Activity Toy Reviews

My daughter received this toy as a Christmas present from grandparents. It arrived defective, with misplaced letter keys. Essentially the letters are out of alphabetical order and are not coordinated to the computer itself. Therefore if my daughter is asked a question by the computer and pushes the correct letter (which is out of order) the computer tells her she is incorrect. I contacted The Learning Journey to ask about replacing the toy. I received no response, so I contacted them a second time. The customer service rep suggested I return the toy to the store where it was purchased. Since this was a gift and we don't want the grandparents to know it doesn't work, and since they live halfway across the country, this was not a good option. The company did say that if I ship the toy to them, and if their engineers determine there's a problem, then they will agree to replace it. However, they will not pay for the shipping. Given that we received a defective toy and will be without it for the several weeks it will take to ship it back and forth, the least the company can do is send a postage-paid, self-addressed label and pay for the shipping. The customer service has not been pleasant to deal with and I therefore would not recommend buying The Learning Journey's products.

I'd never heard of this until grandma got it for my 4 year old. You put the ball on the "up" end of the lever and let it roll down to the "sweet spot," and then you step down on the "up" end and launch the ball. He's had fun experimenting with launching all sorts of things, but the soft balls that came with the flicker haven't broken anything in our house. It is an awesome concept. It takes some supervision for my son because he wants to leverage all sorts of things, and it's just not made strongly enough to be used in any way other than the prescribed manner and I'm afraid he's going to break it with all his experiments.
It teaches coordination, timing, catching. Really cool. It's priced right about what it's worth in my opinion.

My 2+ year old loves this. I wanted a sandbox that looked a little different from everyone else's. What can I say, except it's adorable! We also got the carrot slide from Chicco and couldn't be more pleased. It can also be used as a pool and has a convenient drain plug for that purpose, so you don't have to tip it over. FYI: it took about 4 bags of play sand to fill it about 1/2 way, which is really cheap, but heavy, like 200 lbs total.

This sandbox is the answer to prayers. Not only is it sturdy with a good cover (that neighborhood pets cannot defeat) but it is also nice to look at. We had been everywhere, looked at everything but either the boxes were way too poorly built or they were way too gaudy. It's nice to have kids around but it doesn't have to look like it all the time. For a nice yard that is both garden and playground it is a perfect fit.