From the makers of popular Kidpix, this is the perfect art program for any young Rugrats fan. Choose among projects such as trading cards, stickers, greeting cards, calendars and growth charts-all customisable with your favourite Rugrats characters and personal pictures. It's easy to learn all the necessary tools for hours of artistic fun, and the thoughtfully planned-out user's manual is there as a helpful guide when you're first getting started. One area that parents are sure to enjoy is the Birthday Kit-you can print all the supplies and decorations needed for a theme birthday party, from place mats to invitations. Several of the printing projects require the paper to be printed on both sides-the screen provides the prompts, but make sure that younger users are as familiar with your printer as they are with the keyboard before letting them loose! For Internet-savvy kids, the e-cards are a sure hit, and there are multiple formats in which they can add personal photos. Happily, they'll also find a spell checker and thesaurus to help with that final editing of messages. This print shop is sure to delight your own rugrat with its many options for creative activities-expect a whole new collage of fridge art soon. -Jill Lightner.

In a medium that often sees cheap, poorly done releases to capitalise on the latest fad, Pokémon Project Studio is the real deal: a great creativity toolkit for any child fan. The software is much like an adult's graphics application, with a look and feel like that of Photoshop. The difference is that Studio is drenched in colour, with vibrant characters available to insert into every artistic project. For anyone who has been circling planet Earth rather than living on it, Pokémon is the rage with the junior school set. To say that it's a hot fad is a rabid understatement. Kids love the Japanese Anime characters, based on a Nintendo pocket game. The same sensibility permeates this licensed product, and it's sure to satisfy. The software offers both preconstructed projects and the ability to start from scratch. The menu lists are dense with text, so for younger kids, parents will need to be there for the first few hours of play. (After that, kids can easily orient themselves to the corresponding colourful, icon-based buttons on the interface). [+]

This is a first-class CD-ROM, one of a series of wonderfully designed and presented packages from children's publisher Scholastic featuring the ever-popular voices and characters from the TV series "Clifford the Big Red Dog", a character well-loved by children for more than 30 years. It is intended for children aged 4-6 years and the accent is on learning through fun. Your child will travel through Clifford's neighbourhood on a skill-building journey, and attend a fire drill as a volunteer fire-fighter, change the way Clifford looks, make funny pictures with Clifford and his favourite tree, clean up a food display, play ball, and much more-all activities designed to make Clifford's party BIG fun. Many skills can be learned and honed, including problem solving, logic and reasoning, creativity, classification and sorting of letters, matching, memory, colours and shapes, counting, special reasoning, fine motor skills, and following directions. There are three adjustable learning levels that automatically adjust according to your child's progress, while still allowing for independent play. The celebration only begins when they have everything they need to throw a great BIG party for Clifford. (Games can be also saved, to continue later, and you can print out photos of Clifford. ) The accompanying leaflet is excellent: it is extremely well set out and explains everything from technical support, installation and explanations of the activities, to reporting on a child's progress and troubleshooting, using straightforward, simple language. -Susan Naylor.

Welcome to Legoland. But don't relax-you're not visiting this place; you're running it. And if you don't stay on your toes in this blocky little world, you'll have hungry guests, broken-down rides and bankruptcy to deal with. This game, which requires a Windows operating system, starts with a phone call: "Congratulations, you just got the job as trainee park manager!" Upon reporting to Legoland, you discover that a resident mad scientist recently managed to blow up the whole park! Your job suddenly gets more complicated, as your new boss, park manager Jonathan Ablebody, coaches you on how to put the park back together. A series of tutorials teach the fundamentals of park management, from landscaping to ride repair. Free play is possible once the tutorials are mastered. The more a player builds, the more troubleshooting is necessary. Build too many rides and an alarm sounds-you'll need to build a power station to keep them all running. If you don't hire enough mechanics, rides break down. Panic and hire too many mechanics and you'll hear a "ka-ching" as your cash reserves are depleted by a bunch of lazy LEGO fix-it folks loafing around the park with nothing to do. [+]

What's Her Face is an up-to-the-minute software package that brings the new fashion dolls from Mattel to life for the first time. Join the friends Hip, Glam, Cool and Sweet as they star in a new TV Show "Ultimate Adventures". Choose two friends and help them to select fabulous wardrobes and favourite fashion looks from tops, trousers, footwear, and accessories. Do their hair and make-up, seek out exciting locations and decide where each adventure takes place: will it be a beach in Hawaii, a hot new disco, or a faraway jungle? You can decorate the scene with funky props-sandcastles, balloons, kittens, trees, fireworks and much more. As each episode begins, direct the actions and begin to add music. Give your stars a voice by recording your own voice using a microphone (not included) or there is pre-recorded dialogue available for use. Once all the preparations are complete, get your What's Her Face friends into action: roll the cameras and complete your episode so your friends and family can be treated to a world premiere. Accompanying the CD-ROM is an excellent, black-and-white pamphlet that explains everything in great detail. It is well set out and easy for adults to follow, but it may be necessary to give guidance to younger users. Creative children will love this CD, and without knowing it they will greatly enhance their PC skills while playing the game: creating adventures, making choices, clicking, highlighting, typing and so on. [+]

Young children love going to parties and with the help of this new interactive CD-ROM, they can now go to a fun party with the likes of Goldilocks, Humpty Dumpty and Little Bo Peep. Based on Janet and Allan Ahlberg's best-selling story books, The Jolly Postman's Party is packed with games and activities to keep children (aged four to eight years) happily entertained for hours. They can create joke pictures of themselves and their friends and sign them into a guest book. Bake cakes by clicking on the right ingredients. There is also an opportunity to play testing memory games. When the lights go out in a room, you have to remember where the objects were and when they come back on again, click on the ones that have moved from their original positions. This is an ambitious CD-ROM with enchanting illustrations. Probably one of the most entertaining games is helping the Jolly Postman to burst balloons with his catapult so he can find the letters hidden inside. Compared to other children's software, The Jolly Postman's Party is a bit difficult to install and some of the games are fairly complicated. But you can adjust the levels to make them easier and there is plenty of good technical support available if you do get stuck. [+]

Attenborough's Antarctic is a deliberately ingenuously titled CD-ROM, since of course the Antarctic is the world's last great unexplored territory. A continent in its own right-and, according to Graham Hancock, the home of a lost civilisation-vast swathes of the Antarctic remain largely unknown. Nevertheless, this package still goes a long way towards developing an understanding of the history and nature of this remarkable place. The range is very diverse. There are detailed and well-illustrated field guides of some of the sturdy creatures who survive down here-top marks to the regal King Penguins-as well as a series of historical and natural historical quests to keep the user's interest, tours of 6 regions narrated by the mellifluous David Attenborough, and a retelling of the stories of some of the explorers-Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton-who became famous for their obsession with the uttermost part of the earth. Attenborough's Antarctic has been very well put together. The graphics and video shots are beautiful, the topographical maps give an unexpected sense of perspective to the "white continent", and the CD-ROM will be of much use to people putting their own Antarctic presentations together, coming with software that allows you to compile your own presentation using its text and illustrations. It is both a useful and an interesting package, which seems destined to have a long shelf life. -Toby Green.

Pokémon is here to stay, bombarding us with cute characters and addictive card games. Pokémon Projects Studio (Blue) brings those characters to your PC with printable activities, birthday planning packs and even tattoos. After turning your Windows screen blue (don't worry it's not permanent), Pokémon Projects Studio (Blue) opens with many creative options. Choose Photo Fun and you can design many different photo projects (imported from disk or your TWAIN compatible scanner or camera). Other Pokémon activities include stationery, calendars or greeting cards, all imprinted with your favourite characters, fonts and backgrounds. A favourite choice was the Crafts option, where you can create wearable art, including badges, masks and tattoos. Within Crafts, you can also create paper projects, such as paper airplanes and fortunetellers, or decorative art, such as decals and key chains. Included inside Pokémon Projects Studio (Blue) is sticker paper and shrink sheets to carry your onscreen creations into the real world. Now Pokémon can bound off your screen and onto your refrigerator, wall and body. Those thinking of buying the product should be aware that the Avery brand sheets may have problems with HP DeskJet 500C and 1200C printers and are not compatible with HP DeskJet 1200C/1600C, all laser printers, and Lexmark ink-jet printers. [+]