Is this toy SUPPOSED to encourage violence?!
Written: Sep 19 '07
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Lots of fun with no end in sight!
Cons: Fat pets and pets with bushy tails can't play here
The Bottom Line: Lots of play value jammed into a tiny package. Bad message is broadcast when the fat kids can't play here. : (
|
|
|
| pitfaltina's Full Review: Littlest Pet Shop Twirlaround Treehouse |
My daughter received this toy for Christmas last year with MUCH JOY! because it included a MONKEY! (I write those words in all caps because it conveys the mood best...any Littlest Pet Shop with a monkey rates extremely high on her "good toy" list!)
The playset is pretty small, measuring only 8 inches long by 6 1/2 inches high. Though it is a small toy, Hasbro managed to pack a lot of play value into it.
The Twirlaround Treehouse is a miniature playground that ironically does NOT include monkey bars. What it does include is a merry-go-round, a slide (of sorts), a hanging bar, and a "treehouse".
The Merry-go-round
This is the part of the toy my daughter loves the best. The merry-go-round has two seats, each of which hold one pet. At the bottom of the seat is a magnetic paw print that holds the pet in place when the merry-go-round is spun. The merry-go-round spins in a clever fashion...rather than just a loop around a post that rotates, the merry-go-round has a pole with spiral threads. You wind the merry-go-round up the pole and let go, and it drops and spins at the same time. My daughter likes to spin it REALLY fast so she can see how far the pets fly when the magnets can't hold them in any more. You have to spin it really fast for those magnets to fail, as they do a great job holding the pets in at normal speed. My daughter's one complaint with the merry-go-round is that larger pets (and pets with bulky tails) are too big to fit in the seats.
The Treehouse
The "treehouse" consists of a seat at the top of the playset that only holds one pet. So how are all the monkeys going to hang out at the treehouse, Hasbro? I guess the "head monkey" can sit in the treehouse and all the other monkeys have to chill out on the slide. Again, the seat in the treehouse is small, so my daughter can't stick her frogs and lizards in it. "And EVERYONE knows that lizards like to climb, Mom!" my daughter informs me.
The Slide
Leading to the treehouse is a sort of slide. A narrow piece of plastic with gentle bumps slopes downward slightly into the treehouse. This slide, for lack of a better term, has a cool feature. There is a magnet built into the slide. When you place a pet with a magnetic paw on the slide and move the flower handle to the other side, you can "magically" move the pet. My daughter absolutely loves this feature and made up a little game where she slides the flower to the side as fast as she can, again to see how far she can make the pet fly when the magnet fails. She once shot a puppy four feet. Is this toy SUPPOSED to encourage violence?! : ) If you move the magnet at a slow speed, it works well enough, but as you move it faster, the magnet tends to fail and the pet simply falls over. You have to move it really fast to make pets fly. Or, as my daughter puts it, "Mommy! I made a hermit crab fly! And hermit crabs CAN'T fly!"
The Hanging Bar
Since this is a monkey playground that does not have monkey bars we need some place for monkeys to do their thing, so Hasbro stuck a hanging bar on the bottom of the flower lever for the slide. The hanging bar is simply a bar made of plastic that looks like a chin-up bar. Since the hanging bar is attached to the flower lever it moves when you slide the lever. So whenever my daughter is shooting pets off the slide, there's usually a monkey hanging by its tail on the hanging bar. Those poor monkeys must get some awful headaches from the speed with which they hit the ladder on the other side of the playset! We have found that very few pets can use the hanging bar because there's no way to play with this feature unless the pet you're using has a narrow curved part from which to dangle it. Monkey tails work the best, but my daughter also hangs the butterflies by their antennae, some kitties by their tails, the skunk, raccoon, and chipmunk by their tails, and birds with small talons by the feet.
The ladder I mentioned (which gets a lot of head-on collisions!) is to be found on the right side of the playset. It consists of three simple plastic bars that only rise up about halfway up the set. My daughter says that they're good for pets to reach the hanging bar, but that anybody who wants to get all the way up to the slide and treehouse has to be "magic". So we have lots of "magic" pets flying around the Twirlaround Treehouse!
The slide and ladder part of the toy can be taken off of the treehouse and merry-go-round part of the toy for even more fun. The slide and ladder part can either stand upright or you can tilt it so the slide actually IS a slide. You can then hang a monkey at the apex with the hanging bar and turn the set into monkey bars of a sort.
Finally, this set comes with the most ADORABLE monkey. The monkey is brown with a tan face and paws and a long spiral tail that is just perfect to be hung by. This isn't any ordinary monkey, though. This monkey eats a banana with a little help from a finger, and I suspect this is why my daughter wanted this set so badly. When you push down on the monkey's head with a finger, the monkey's left arm raises a peeled banana to its mouth and the right arm waves in the air. What really impresses me about this monkey is that it has eaten that same banana thousands of times and it still works. Let's give a big HURRAY! to Hasbro for making bullet-proof toys! The monkey has a magnet in its left foot to hold him in place on the playset until my daughter shoots him across the living room. For paranoid parents worried about the recent magnets-in-toys scare, don't worry, we've NEVER had a magnet come loose from a Littlest Pet Shop toy.
Clean up is easy. A swipe with a damp paper towel will clean up most messes. You might need to use a dampened cotton swap to get at the smallest cracks and crevices, but really, how often will you need to do that?
What I LOVE about this toy:
~My daughter isn't tired of it after nearly a year of play
~It encourages my daughter to try different things with her pets, which are otherwise not very useful
~Very compact to store
~Lots of features in such a small toy
What I HATE about this toy:
~Small seats in the merry-go-round and treehouse exclude a lot of pets
~Not many pets can use the hanging bar
~A treehouse with space for one pet? Seriously?
This toy was a gift, but it usually retails for $9.99.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): GIFT
Type of Toy: Playscene
Age Range of Child: 6 to 8 Years
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
pitfaltina
|
|
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me:
I'm a mommy first, a working woman second, and a craft fiend all the time!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.