Its Time for Yo-kai

Despite having never seeing the Yo-kai Watch show previously, having only seen a commercial and some toys at Target, my son practically jumped out of our moving car when he saw the Yo-kai box sitting on our steps.

Pure joy!

My five year old has been talking about this since I mistakenly mentioned that I would be doing something with Yo-kai Watch a few weeks ago. Here is a dad pro-tip if you tell your kids about fun things coming up they will ask you about it everyday until it happens. Every day he would ask "Where's my Yo-kai watch?" "When will it be here?" "Why isn't it here yet?" He was like a low level mafia collections guy looking to get paid. But the day finally came.

When we cracked open the box, it was even better than he could imagine. We were lucky enough to get a few watch sets, some collectors albums, a few figures, some awesome posters and a handful of blind bags. It was like Yo-kai Watch themed Christmas.

Its time for fun! ... watch doesn't actually tell time

After both of my kids got all Yo-kai blinged up in their watches we started planning a viewing party with their cousins. Guests were invited, posters were hung, popcorn was popped, juice boxes were chilled. Of course we had some technical difficulties, which forced us to watch the DVD on a laptop. But once everyone sat down, grabbed handfuls of popcorn and some juice boxes, it was all good. Honestly the intimacy of watching it on the smaller screen, had the kids sitting closer and being much more focused on the video.

Yo-kai Watch, is a worldwide phenomenon, the theatrical release of the Yo-kai watch movie, in Japan beat Star Wars:The Force Awakens head to head. The Yo-kai live in a parallel dimension to ours, they often come to our dimension to have fun or cause mischief and if you make a connection to a Yo-kai they will give you a medal, and with that medal and your summoning watch you can bring them back to help you get out of trouble or just to have fun.

Who are we going to summon next?

The show kept the kids entertained for a while, but they kept going back to the toys. My son and his also five year cousin were wearing the watches and cracking up as they tried the different character medals. The watch, which does not tell time plays tribal songs, summoning sounds and then shouts the Yo-kai name. The watch can recognize over 100 medals. Each medal which has a QR code on the back, which can be used to interact with an app on IOS and Android devices.  I'll be honest I don't really get it, but listening to five-years-olds laughing their butts off is pretty cool in my book. I do wish there was a volume control on the watch, since its pretty loud. But alas, at least it doesn't randomly start making noises.

On the other hand my seven year old daughter was really into the collect-ability of the medals. She is a huge Shopkins fan and was really into checking the checklists and searching for the rare pieces, really enjoyed putting together her collection of Yo-kai. Her favorite is Tatteltell, while me and my little guy are more Camp Whisper.

 

Yo-kai watch products are available at all major retailers and online. 

Watch episodes of Yo-kai Watch on Disney XD weekdays at 5pm and on Youtube

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Disclaimer: I was compensated by Hasbro for the #YokaiWatch campaign. All opinions remain my own.