One of the girls favourite TV shows is ben and Holly. It is also one I am happy to watch. the show reminds me of our family set up – with Princess Holly as the older child and twin sisters Daisy and Poppy. Unfortunately I feel more like nanny Plum than Queen Thistle. 
They were therefore delighted to review the Ben and Holly Thistle Castle Playset. This costs £25 and is sure to be one of the big toys to buy this Christmas. 
One of the best things for the girls was that you could start playing straight away. Everything is already set up for you. they were a bit disappointed there was only a Holly character to play with.They had already decided who was going to have ben when the set was opened and were surprised he wasn’t included in the box. You can buy other characters, a twin set of Ben and Holly costs £4.99, but then you would get two Holly’s. 
Once they got over this disappointed they loved playing with the castle. There are lots of hidden surprises which they really loved. You can slide Holly down the slide hidden under the toy box. When you stir the cauldron all the doors open to reveal the fridge and a hidden picture. You can also lift the chair so it looks like Holly is floating. These magical features are really lovely and kept the twins happy for ages. 
The set itself is very robust. It is quite an unusual shape and that is because you can join all the play sets together to make one big Ben and Holly world. This does mean that the one set on its own looks a little unfinished but the children didn’t seem to mind. It is quite a compact toy and doesn’t take up too much room. It easily fits in one of our toy boxes. 
The toy seems very robust. I liked the fact the Holly figure seemed really strong. unfortunately the wing broke off after only playing with it for an hour. I’m not sure exactly how this happened and of course this does happen with young children but it seemed a shame when we had only just got the toy to break straight away. 
If you are planning to buy a few of the ben and Holly play sets then this is a good place to start. The magical features make it really fun but you do need to buy additional characters to make it really worth playing with. Disclaimer: We were sent the playset for the purposes of this review