Cottage Catastrophe! A Toy Warning

Posted by Vulnadia on May 06, 2009 at 03:26 PM We have had a great travesty occur in our living room this week! Our most favourite toy, our Rose Petal Cottage has finally bitten the dust and died a horrible death. You see, my kids love to play house in it and prefer to take tea every morning at 9:30 straight up. Every afternoon, they turn it on its side and use half of it to make a sort of pirate ship and they set sail with their "Arrrrggghh" battle cries and wear their little pirate hats. Kaiden even overturned the door half recently and made himself a tiny tent of sorts using the door to come and go freely from underneath it. At my house my kids have found a myriad of uses for their Cottage. They have even mastered somehow getting caught in between the walls by climbing in the windows. But sadly, this has taken quite a toll on the connector pieces that hold the polls together that make up the main frame of the house. Yep, somehow my kids have managed to break, bend twist and warp the plastic bar pieces that hold everything together. I thought that I was being a bright, smart mommie by knowing that the main toy websites often have solutions and parts available for these things. After all, this toy is fairly new and not ancient. Heck I was even able to locate the CD and cords that go with a Doll that is several years old by going to the manufacturer website and those parts were all free, shipping included. But sadly, when I went to the Hasbro website, I not only found that their customer service link didn't work so very well (I had to submit my query several times before it would take) but I found that this was supposedly not a common issue with this toy. I submitted my question to their customer service department in hopes of getting replacement parts on yesterday. Today, I was informed that this toy is no longer being manufactured and that they do not have a replacement set of parts for the Cottage. So basically, it is going to have to be throw away unless I can come up with a safe solution to the framing issue. I had thought that maybe customer service would offer some sort of solution, but alas they cannot. I'm very surprised, too, because this toy isn't really old or outdated. But now, husband is going to have to finally break down and build the babies a house of their own outside in the backyard. Their inside Cottage will be sorely missed as they had become very fond if it in all its versatility!