we knew what to expect. Slick and entertaining graphics and characters, excellent sound design, intuitive controls and a lot of fun.

TOCA House puts you in charge of a rather impressive looking domicile inhabited by 5 fun characters. (We've dubbed them Supergirl, Little Boy, Granny, Miss Houseyhead and Monster-Dude) As any ex-student will know, sharing a house is fun for the first day until it comes to performing all those household chores - and this is pretty much the nub of what TOCA House is about.

Each character shuttles between various locations, all armed and ready to perform the day to day spring cleaning, household chores and gardening that the TOCA house needs to keep it in pristine condition.

SuperGirl is great. She has stretchy limbs and is super-strong, so she's a whizz at hanging pictures on the wall. Boy is a dab-hand with a mop. Granny is a whizz with her broom and Monster - well Monster just seems to like getting messy so takes a lot of baths (yep I definitely shared a house with someone like that, who used up an entire day's worth of hot water every morning noon and night).

TOCA House has lots of little activities to get on with, but repetition does set in rather soon - which is a real shame because in the free TOCA Apps there's plenty to see and do, so you expect to see children get a lot more out of the paid-for versions of things.

That said, Charlotte could've quite happily spent an afternoon doing the same chores over and over again (oh if only this were true of real life) just to see the excellent little animations and the funny noises characters emit whenever they've done a job particularly well.

The app seemed to crash once in a while (needing a cold restart to get things running again on iPad 3) but it's beautifully made and definitely felt like a worthy purchase for the price considering what other kid apps go for on iTunes.

Charlotte's best bit: Bathing the monster chap. Definitely her favourite bit.

Daddy's favourite bit: Slick presentation as ever, and some fun and unique characters in true TOCA Boca stylee!

As you probably know by now, we absolutely love all things Toca Boca - they produce the most fun, kid-friendly apps on the market and are absolutely the go-to if any would-be kid app developers want to know 'how to do it properly'.

So it's good news day today, to celebrate it being Friday, go and grab yourself Toca Store - the cute till and customer game from the iTunes store for your iPhone or iPad for exactly nought pounds and nought pence.




Be quick though, it's a limited offer so get it downloaded pronto. It's kept Charlotte very amused for a few hours after school this evening and got a huge thumbs up!

Here's a link to the iPad version: Toca Store (Bonnier Digital) on iTunes

Elsewhere in Toca land we're hotly anticipating the release of the next big Toca app, Toca Band. You will need iOS to play it but it's already looking and sounding absolutely fantastic.

Here's a video of the game in action:

We're relatively new to the app game so apologies if we're raving about things that you've already seen, already enjoyed and have moved on from. The Toca series from Bonnier Digital absolutely sets the benchmark for kid-friendly apps. We've already reviewed their excellent Toca Kitchen Monsters app, and now we're taking a look at the 'lite' version of Toca Doctor HD.

At a piffling 6mb and available for free, Toca Doctor for iPhone and iPad is the sort of app that anyone developing apps for kids needs to take a long hard look at before patting themselves on the back that they've written 'the next Angry Birds'.

From the moment the Toca Boca screen loads (each with a different theme geared around whatever Toca app you're playing), your kids will be bouncing up and down with excitement.

The presentation of these apps is faultless. Superb graphics with a 60s kitsch retro vibe are just the start of the attractive package. Where the Toca apps score really highly is in the sound production and control systems Bonnier Digital use. They obviously rigorously test these apps out on kids so kids don't need to mess around with virtual controls, wade through annoying user interfaces, and pester mum and dad for help every 5 seconds. The Toca range is just that intuitive that kids can get on and enjoy them with the minimum of fuss.

For a 'game' that offers kids the chance to become virtual surgeons and perform all sorts of (sometimes quite icky) operations, Toca Doctor is the 21st century equivalent of ripping out someone's funny bone with a tiny pair of tweezers, playing that hoary old MB Games favourite 'Operation' (which has now changed beyond all recognition and is, to be quite frank, a bit pants now compared to what it used to be like).

Toca Doctor HD Lite gives you a teasing taste of 5 puzzles from a total of 18 available in the full version. A poor kid wraps his bike around a tree and ends up injured, so it's up to you and your miniature doctor buddy to find out what's wrong and perform the necessary surgery to get your patient back to full health.

From top to toe you'll be working on a broken leg, tweaking splinters out of the poor little waif's hands, even giving him a pill to cure his dicky tummy.

As I mentioned before, it's the absolute genius way the developers take full advantage of the iPad (or iPhone's) touch screen to provide really fantastic controls that feel absolutely bang on the nail. I swear to you, you'll be sneaking in to extract those splinters more than once, it just feels so satisfying, like popping bubble wrap.

Though your children will rattle through the lite version fairly quickly, the ever-present lure of the other 13 puzzles will no doubt have you umming and ahhing about the full version price (£2.49 for the iPad, £1.99 for the iPhone). When you consider how much that skinny latte cost you this morning in Starbucks, surely a couple of quid is absolutely nothing compared to the hours of peace and quiet you'll get when you let your kids loose on this.

Toca Doctor HD Lite is available from iTunes for the iPad and iPhone

Charlotte's best bit: Without a doubt, taking those splinters out - oh and the lovely "hello!" you get from the stomach pill too. So cute!

Daddy's favourite bit: It's all so brilliantly slick and so easy to use. Kids from 2 to 102 will be able to play this easily and will love the sights and sounds.