This Uni Ain’t Puny! Thinkway & Neopets Score Big With Their Interactive Talking Uni Pkushie!
Written: Jul 23 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Adorable design, interacts with other Neopet talking plushies, over 50 sayings.
Cons: Fur gets dirty easily!
The Bottom Line: Love Neopets? Think Uni’s are the cutest and coolest species? Then you have to get a Thinkway Interactive Talking Uni Plushie!
|
|
|
| Freak369's Full Review: Thinkway Neopet Uni |
As I’ve mentioned in several Neopet reviews, I am a huge fan of the site and think that it is a great place for kids to hang out, play games and interact on message boards. Since the site is monitored and there are different age ranges that your child can join under [as well as Neomail and message board restrictions], it’s a site that I’ve never had a problem with any of the brood spending time at. Annabelle didn’t really think much of the site at first, I mean, how entertaining is it to watch someone play “Word Poker” or “Hasee Bounce”? That all changed when I was looking for a morphing potion to use on one of my pets to get an avatar, when I came across a cheap Uni one and used it, she flipped when she saw what it looked like. After that, it was all over with. She wanted her own account and a Uni for a pet. I knew that there were a few Hasbro and Thinkway toys in the Uni species so I started looking for them to see if she would be interested in them. Needless to say when she saw this for the first time she flipped out, immediately named it and started looking for the perfect comb to use on it’s mane.
Thinkway Interactive Neopet Talking Uni Plushie
Visually this has a lot more detail than the Shoyru that I purchased; with a silky mane and soft point unicorn horn, it’s the perfect pick for little girls. Annabelle likes to watch when I am logged in to the Neopet website [except when I am playing games] and fell in love with the Uni species as soon as she saw one. When I came across one in white with pink hair I knew that it was made just for her. This one wasn’t on sale but I didn’t mind spending a little over ten dollars on it, the smile on her face when she saw it was well worth it. The Uni goes pretty much everywhere with her, tucked in her Hello Kitty Backpack with a few of her other prized possessions. These interactive plushies aren’t fragile but you can’t toss them around or play with them as you would a regular stuffed animal. The fur does get dirty easily but if you clean it often and make sure to keep it away from the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it stands a fighting chance of staying somewhat clean.
Each of the Thinkway Interactive Talking Plushies has their own set of sayings; the Uni will say things like, “I am so pretty.” and “Will you brush my mane?” but there are common phrases that all these pets share like, “Do you want to play a game?” or “I feel sick!”. If you let them interact with other pets and petpets they will learn more phrases but not the ones that define their species. Each of them says “Hi, I am a ... [species name]” so that isn’t something that a Uni would teach a Kacheek. It might take them a while to learn phrases from other pets so let them play with each other and start up an interactive game between them. They will need to take a rest after about ten minutes of playing, if this happens just ‘wake them up’ by pressing one of their ears and they will go right back into the game. The more pets and petpets that your Uni is exposed to, the more it will learn and the happier it will be. The speech of the pet is clear and not garbled and the only time you might have trouble understanding it is when the batteries start to die. This one has the same light up features as the Shoyru [cheeks that glow or blink]; a good indication of the battery life is when these dim or stop working.
Unlike the pets at the NeoPets website, these don’t need to be fed, read books to or groomed but they do need to be played with. If you yell at it or are mean to it, your pet will get sick and refuse to play games with you until you start acting nicer to it. Most of the time all you need to do is talk softly to it and it will start to feel better. The one thing that really irked me about these is that they were marketed to be interactive toys that play games; it is interactive and will respond to your voice but there is only one game that it will play and that is rather silly. Remember the old “Magic 8 Balls” where you would ask it a question then flip it over to get an answer? This is basically the same thing only it gives you a yes or no answer to your question. You can do this alone or with other pets and petpets but it does start to get a little annoying with three of them going at it for more than a couple of minutes. There’s no volume control so if you can’t take the talking any more, just put it to sleep by moving the pets more then ten feet from each other and they will start yawning and go to sleep.
The Bottom Line
Powered by AA sized batteries, this is a very cute toy that Annabelle loves to death. It’s really strange to see her being so gentle with it, combing it’s hair and whispering secrets in it’s ear one minute and the next jumping off the couch on to the oversize Cookie Monster plushie and making it beg for mercy. She isn’t into the girlie stuff that much but does have a strange fascination with princess and castle things. I thought that since she liked this she might get into the My Little Pony stuff but weeks after I bought them and they sat on the shelf of her room, they went back to the store. She likes grabbing my talking Shoyru and having them sit there and talk to each other and when she sees someone else with one at the mall or a Neopet event, she looks like she is ready to explode with excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ten dollar toy get so much use and be so loved - but her Uni [named Princess of course] gets the royal treatment everyday. Her mane gets combed, she enjoys an imaginary bowl of Uni food and gets toted around in her backpack with her face sticking out.
Aside from the fur getting dirty easily, this is a wonderful interactive pet that is leagues beyond the old school Furby toys. These sell for around ten dollars but some online sites are charging as much as twenty for them. Be sure to look for the packages that have the words ‘rare item code’ on them. These contain playing cards that you can collect and on them there is a printed code that you can use at the site. You enter the code at the Grundo Warehouse and in return you are given a rare item - it could be a weapon, gourmet piece of food, rare book ... you get the idea. Not all the pets or packages have these so if you are a member of the site it is worth spending a few minutes looking over the selection to see if you can find one that has a rare item code inside. The Shoyru will always be my favorite but the Uni gets played with a lot more because it goes pretty much everywhere with Annabelle. Thinkway made a great toy that kids genuinely love to play with and if you are a Uni lover [or you are looking for a unicorn themed item to give as a gift] this is an awesome pick!
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2005 Freak369
Other Neopet reviews ...
NeoPets Online
Hasbro Neopets Deluxe World Meridell Game
Hasbro Neopets Deluxe World Faerie Land Game
Thinkway Interactive Neopet Talking Shoyru Plushie
Hasbro Playskool Neopet Mutant Kacheek Interactive Game
Neopets: The Scams, Hacks, Cheats & Darkside of Neopia
The Dark Side of Neopets: Pant Devil, Dr. Sloth, Boo Brothers, Esophagor & Tax Beast!
The Neopets Primer: Getting Stared On That First Million!
The Neopet Primer II: Making The Second Million!
So You Want To Get Rich At Neopets? Quests, Quests & More Quests!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): see review
Type of Toy: Other
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.