Thinkativity Imagine and Learn Musical Mixer

My 2 year old daughter absolutely loves this toy! She is a whiz at it. She plays with it for hours. She is so excited when she plays this. She got it last year for her birthday and is still playing with it 6 months later. It so cute. It helped her learn different foods and words. If she can't find the right thing to make one of the recipes, it gives her hints to find the right food groups...helping her learn her colors too! I can't say enough good things about this toy! If I could I would nominate it for a toy of the year award!

We were very excited about this toy a relative who is a chef gave it to my 2 1/2 year old daughter for Christmas 2009. The toy seemed to work, in that it responds when the child puts the different pieces in the mixer. However after hearing my child get lots of "try again" type responses, I tried it myself. It didn't work as intended. The toy doesn't recognize the pieces/foods well. A third of the time it doesn't "see" a piece at all, a third of the time it thinks it's a different food, and a third of the time it correctly "sees" the food. Because of this, it is impossible to play the game of making certain foods by mixing and matching the pieces.

It was also difficult to tell if you were pushing the pieces in properly sometimes it would respond just to lightly push them into the spot, other times you'd have to push hard until it clicked in. How the item was pushed in did not improve the toy's accuracy at "seeing" the foods.

I would have given this one star, but since I didn't follow up with the manufacturer, I will give it a little benefit of the doubt that we just had a defective toy.

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