Super Special Friend Kai-lan - Tiny Toy Testers Review
Ni Hao! Welcome to our Tiny Toy Testers Review of the Super Special Friend Kai-lan! She makes our hearts SUPER happy! Check out our little toy tester below and then keep reading for the Amazon.com parents' review:
Fisher-Price Super Special Friend Kai-lan...
Parents' Review: 5 Stars for Wonderful, 1 Star for Terrible:
Assembly: 4 stars, "It took about 10 minutes to detach all the wire thingies from the box, which was irritating but straightforward. There were no instructions other than on the plastic strip that you had to pull off to put the toy in normal play instead of demo mode. It was fine."
Fun Factor: 2 stars, "It was cute at first but got old quickly. It was also way too LOUD and had only one volume setting. This toy would probably be more interesting to children who are watchers of the TV show; our son has never seen it. After I watched a few youtube clips of the show, I thought it sounded worth watching … but the toy by itself wouldn’t have made me very interested in the show. I might have been kind of disappointed with the limits of the toy if I were a watcher."
Educational Factor: 1 star, "Its range is just too limited. I might be able to use it to bring up the subject of emotions and feelings, but I would have to provide all the educational content. It’s especially hard to get any kind of emotional feeling for a heavy rigid plastic doll that squirms in ways that make it hard to hold onto. I also thought the pace of the speech was odd, sometimes without any pauses for the child to react (“When I’m sad I ask for a hug can I have a hug bao bao that’s how I say hug in Chinese!”) and sometimes had too long pauses (“You make my heart feel super.…. Happy!”)."
Novelty Factor: 2 stars, "Our boy plays mostly with trains and trucks, so it was very novel to have him play with a doll that talks about emotions. However he mostly interacted with it as a mechanical noisemaker."
--Laura McMullan
computer zubehor on September 24, 2009 at 06:12 AM
I think it's cute, and my daughter actually interacts with it. She really can't get enough of it. It endorses emotional intelligence while teaching some Mandarin words. I keep hearing my daughter saying "dig" or "Thank you" or "push" in Mandarin. Kai-Lan is always careful to stop and figure out why her friends act the way they do and takes the time to help them to solve their problems. I love it because she loves it, and I think they are doing a great job. I wish they'd make some toys, though.