Still, once we got to Shoreham on Sea, we were ferried around in a coach for the rest of the day, which was nice. It even had safety belts which was a step up from the coaches of my youth I don’t mind telling you.
When we arrived at the secret location, which turned out to be the offices and warehouse of a company called Paladone (nope, I hadn’t heard of them either), we were presented with coffee and bacon, which sorted me out for the day!
I’ll interrupt my narrative to give you a flavour of all the stuff we got up to in video form:
Still, as the day was officially labelled a play date, we certainly did some playing. It was great to reconnect with Darren and Tom as well as meeting Martyn. And of course I had the kids to keep me honest too, even if Ned’s name badge did make it look like he was the Grim Reaper at one point- I mean, who’s called DIE-
If you’ve watched the video, you’ll know we had a lot of fun playing around in Paladone’s show room after we’d been to the cinema and had a go at the sea side arcades (there were tears when we finished with the 2p machines you know). I particularly took a shine to their range of mugs, so much so I decided to create a montage. Everybody loves a montage:
We left with a a goodie bag of stuff after not quite managing to win the Dragon’s Den style competition- our range of Star Wars themed grooming products that included the REYzor and the LightShaver didn’t quite cut the mustard. I’m enormously pleased with my Bat-a-rang bottle opener/multi tool and the kids loved their DC super hero iPad decals.
The interesting thing I learnt, other than Paladone must have stuff in pretty much every home in the UK (and 76 other countries too), was the reassurance that their products are both well designed and conform to all the relevant safety standards. I’d assumed a lot of the stuff you see in stores wasn’t made with UK safety in mind as the toys often don’t have the manufacturer on, just the place on manufacturer. It was kind of reassuring to know that they’re well designed and rigorously tested.
We’re now minor celebrities due to the press coverage too:
If you want me I’ll be out signing autographs and wearing leopard print like a proper Pro Blogger!