Toca Mini

Another hit from Toca Boca, a simple yet engaging app that helps little ones explore their creative side.

Available on:

0-6
mnth

6-12
mnth

12-18
mnth

18-24
mnth

2
yrs

3
yrs

4
yrs

5
yrs

6
yrs

7
yrs

8
yrs

9
yrs

10
yrs

11+
yrs

Parents

What is it

Toca Boca presents the classic concept of decorating a character but with a range of extra features and animations to add to the fun in Toca Mini!

You can add eyes, mouths, noses and eyebrows that become animated once included on the ‘Mini’ – including letting the Mini blink, smile and even sneeze! With 60 colours and 78 reversible stamps children can have hours of fun creating exactly the ‘Mini’ that they wish, whether that’s a scary monster, a superhero or a friend. The versatile stamps add details such as hats, socks, clothing and there are plenty of colourful backgrounds to choose from too. You can even take a photo at the end to share with your friends.

What our team of testers said

"I like making the face...do you think he looks ugly, I don't" - Boy aged 5

"I think it's cool" - Girl aged 7

Skills Developed

Develops creativity and imagination
Encourages artistic skills

What our experts think

This app stands out for us, compared to the range of similar ‘decorate a picture’ apps because of the meaning and emotion that can be easily shown through the facial features. With this app it is really possible to see how moving one eye a fraction can turn the character from cute to scary which adds a new dimension to what children can learn through this game. We found our little testers enjoyed experimenting with the facial features as well as decorating all aspects of the character and background. One child particular enjoyed creating an ‘angry boxer’ complete the tattoos on his arms!

It would be even better if...

We’d love to see more designs to use on clothing as well as a wider range of backgrounds.

Play Suggestion

This app is great to developing a child’s creative side on screen but it can also act as inspiration for creative play offline too. If your child enjoyed this game then think about how to give them similar opportunities with a draw/printed character on paper and a range of decorations. There are loads of kits you can buy with stickers and glitter and endless decorations but you could also simply cut out shapes similar to those in Toca Mini and encourage your child to colour them and decorate their character with those. A really low cost way to have some great creative play. Once finished you can even mount their creations on card and let your child create and play with a whole family of characters they’ve created themselves whether they are monsters, fairies or friends.

Whilst your child is playing with this app we also encourage you to take the opportunity to discuss emotions. By moving the facial features around the character can appear to be happy, sad, angry, scary, cute, ugly – this can help you to discuss their understand of these emotions but also to discuss how superficial emotions can be and how there is a lot more to a person than what they look like.

Features

Brands: Toca Boca
Key Features:
- No 3rd party adverts
- No in-app purchasing
- No internet access required for core features
Child Restrictions: Yes- appropriate features restricted
Languages available:
Appropriate child restricted areas? Yes- appropriate features restricted
Apple version: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Requires iOS 5.0 or later
Android version: Requires Android 4.0.3 and up
App Types: Educational Apps
Games
Types of skills developed: Art & design
Creativity

Our Reviews Play Suggestion Features