This is the first of a monthly tape magazine aimed at four to eight year olds, ideal for keeping the children busy on wet days - or so I thought.

The cassette consists of six programs, three on each side. Side I has Balloon puzzle, Pip word game and Number Game. The first game is a re-hash of the comic book game of untangling balloon strings to find the owner. Pip checks to see if the user can memorise a three-letter word. A word is shown and the child has to press a key when he sees the particular word on-screen again. Number Game tests the child’s ability to add up to 10.

Side two starts with Humpty, another number game, in which the child's ability to do basic addition is tested. The next program is a teach and test natural history - about Blue Tits - but strangely no colour is used. The final program is a simple text adventure using single key responses which the user must help Pisky Green find seven stolen objects.

Though the idea behind the cassette is sound, the copy I received had not been thoroughly de-bugged a competition mentioned was missing; and at £3.99 it is not exactly cheap. More care should have been taken with the content of the tape to attract children, possibly it is too ambitious a project for a small firm to tackle.

M.W.