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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Review: The Basic Ocean-Zoo

Here is the Basic Ocean-Zoo® kit produced by Big Time Toys that is sold in stores today. It consists of an Ocean-Zoo in a variety of colors with new design aero-vent castle top cover, Packet 1 Water Purifier, Packet 2 Instant Live Eggs, Packet 3 Growth Food, and a feeding spoon.

That's a lot for only $4.99 at Wal-Mart! It costs more to get the same kit from Transcience: $9.00 to be exact. You have everything you need to start your colony of Sea-Monkeys. You don't get a packet of Plasma III nor a Million-Bubble air pump, and those are essential for a tank to thrive, especially the air pump.
Transcience recently increased thier prices for individual packets from $1.00 each to $4.00 each so you can save quite a bit of money getting this kit.

The Ocean Zoo tank is pretty much the classic Sea-Monkeys® tank that has always been available. The lid differs from the design used by ExploraToy in that there are little holes drilled all around the edge to allow more air in the tank and there is no Instant Life Hatching Egg logo molded in the plastic. The position of the magnifiers is different as well. with the smallest magnifier now near the bottom left. The plastic seems a bit stouter to me as well.

Don't be fooled into getting the Marine-Zoo, though! It is a cheaply produced tank that I think is now out of production. It isn't made of hard plastic, there aren't any built in magnifiers, and nothing is holding the tank to the base but prayer. just picking it up when full of water is inviting a spill. I wouldn't even attempt to start an experiment in one of these tanks. It costs the same price as the Ocean-Zoo kit, and you get ripped off with the tank.

I have one of these at the house that I got just to get the basic kit. When I get a chance I will post some pictures of it.

2 comments:

  1. I noticed the the price increase too. There also isn't as many products listed as there were a couple weeks before.

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  2. I emailed Mr. Atamian during the time the site was down telling him how I hoped that Ms. Yolanda could get something up soon so people could order. I gave him a link to the catalog on my old site which included a parts catalog. It was shortly there after that the official site began linking to my page! I quickly had to adjust the prices to reflect the prices in the parts list included in new kits. Soon a new parts and supplies page for the official appeared based on my old HTML code, but with less items and increased prices. I hope that Yo isn't running out of supplies, She has been pretty much running Transcience all by herself since Mr. Von Bruanhut's death in 2003. As soon as I get a chance, I will ask Mr. Atamian about this.

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