Everyone wants their kid to know a second language. Learning a second language has many cognitive benefits, including better attention and task switching capacities in early life, and less cognitive decline in later life, according to some studies.

Plus, it opens up whole new places you can go on holiday, and having your kid fluent in two languages is a great way to one-up that annoying woman in your mothers group who keeps going on about how fantastic her toddler is at maths.

This Magical Lights Unicorn ($39.95) is designed to help children (aged 18 months and over) learn the basics of colours, as well as some numbers and shapes in English and French. Plus it sings, so that sure is something.

There are few things creepier than the laugh of a magical unicorn, or more annoying than the falsely high voice of whoever they got to do the voice acting. Yet, for some reason, kids love these majestic, light-up, talking beasts. The good news for parents is that it has a volume control button (which might be too small for clumsy little hands to learn to adjust for a while), and automatic shutoff if the toddler forgets to turn it off after playing with it.