Activity Toy Reviews

For those little hands, these are terrific for handling. The great assortment of colors, patterns, "moving parts" on the sides really stimulate a child's interest. My son is teething and wants everything in the mouth of course. The sides of this offer a nice variety of textures too. My son's favorite thing with these is to have them stacked on top of one another to either watch all the motions in sync when the top button is pressed OR just to knock down the stack of blocks. They stack to the perfect height for a child who sits up. Bravo to the manufacturer!!

My sister bought this for my son when he was 4 months old (now he's 7 months)He loves it, particularly the blue block. We take them with us on road trips, airplanes or for a troll in the carriage. He can hold one of them at a time or I stack them adn he plays with all three. It is not one of those annoyingly loud battery operated toys. It is simple and basic yet fun for babies. An "old school" type of toy. Definetly worth buying!

My daughter loves these blocks. They were the best gift her daddy could have given her. She loves to look at the designs, chew on them, toss them, etc. She has them at school also and she is usually found in the middle of the room playing with them.

Shuffler didn't work smoothly. Multiple cards sometimes get jammed in the rollers of the shuffler. A dissappointment.

Arrived very quickly. Easy to use. Built to last for years and years. Operates quietly and thoroughly. I have been around plastic electric ones and they are noisy, slow and poorly built. This one is the real thing.

My son who is almost three loves anything Buzz Lightyear so when he got this he went nuts. He plays with it a lot and doesn't seem to mind that it's actually a piece of junk. Lucky for us someone gave him mini sized Toy Story 2 action figures (Disney Store i think) at Christmas because they're the only ones that fit. I had no clue, I bought it on clearance for $9.99 and didn't even think that the normal action figures wouldn't fit. It's very flimsy and I shutter everytime he drops it. I know one of these days it will be in pieces. The rockets are kind of cool, one fires from on top, the other from under the ship. And the light up flames on the rockets add some quality to it. It's worth the 10 bucks for my kid who is getting my moneys worth out of it, but there's no way I would have paid the original $20 for it.

We ordered this Buzz Lighyear Spaceship for our 2 1/2 year old son for Santa to bring. Our son loves Toy Story & Buzz Lightyear and he requested a 'rocket ship' from Santa. We thought this was the perfect gift! We placed the order on December 6th and it did not arrive until December 23rd. Unfortunately, this spaceship is WAY TOO small for the HUGE Buzz Lightyear figure we also ordered. It was unclear to us that the spaceship was so small and the Buzz figure that was advertised with it were not compatible. So, my husband and I rushed out to Toys R Us on December 24th to desperately find a Buzz Lightyear figure that would fit this rocket ship. Luckily it worked out, and my son was very happy on Christmas morning, Now, less than 2 weeks after Christmas the rocket ship has had 1 door broken off and the shooting rocket bent so it no longer shots. My son is not gentle with the toy he plays with it, but he's had it less than 2 weeks maybe 3 full hours of playing with it and it's broken. This toy is a disappointment.

I contacted HASBRO after several attempts I was finally able to get through. THey were virtually no help at all. They apologized and said, they can't help it if the stores don't have any and that I could buy it their direct website. Rediculous.

I also purchased the Action figure which is about 5" and it doesn't fit. Hasbro says I need the 3" which is in the adventure pack. SO, I now had to spend another 8.99+ 4 something to buy it online at TRU. PErsonally, I think they should have let me buy it at a reduced cost! Oh and now I see that the space ship is 11.00 at TRU after I just pd 19.99 2 weeks ago. GRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

All in all, I'm disappointed and so is my son! He thinks Santa forgot a piece.

My 5 year old son likes dinosaurs but he's not ga-ga over them. However, he enjoyed this Pixter cartridge a great deal. The video of dinosaurs was good, and he was absorbed by the detail of dinosaurs life cycles, enough so to inform me that dinosaur eggs were as big as bowling balls and that stegosauruses ate anything. In general the Pixter graphics are cheesy and the capabilities of the device are limited, but my little guy loves it.

I want to ditto a few points mentioned below. The menu for the DVD is a real pain. It is so hard to tell which box you are on, and then, you can't pause or fast forward the DVD, so you're stuck with a 20-25 sec. clip. It got aggravating after a while.
We also joked while playing it that a lot of the songs were UK/Australian. You should view this as a warning. A lot of the questions were pretty easy, but there were some challenging ones.
However, when we got to the final Name That Tune section we would just make the other person name the tune in however many seconds they wanted because we knew that so many of them were so obscure that you could safely win by making the other person guess the question and get it wrong (thus giving you a point).
We were really excited to play the game, and gameplay is okay, but even for connoisseurs the UK stuff makes it a too much, and the DVD menu and playback problems were really just bad enough for me to really not want to play it much more in the future.

I recently placed this game with a group of friends. We are all in our 30s so we grew up in the 80s. Several of us consider ourselves to be very knowledgable when it comes to 80s popular music. This game was not very fun. It seems to be based on UK and/or Australian charts. We found much of the content to be obscure for Americans.

Name That Tune 80s Edition is probably the most fun and interactive 1980s game on the market. This game is all about the music, bands and videos of the 1980s. The game includes 110 question cards and 55 expert cards. The directions say that the game is meant to be played with a minimum of three players but you can modify the game and play with two players. There are no dice to roll. At the beginning of game play you choose a game piece. According to the game directions the youngest player starts first. Another player then will ask the player's whose turn it is to answer a trivia question. The trivia question will correspond with the number on the board. For instance, you will start play in the #1 spot, so the other player will ask you a #1 question on the card. There are 6 questions on each trivia card. The questions in the 1, 2 and 3 spots are easier than the questions in the 5 and 6 spot.

After a player moves 6 spots they then move to the circle area. This is when the DVD play beings for the most part. There are some DVD questions on the cards but they do not come up often in the trivia cards. The first DVD circle is Name That Group. When the DVD clip is played you have a short amount of time to name the group. Some of the groups that came up during game play were easy--Queen, The Ramones, and Wham to name a few. Other groups that appeared on the DVD were not very well known to even the most die hard 80's buffs who participated during my review. Groups such as 10cc, Stimulation and a video by Phillip Oakey and Giorgio Morodor stumped the entire group.

One thing that was clear in the three times I played the game is that certain clips will appear over quite quickly. The game directions make it known that clips will reappear but in different categories and with different questions. They also say that a different assortment of videos would appear when you put the DVD in each time. In all three game plays the same video clips from Kool and the Game, Europe, and Queen appeared. However, once we said let's just play Bid A Vid after normal game play ended we saw a lot of clips we hadn't seen prior. We saw clips from Mister Mister, Information Society, and Katrina and the Waves among others.

The game is won win someone wins the "Bid A Vid." This is when a player says they can name a video in a certain amount of time. It's fairly easy to win the "Bid A Vid." The most fun was had when we just decided to navigate the DVD and guess the answers. It was very enjoyable and I hope this product is a success so that refill DVD's are released.

My son wanted a basketball net last year for Christmas (2003). He was nearly four years old and spent tons of time kicking balls around and loved baseball, too. So, we thought this would be a perfect choice for a Christmas present. And the price was fabulous! Well, we found out why it was so inexpensive. First it was a nightmare and a half to put together. The sticker on the backboard lasted only a couple days. It just didn't adhere well at all. The net doesn't stay up well at all and we were constantly raising it back up for him. I put this at the curb with trash in August. By that time the nets from both the basketball and the soccer portion were totally rotted away. Definitely not made to withstand outdoor conditions, even though it is an outdoor toy. Spend your money on a well known brand and buy individual components instead of this one.

My son received this for his 2nd birthday. It was definitely difficult to put together, particularly the backboard. On the positive side, it was totally fun for my son and for us, his parents! Unfortunately, the best part of the center-the basketball hoop- broke! The rim has break-away hooks, so it doesn't fall down, for instance during a dunk, but it takes only the ball to hit it directly for it to break away and hang there. Over time the hooks broke and now if the rim is hit just shooting into the hoop it will fall off to the floor! He played with the other sports (soccer, golf and baseball) too, they survived. Oh, the balls were not accurate to the sport they represented too. They came lopsided, the baseball was yellow. Actually, we even use the back of the soccer goal net as a toy container! I do like the idea of the 4 in 1 sports center, but the quality of the product needs much improvement!

This toy my daughter received for her birthday 2 years ago and she loved it! It was actually a big hit at the party b/c of the wipeable cardboard. The adults were playing games with it.