A Leap Forward, a Leap Back

A few months ago I bit the bullet and purchased Will a Leapster handheld console, it was the outgoing model and I purchased it on sale for $35. While the Leapster it's self is not amazingly expensive, the games are. Each game starts out around $30 and slowly sinks in price as new one's come out. But you can't buy any of them for less than about $15 -- and that is online, then you pay shipping.

What I love about the Leapster is that all the games are teaching based software; and age specific. I buy games for Will's age that allow him to learn his ABCs, numbers, shapes, matching, and create different type of art. And they come in the 'hot' charactes of the day: Scooby Doo, Lightening McQueen, Monsters, etc.

Being the penny pincher I am, I religiously search my local classified online for any games on sale. I managed to buy three of them for a total of $15. Then I found out one HEB Plus further south was clearancing out some games for $10 each and I made a trip down there to pick up a few. I also bought some on sale at Target for $20 each. As you can see, even penny pinching, the money adds up.

But the time that Will spends on them, off and on, is worth it.

So, today I purchased a large lot of Leap Pad books and cassettes, which is different than the Leapster -- but made by the same company. The Leap Pad has a place where a book lays open on it and it has a pen that you point and it reads the story, or words, outloud. It has a few activities, but overall it requires more supervision and is less fun. My sister-in-law wanted me to keep my eyes open for any books that I could for her boys, age 2 and 4.

The batch today was 25 books and casettes for $50 -- that's $2 a set. Even at thrift store prices, I've been paying closer to $5 a set. So I spent 2 hours in the car and drove over 100 miles round trip to pick them up.

When I got home and seperated them out, I picked out a couple to add to Will's collection. Then I matched up the rest. I was not happy to find that five books had no cassettes and five cassettes didn't match their books. So really, I only bought 20 books. Then I found out that two of the matching one's were missing other things -- cards. So, really I only bought 18 sets. But there were three books that were exact duplicates of three other books. So, I only bought 15 unique sets. Really then, I paid an average of $3.33. Oh, and don't forget the gas. But I figure I'm still under $5 each.

Just as I'm posting the non-matching cartridges and books on freecycle for anyone who wants them, Will walks by. "Hey, that goes to my Leapster."

Looking where he's pointing, I tell him, "No. Those don't match anything. So, I am giving them away."

"They go to my leapster," he insists. "Look, they have a bump on them." They sure as hell do. Looking over the cartridges closer, three of the five are leapster cartridges. Two of them are actually cartridges I had wanted to purchase but had been unable to find for less than $30 each. And I was about to give them away.

So it was a great day for Leap products, until Will's Leapster quit working this evening.