Teens beat credit crunch by swapping

Savvy teenagers hit by the credit crunch are turning to swapping to get the things they want and beat the recession.

In the past 3 months alone over a half a million cash strapped teens across the UK have found the secret to getting the things they want for free by using swapitshop.com.

SwapitShop has unlocked one of Britain’s biggest hidden resources – the fabulous £5.9 billion fortune tied up in unused games, music, toys, fashion, DVDs and more sitting in the UK’s teens bedrooms.

In a survey conducted by SwapitShop this week, kids have provided a fascinating insight into the effect the economic downturn is having on their own finances. The survey found that:

· 11% of teens have had their pocket money reduced over the last 4 months.

· 68% of teens regularly talking about the recession at home.

· 66% of teens have been effected by the recession.

Izzie from Wolverhampton said “My parents have told my sister and me that we have to spend less money on things. We even cancelled our summer holiday to Spain. But my mum and dad are really happy that we use SwapitShop to get games and presents. They know it doesn’t cost them anything”.

Andrew, age 12, and an avid trader on Swapitshop said, “It’s wicked, my dad uses eBay and I now use SwapitShop. This week I have traded two playstation games and got 4 DVDs.”

Jonathan Attwood, the founder of SwapitShop said:  “The site is an Aladdin’s cave of all the stuff teenagers want.  It is crammed with toys, games, books, jewelry, CDs and DVDs – all up for grabs without spending a penny!  Young people are discovering that by swapping they can save a fortune.  With the credit crunch we are seeing a big increase in teens trading on SwapitShop”.

Brother and sister James and Holly, ages 12 and 15 said.  “It’s mad, every week the post man delivers loads of swaps that we have won.  Last week we got 2 DVDs and completed my deck of Dr Who cards.  Plus we have loads more of our stuff up for Swap to get more Swapits to save up for an Ipod”.

Their mum said with computer games costing £40 each in the shops swapping saves a fortune.  “We can’t afford to but everything they want, this way they can get things and it also promotes recycling making them think about the value of items”.

Top Twenty Toys for this Christmas

Want to know whats in Santa’s sack this year?

Well here’s the results of an interesting survey conducted on kids in the UK to find out. Apart from the hair straighteners and ponies it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between the girls and the boys.

One things for sure though, a certain Japanese video games company should be looking at some tidy profits by the new year

	Girls		Boys
1	Nintendo Wii	1	Games (Wii,DS, PS3,PSP,Xbox360)
2	Laptop	2	Nintendo Wii
3	Mobile phone	3	Xbox 360
4	Money	4	Money
5	Nintendo DS	5	Laptop
6	Games (Wii,DS, PS3,PSP,Xbox360)	6	Nintendo DS
7	iPod	7	Mobile Phone
8	Clothes	8	PSP
9	Anything	9	Bike
10	Nintendo DS Games	10	iPod
11	DVDs	11	Wii games
12	Bike	12	PS3
13	Digital Camera	13	Football stuff (boots, tickets, top)
14	Wii Fit	14	Nintendo DS Games
15	A horse or pony	15	Guitar
16	Wii Games	16	FIFA 09
17	PS3	17	Guitar Hero 3
18	GHD straightners	18	Cards
19	iPhone	19	Anything
20	CDs	20	Cars (Toy cars, RC)

Free fun at UK Museums

Seeing as how it has rained practically every day this year this could be the perfect activity for those wet summer weekends!

The latest cool promotion on Swapitshop gives you the chance to earn Swapits by visiting museums like the London Science Museum and the National Media Museum in Bradford.

And if your folks are too tight to take you to the gift shop afterwards, you can always bid for a rubber or a pencil case on Swapitshop and save yourself the bother! Check out the FRENZY!

**SWAPITS ALERT** Win 5 Swapits for answering the simple questions in the competition. Click here to enter.

Quest for a PS3

Donkey Kong Land is sold! Me=glee

I’m delighted to announce that after one week I have completed my first auction and I am well on the way to that shiny, sleek, new PS3!

After a furious bidding was the fantastic Donkey Kong Land cart sold for the princely some of 405 Swapits from a start value of 250.

I’m off to the post office now to send it in and claim my points, then I can get on with the next part of my plan.

Anyone have any suggestions for what I should bid for next?

Pre-internet Swapitshop?

Ever wondered what life was like before the Internet?

What did kids do at the weekends? How did they entertain themselves? And most importantly how did they swap toys and stuff without Swapitshop?

Well believe it or not, Swapitshop is nothing new. Way back in 1976 the BBC came up with a Saturday morning TV show called ‘The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop’ and gave kids up and down the country the first ever opportunity to waste their parent phone bills by spending hours trying to get through to the TV show’s telephone switchboard.

If you did manage to get through, the idea was to offer up your favourite Action Man or Sindy doll for other like-minded swappers to trade. This was all mixed in with comedy sketches, celebrity interviews and cartoons to help waste your Saturday morning until you got carted off to Tesco’s by your mum.

You might recognise a couple of faces in the clip below as Swap Shop was the show that helped launch the careers of John Craven, Keith Chegwyn, and last but not least, beardy crinkly-bottomed loon Noel Edmonds.

Great idea, but of course being the BBC being the BBC, the show was actually pretty boring and nowhere near as cool as ‘Tiswas’ on ITV.

Win tons of Swapits in the My Meebas compo

What do you call a cross between an electronic game and a cuddly toy!? My Meebas, that’s what!! Care for it, play with it, groom it and watch it grow; there’s hours of fun things to do before an unbelievable surprise occurs and your fully grown My Meebas hatches from its home!

**SWAPITS ALERT** Swapitshop are giving away 1 My Meebas and 3,000 Swapits to the winner, 1 My Meebas and 500 Swapits to 9 runners up and 5 Swapits to everyone who answers the competition question correctly!!!

Click here for the competition question – hurry up, you have until September 12th!

New Star Wars movie ‘not the worst film ever’

For all you Star Wars fans, here’s a mini review of the new film, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” from the New York Times website:

Expectations were set so low by George Lucas’s lousy trilogy of “Star Wars” prequels that the latest from the Lucasfilm factory, a feature-length digital animation called “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” comes as something of a surprise: it isn’t the most painful movie of the year!

Set between Episodes II and III, this new “Star Wars” saga (II.5?) completes the franchise’s divorce from photography-based cinema, as well as from any relationship to credible human feeling.

Anakin Skywalker, left, and sidekick in the animated feature “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”

As a mechanical thrill ride, however, “The Clone Wars” has an uncluttered look and furious pace that make it more or less as satisfying as its wildly overdesigned predecessors, although it’s neither as agile nor as well made as the terrific series of short, traditionally animated “Clone Wars” installments shown on the Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005.

The director, Dave Filoni, has cited “Thunderbirds,” the 1960s British animation series with marionettes, as an inspiration for the, uh, wooden style of his picture, but the stiff, self-important characterizations; corny space-war talk; and overheated militarism kept reminding me of “Team America: World Police.”

No more than a pretext for exploding robots and light-saber duels, the plot concerns the efforts of Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, his neophyte sidekick, to secure a fragile alliance by retrieving Jabba the Hutt’s baby son from the double-crossing clutches of Count Dooku, blah, blah, blah. Exploding robots!

By NATHAN LEE
NEW YORK TIMES 15th August 2008

I haven’t seen it yet – hoping to go at the weekend. If you have seen it – let us know what you think by adding a comment below. Now I’m off to bid for a Clone Wars sticker album on Swapitshop!

My quest to swap a Gameboy cart for a PS3

*Gameboy cartridge not actual size

Hi swappers.

I’m new to Swapitshop so I thought I would write a blog about my swaps to let you know how I get on. To make things interesting I have decided to set myself a little challenge.

I really want a PS3 but I don’t seem to have enough money. What I do have is a stack of old Gameboy cartridges and I might be persuaded to part with one or two!

I have a spare copy of Donkey Kong Land and it’s even in a nice little plastic case. Its a lovely banana coloured cartridge and I believe it’s quite rare so I’m sure someone will be happy to bid for such a desirable item.

Anyway I’m going to stick it up on Swapitshop and see how many points I get. My strategy is to buy something else with the Swapits and then auction that item at a profit. If I repeat this enough times I reckon I should have enough Swapit points for the PS3 by Christmas (with a bit of luck).

So what do you think my chances of success are? Post your comments below and wish me good luck!

Red hot swaps this week:

1. Star Wars Clone Wars Stickers
2. Agent Alfie Thunder Raker Book
3. Sophie Choice DVD
4. Two Silver Chains
5. The Snow Queen DVD
6. Sullivan Microstar
7. The BFG – By Roald Dahl
8. Kingdom Hearts PS2 Game

Got something hot to swap? Click here to add a swap today!

Top five craziest Smash Bros Brawl moves

We all love Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii and we’ve been playing it pretty much non-stop since it came out. Some of the moves are, well, just plain weird – here’s a list of our top five.

1. Peach – Wibbling the Toad
In the middle of any frantic kicking/punching/slashing action, by pressing the special attack button, Peach whips out the little Toad guy (whats he doing under her dress?) and wibbles him in the face of her enemies. Classic!

2. Kirby’s Cooking Pot
Grab the floaty smash ball power up and unleash Kirby’s super finishing move, where he produces a cooking pot, sucks all the other characters on the screen into it and whips up some mental Smash Bros soup.

3. Luigi’s Winning Pose
OK not a fighting move but still stupidly funny. Win a match with Luigi and he dives forward on his belly with his arms held back and rolls backwards and forwards like a rocking horse. Answers on a postcard if anyone has the slightest idea what this is all about.

4. Mr Game ‘n’ Watch Sausage Toss
One for the beardy old-school retro types. Not sure whether its the silly beeping noise that accompanies it or the litte black sausages that look like turds, but there’s something super satisfying about panning your opponent with a several pounds of sausage meat.

5. Snake’s Hidden Codec Taunt
Play as Solid Snake on the Shadow Moses stage and tap down to activate the taunt. Do it right and you get treated to a little cut scene where Snake and Otacon discuss the current foe:

“There’s a gorilla wearing a tie in here. He’s huge.”

If you think you have found a move even more ridiculous than these, please post them by clicking the ‘add comment’ link below.