For David’s monthly birthdays, we have elected to give him a new toy. Yesterday marked month 16 and I gave him the vtech Learn & Discover Driver which I bought for my little cousin a year ago as well — it’s got some nice tunes and it’s cute. David has actually really taken a liking to it. He loves driving the car. It’s also pretty awesome to see that he is now actually really interacting with the toys rather than smacking them around and doing nothing else with them.
But as I’ve been hearing the songs played by the Driver repeatedly, I noticed something: the songs are sung off-key. Yes, seriously. The singers clearly can’t hit the high notes. It’s such a fun toy, but you’d think that before distribution, vtech would actually do some Q&A and listen to these songs. I feel that off-key songs simply encourage babies to sing off key. I wonder if some of today’s young singers have had their foundation based on lousy toys!
I am beginning to realize that this isn’t the only toy that had a lousy QA reviewer. I also have gone through not one but TWO Megcos Learning boards. This is one of my favorite toys David owns which is why I own two. It has 40 familiar tunes and it’s one of those “learning shapes and numbers” toys, so you can benefit three different ways. And the Amazon listing calls it a “Top Quality Children’s Item.”
Except that it’s not. First, there’s no minimum age recommendation. I started giving it to my son around 8 months of age because the songs were just so fun to hear. However, at 8 months of age, babies understand nothing. Toys to them are for banging on the floor, and within a few weeks, the Megcos Learning Board started making a repeated buzz noise. I actually tried my best to take apart the entire device to fix it again. There were about 15 screws and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Because I loved it so much, I bought a second, and I gave it to my son a little while later. It, too, suffered the same fate. So much for “top quality children’s item.”
It’s not even quality. Stephanie Schwab tells me that she bought the LeapFrog Learn & Groove Musical Table. I have the same toy (it’s popular and I think every kid has it!). Her sister-in-law speaks Spanish and says that the pronunciation on the Spanish language setting is totally off. You’d think they could hire someone who actually speaks native Spanish, no?
The toy industry exceeds over 20 billion dollars in annual revenue. I’d like to think that toy makers can actually spend money on creating toys that really do boast quality and superiority. So far, my experience with toys for kids has been less than stellar. I know kids don’t care, but the money for that purchase usually comes from those of us who do.