Ahhh, this is the way to live!
Written: Aug 07 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: All-in-one house. No need to buy different furniture play sets.
Cons: The water pumping feature is a pain and not worth it. Not very portable.
The Bottom Line: Barbie has everything she needs and desires in the coolest house on the Beach front!
|
|
|
| dmuse's Full Review: Beach Bungalow House |
Out of all the Barbie houses I've seen recently, the Barbie Beach Bungalow house is the coolest. Barbie has everything she needs to live the good life. What the Barbie Beach Bungalow house has is: a bedroom which is separated by a flight of stairs. A kitchenette with table, washing machine, aquarium, stove and fridge. A cute little back porch with barbeque, living room, an outdoor shower with beach style swinging doors for which Barbie can wash off after spending a day at the beach. The best of them all though is the in ground pool (or should I say "in roof" pool) which is shaded by an inflatable palm tree canopy.
The technical features of this house is manual air and water pump. You can inflate air into the cool bright sea green couch or bed with the handy dandy air hose. You use the telescope pump, pulling it up and pushing it down to inflate the furniture. In the kitchen area, are the two settings: A water setting, or an air setting. If you want to put water in the washing machine, aquarium sink, and pool, all you have to do is pour water in the bottom of the house (located in the fridge) and pump with the telescope and lift up the shell shaped stopper on the pool to allow water to drain down. The water feature however leaves much to be desired. While the air feature worked great, the water didn't drain down into the sink and aquarium that well. I could never seem to get the aquarium filled all the way to have the plastic fish float around in it. I pumped that telescope for 10 minutes plus and followed all the instructions, but it still bombed. Oh well, my five year old daughter didn't care. Actually she never knew about the water feature of this house anyways, since she watches PBS so she never saw a commercial for the Beach house. She saw it in the Sears catalog and at TRU and wanted it. My advice is to just forget the water part and fill up the pool on the top instead with water (you don't need the pump for this) so Barbie can take a swim. That is all my daughter cared about. Included with the house for the water feature are blue tabs that you put into the water to make it blue. I chucked them in the garbage. My daughter plays on the carpet and I had read reviews of the blue mess, so I wasn't taking the risk for stains. I have also read reviews about this house leaking. So far I haven't had any leak. The inflatable furniture is still going strong as well. No patch kit is included with the Barbie Beach Bungalow House, which should be included! If your couch, bed or palm tree canopy gets punctured, Barbie will have to sleep and watch tv on the floor. She will also have to wear heavy water proof sunscreen as well, since she'll lose her shade over the pool.
Accessories: As with nearly every Barbie playset, it comes with small accessories to help make play more realistic. Included is a turkey on a stick for the barbeque, corn on the cob, fish shaped dishes, neon pink cutlery, a large and small water pitcher, a book, vcr tapes, icy drink glasses, sunglasses, seashell, a dishwashing basket and a couple of cleaning supplies like liquid laundry detergent. You can store these in the little pull out drawer in the house or in the fridge when done playing so they don't get lost.
Assembly: Frustrating!! So what else is new with Barbie toys right? Lots of stickers, lots of plastic pieces to click into place, makes assembling the Barbie Beach Bungalow House a royal pain in the butt. If Mattel is going to charge such a high price for their toys, at least they could be nice and do most of the assembly work for us! It took almost an hour to put together. My daughter loves assembly time though. Watching her brand new toy come to life is pretty exciting.
Portability: Not great. There is no handle and the house is pretty big, awkward and too heavy for my daughter to lift. I hate moving it around. Takes a bit of work to stuff it back up and fold it. It doesn't always click into place every time. This is pretty much a toy to keep at home. However, this toy entertains my daughter for hours and would be a perfect toy for vacation (if you can find a way to transport it easily), because it has it all. Well, except for a bathroom. My daughter doesn't care though, and honestly neither do I. I love this house because it has all the main rooms Barbie needs for comfortable living plus a pool and the whole look of the house ... well, it is that awesome beachy theme that it makes it worth the money. Okay well maybe not quite worth the money since I spent $80 CDN on it. But for the entertainment value and all the stuff that comes with it, this is a toy that will pay for itself for quite a few years. Being that my daughter is five, she still has many Barbie play days ahead of her.
Durability: It is truly one big hunk of plastic. Again, what else is new? But so far it is still holding up. Everything feels sturdy enough if you tug on it. My daughter hasn't had this house for very long, so only time will tell.
All in all, the Beach Bungalow House deserves my recommendation. Just leave the water feature out of the picture and Barbie has a very cool beach house for which to live in. Barbie has a place to eat, swim, shower, sleep and party in a house that which has quite a unique look and theme, apart from the other Barbie houses of the past. Wish I could live here!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80 Cdn
Type of Toy: Other
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dmuse
|
|
Location: Maritimes, Canada
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
"There's a little witch in every woman."
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.