Robot Reviews

My six year-old received this for his birthday and hasn't given it a second glance. But he was the same with Lincoln Logs a while back and now loves them. So I haven't given up hope yet.

Brilliant. Simple, easy to use creatively, encourages practice with spatial relations and engineering.. My (currently four year old) son plays with his Tinker Toys all the time. He never seems to get sick of these!

When shopping for xmas presents I wanted to buy a "building" set and I was recommended that Tinkertoys were very popular in the USA - I am a brit so never really knew what this toy was.

Not wanting to do lego's yet, but wanting something better than megablocks as we had outgrown them alreadythought what the heck and bought it a box of Tinker Toys for my son.

I can honestly say it was the best [...] we spent that year. He has played with this by himself, or with his dad or/and me, who have built all the toys on the box ! Its a really fun toy.

BRILLIANT !!

and the large box is enought btw to build things, and also, just enough pieces that they dont get lost and will get picked up each time.

Also great size pieces as younger than 3 cant swallow anything, but intriguing enough for the older kiddies to build with :}

We purchased this along with some other leap pad books and our 7 year old daughter can't put them down! Great product at an awesome price.

I've been trying to get some sort of way to listen to my I-Pod without the earbuds. I was not going to spend $100 bucks on another boom box just for I-Pods. So it caught my attention while I was in Herbergers and noticed I could listen to music through the dog. It was cute so I grabbed it. You have to put two AA batteries in the dog's leg. Then you just plug in your I-Pod and instant music. The sound isn't as good as with a stereo system which makes this good for me since I live in a condo and do not want to make a lot of noise. The dog is cute and its head turns and its ears go up and down to the beat of the music. There are also lights that go on and off to the beat of the music too. It also cries and barks. That kinda gets annoying after awhile. It demands attention. And if you pull its tail it growls. You control the songs and volume through your I-Pod. This is a cute cheap way to listen to your I-Pod without spending a lot of money.

The i-Dog rocks! But for some reason the thing where you
"pet" the dog won't work but other than that WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This dog is the best toy ever i got this for christmas last year and i just can't stop using this. You can plug this into an ipod or use it next to a radio. But the weirdest thing happened after awhile, as i was going to feed my dog(my real dog) i realized i left it in the car and when i tried to find it it was on and i remembered me turning it off. Anyway this toy is worth buying. IT's not even for kids really my 20 year old cousin even has one. So if your thinging of buying this amazing product, buy it!!!!!

I pre-ordered a got the new NXT box last week. I built the alpha-rex. It was fun. Here are my impressions so far...

1. The motors, sensors are well designed and works great.
2. I found a single defective piece in my set which is very uncharacteristic for lego. However, it was still usable.
3. The bluetooth gave me some problems on the second day of usuage. My laptop (Dell Precision M70) and the NXT brick couldnt connect. I had to use USB to download. I dont think its serious issue as it had worked fine previously.
4. The labview software was intutive and straight forward. However, I believe that a 10 year old will need some lessons to get used to it.
5. The display interface on the brick is very intutive. It could have been better with backlight...but then again I think that would eat up the battery faster..
6. The packaging is very disappointing. I plan to buy separate plastic boxes for storage.

Overall, I am very excited and happy with the product. I cant wait for the bluetooth resources that lego will post on their website, which will let me do some cool stuff...i hope :)

My NXT set just arrived by FedEx this afternoon. I'm a parent of two (6 and 3-year old) so this is mainly for me for now. I was an early adopter of the first generation of Mindstorms, so naturally I pre-ordered the NXT. I've played with it for two hours, so these are my initial impressions:

- the new motors are Wonderful -- they work as motors or servos (you tell them which angle to go to). They look futuristic and robot-y

- it comes with an ultrasound distance sensor -- whoa that's neat!

- All of the sensors are "slick-looking", and seem to work very well.

- the brick display is quite nice, but the interface is a bit niggly. Lots of nested menus. My 3 year-old managed to delete the built in demo program by button twiddling. It was easy to restore, though.

- the box itself (the "out of box experience") is disappointing. You have to punch out some quarter-circles to allow it to hinge, but they're poorly serrated, so the tears come out ugly. The inner boxes are hard to open so you end up messing those up. In short, the previous mindstorms box was a great long-term storage solution. This one is going in the trash. As a first impression, it's pretty poor.

- back to the good: there's a "quick-start guide" that gets you building a simple robot that is run by a built in demo program. It's perfect: not difficult, but not trivial -- it makes noises and moves around. The kids were enchanted.

- the "powered by LabView" programming environment seems halfway between the nerd-y LabView system that you could buy from Dacta and the totally bozo thing bundled with the old Mindstorms. It doesn't have that "rocket scientist" feel of the old LabView environment, which is both good (it's more self-guided) and bad (I don't see how to zoom out so that I can see complex programs all at once, for example.

All in all, this thing is very impressive, has lots of staying power, and since it supports MacOS X, I'll actually use it, and will most likely pull out my old MindStorms and combine parts. Thanks, Lego -- keep up the great work!

Firmware update worked fine for me. You may need to reset your NXT brick (paperclip beside the usb port) and redownload.

My three year old daughter and I built and programmed the tribot in about three hours. We're thrilled with it.

I wanted a robotic pet for our busy family, so I bought the original RoboSapien when it first came out. Though we had a lot of fun with it, it lacked autonomy (the ability to do things on its own). Robopet promised that, so I bought that next for my family. It looked promising!

At first, it was immensely fun. It seemed to deliver on its promises. It could roll over, sit up and beg, and scampered about as it explored its environment without running into anything. However, I was disappointed with the fact that it had trouble on a threshhold (the raised part where one floor type changes to another floor type), and could easily get itself stuck in a corner with only one or two obsticals. Oddly, uneven and soft surfaces posed a great challenge; one would assume that a walking robot with four legs ought to be able to walk on anything, but robopet needed a hard, flat surface. Also, I questioned the durability of this 'bot.

Now, I'm not sure if it's something that happened when it fell 6" to the floor after backing away from a wall, or if it was a defect, but mine started locking up whenever I used it in edge detection mode. Nothing takes the fun out faster than when this 'bot freezes in some odd pose and becomes completely unresponsive until it's reset; this after only a couple of minutes of play.

I did some research on my problem, and discovered other durability and quality issues. Apparently, the gears inside are made out of cheap plastic and are prone to stripping. The legs aren't very strong at all and they are also prone to breaking. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if spare parts were readily available, cheap, and easy to replace, but this is not the case.

I'm sorry, but a robotic pet needs to be reasonably durable. If it walks, then it needs to be able to walk on grass, carpet, gravel...and finally, it ought to be able to tell you when it's "Hungry" (low battery power) at the very least. If you want to get into the world of robotics, I suggest one of the many good kits, and if you're in the market for a cheap robotic pet, wait a little longer. Robopet does come close, but we're not quite there yet.

This does everything it's supposed to--lots of cool tricks, no trouble walking on carpets or hard floors, etc. It's not too noisy (just noisy enough to entertain kids), and the programming is very clever. My 10 year old has the patience to read the directions; my 6 year old just pushes buttons and enjoys himself. My kids think it's "awesome!" I'm glad the price was reduced, but it's definitely worth $70 (including shipping).

My 6 year old nephew got this for his birthday after he got the dinopet for Christmas and he loves them both! This is so funny it even acts like it is peeing! This is a pet I can handle we all love it!

I am a 33 year old female who always found toys for boys more exciting than the ones for girls. I was excited at first to find and purchase this toy for my 7 year old son. I couldn't wait until Christmas Day to play with it myself. My excitement turned out to be disappointment. We took it to our family dinner and my family felt the same. It is nothing like the larger version my aunts uncles and I would play for days and days. They had a great idea when they brought it back, but I wish it were like the "old school" version. Like a previous reviewer wrote, "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT!".

Do not waste your money on this toy at all!! The robots heads pop-up without even being hit. The robots are always falling off the ring and they aren't that easy to snap back on. It was disappointing to play this game. My kids have given up ont his game and it just sits on the shelf.

I didnt find the product as bad as indicated in most of the other reviews but it is a disapointment. The original version was much larger, more responsive etc. Too bad Matel didnt use the original specs.

My daughter received this toy for her fourth birthday. She plays with it all the time!!! It didn't come with any tapes and honestly she doesn't need them! She spends quite some time speaking into the microphone and using the slide to change the sound of her voice. It is so funny! We all get a kick out of it. There are several different sounds to choose from. Even her two year old twin sisters get into the act. They love it.
Love this toy. It's extremely durable. Would absolutely recommend this.

So glad you can still buy a tape recorder!!! They will eventually become obsolete like VCRs, so I'm glad I got my hands on this. Thank you Fisher Price for still making them!

Recorder has been dropped many, many, many times... still plays perfectly, without a scratch on the plastic. Adjustable volume, cute voice wharping, and best of all - you can not only play tapes but record! My 3-1/2 year old is having the time of her life.

I highly recommend purchasing this recorder and a package of blank tapes the next time you have to buy a birthday gift for a 3-8 year old.

my 3 yr loved it and played with it for a wk....but still after 6 months he plays with it for 30 minutes a wk, which is a big thing for him as he never plays with a toy when it gets a wk old..i got it for $[...]

I'm always having too much attention with Scorponok,he's allways going to others'personal space and attacking them,especially Megatron and Optimus.He's always showi'n of his muscels and good looks which ticks off especially Megatron.That's why most people gang up on him.Scorponok transforms to a hover jet and mechanical scorpion.He also has bigg'ol claws and a stinger full of electricity and raw energon.He's in my main ofice on top of a summit pumping himself up sayi'n;"I'm the best of all you weaklings!AH HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!!!And Megatron shall pay for dissing my master Alpha Q!All he wanted was to have back his planet and this is what he gets!You people sicken me!"He drives every one crazy!We'lp,gotta get goin!

looks great, interesting transformation, sounds are greatly improved from the deluxe armada figues, BUT!

i think the collector obsession with tight joints has gotten to hasbro's collective brain. the last couple of energon toys i got (scorponok and arcee) have both been TOO tight, by a lot, and with scorponok it's so much the case that some of his semi-detachable parts tend to come off during every transformation.

...but they pop back on easily enough, so it's not that big a deal.

i'm mostly a g1 fan, so i kinda wish he was a LOT bigger, but as it is now he's sitting in my office comfortably and threateningly holding arcee off the ground with one hand and scaring the crap out of starscream with the other.

neat.



oh, my other gripe is some minor difficulty in posability. his legs and arms aren't really as flexible as they might be, and he can't stand freely in robot mode with his tail up.

I really like my Scorponok figure. I've heard several complaints about tight joints and the like, but I have no problem with them. Still not quite used to the "ratchet" joints that they're using alot more of in the mega and ultra figures. As for the poseability to these joints, I'd say it's relatively good. Overall a really fun toy if you can deal with the noises that go with it (take out the batteries if they bother you).

I love leap pad my daughter is doing work above her grade level because of these

My 6 year old loves this book. Wanting to be like her sister she is learning spanish too! This is a very well laid out book. enhances the ability for young children to learn a second language.