Home and Garden TV

The Play & Freeze is scheduled to air on HGTV’s I Want That! on January 18th, 2006. (FYI: HGTV can change the show time at a moment's notice.)

Winner!!!

I'm not sure exactly what it means, but TOTALToys, Inc. has told us that we won an award!

VENDOR REP OF THE YEAR: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Last Minute Gift Guide

Good Day LA listed the ball as the first "last minute gift" on their list.

Great ball review

Here's a great review of the ball from the Mom's Network...

Now making Ice Cream is literally a whole new ballgame for families. We found the new Play and Freeze Ice Cream maker to be a great gift idea for all. Much like a technologically advanced blue soccer ball, this homemade treat maker worked like a charm and the necessary ingredients didn’t send me all over town to get them.

Having something to do for all age groups was important to us and even a three-year-old was able to get involved in the mixing process. While each batch doesn’t make a ton, we also found this to be a big plus as each child was able to help in making their own versus each taking turns adding one ingredient, one mixing, etc.

The ball requires no electricity (so would be great for outings as well such as picnics and camping trips) and was definitely what we’d call a 4 out of 5 for originality in family fun or a “quality” time venue. The Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker can be found at stores such as REI (www.rei.com), www.LLBean.com, and www.IceCreamRevolution.com.

Revenue records

Company revenue has far surpassed all projections. November alone was a crazy month with lots of candle lantern work (the most in several months) and all-time-record ice cream ball sales. Total sales were just short of half a million for the month. We also passed the $2M mark for total revenue since purchase of the business. We will celebrate both with a pizza party today!

We're also seeing records broken for our Amazon sales. Our previous record was 78 items purchase in one day. It happened when the ball appeared on Good Morning America. It was a very short-lived spike and the sales faded within three or four days. We almost broke the record on Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving is now known as "Cyber-Monday" since people get back to their high-speed internet connections at work and start their Christmas shopping). We had 76 sales. Tuesday was a bit lower. Wednesday was the winner, with 79 sales, breaking the old record. Thursday isn't quite over (due to Amazon's time-stamping process), but total sales are already over 100. We expect this rate of sales to continue until December 20th or so. What a ride!

Jay Leno

Just a reminder...we've been told that the ice cream ball will probably be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday, December 9th. We were also told that Jay has veto rights over everything so if he doesn't want to show the ball, it won't go on. I guess we won't know for certain until the show is on!