Toca Boca Hair Salon - Christmas Gift Review

Toca Boca Hair Salon - Christmas Gift is a wonderful new Toca Boca app based on their Toca Hair Salon, which is free as a gift to all their loyal fans, also giving others a taste of what Toca Boca has to offer.

I always enjoy this time of year to see which of our favorite apps have come up with holiday-themed updates, oftentimes adding Christmas content to an existing app which is then removed after the holidays. These updates by their nature are offered to those who have previously downloaded these apps, so I think it is lovely that Toca Boca has come up with this idea to offer this application for free as a lovely Christmas gift to all.

I love this application as I do Toca Hair Salon. Here players get to groom Santa himself as well as a Christmas tree. The look and game play are very similar, as is the scene found outside the salon is now transformed nicely to a winter scene, with snow on the ground as well as falling from the sky. Once inside, choose a client and get to work changing his look in any way possible.

The styles one can create here are truly endless as one has the choice of tools to use, including a comb, scissors, hairdryer and buzzers. One of the best elements to this game is the magic potion G.R.O that when applied, will grow back hair that has been cut or shaved, even to simply lengthen hair as far as the screen will allow. A very nice selection of hair colors is also available, including both natural as well as other fun colors. Spray color slightly for more of a highlight effect or more intensely to fully dye a character’s hair a different color totally, complete with the fun sounds of ball bearings rattling around in a metal can as one makes a color choice.

Although much of what is offered here mirrors what is available in the Toca Salon, this app is not to be confused with a simple “lite” version of Toca Salon (although this app can easily be used by those new to Toca Boca to see if Toca Salon is of interest to their family) as here, wonderful decorations in the style of ornaments and such have been added which my family has gotten a huge kick out of, which vary from the more traditional hair decorations recently added to the classic Toca Salon.

From bows to ball ornaments, stars and other hanging decorations, place these items where you wish, making note that each of these choices has a variety of colors or patterns to choose from, a fun detail that is utterly Toca Boca

What I love most about these decorations is their relationship to physics, as using the hair dryer after adding these decorations will blow the ornaments away, and shaving or cutting the hair can also remove these decorations. I would love to also be able to simply move or take away these decorations with the drag of a finger after they have been first positioned, something not possible at the present time, but would be nice for a future update.

The addition of these decorations has brought this app to a whole new level of creative play that we just adore. I would also love to see more salon updates or solo apps for Halloween as well, possibly styling a wolf man, vampire or witch and glitter, curling and flat irons would be interesting choices to include as well.

Also new is the ability to turn off the camera function found within these salon apps.

This function saves parents the time it takes to delete possibly hundreds of photos from their camera roll. The camera itself remains, allowing children to still have fun taking snapshots of their characters, complete with fun bulb flashes and sound effects without any image being saved.

For some children this is a great compromise, but I worry that my son may go looking for his images and be disappointed not to find any.

In situations like this, other families may find that having the option to remove the camera altogether may be a better solution - hard to say as the photo-taking is super-cute, even if no images are being saved.

I don’t begrudge my son’s picture taking, and I confess that I have a hard time deleting his creations, but personally, I would love to see an option where the camera takes only one shot of a given character specific style, with the second, third and beyond images taken in rapid succession without any changes made to the model not to be saved to one’s camera roll.

I am impressed with the generosity of Toca Boca to have made this Christmas app a stand-alone app instead of an update, allowing fans not just specifically of theirs, but of applications in general to download this app for free.

I highly recommend this app as I do all their others, and I have in the past given them credit for making their apps affordable for most. This app is a download one who buys apps for iPhone or an iPad simply can't pass up, also being a wonderful introduction to the whimsical world of Toca Boca. Toca Boca Salon and their other apps have been reviewed at GiggleApps as well. Please look for them if interested.