Nicholmere's Full Review: Tiny Love Stroller Play Set
The Tiny Love Stroller Play Set consists of three separate toys that attach by Velcro belts to a stroller bar.
Age Range
The play set is rated for the 6 to 18 months age group.
We picked up our set in the summer of 2000 when my son was about seven months old, and he used it every time he was in his stroller until the winter of 2001, shortly before his second birthday.
Product Description
Each toy attaches to the stroller bar using Velcro straps with buckles. The straps were easy for me to use, so I was able to move the three toys around on the stroller bar whenever I wanted to. The tinylove.com web site recommends moving the toys around in order to “hold baby's interest - like having a new set of toys each time,” which I find a bit silly; my son recognized the toys whether they were on the left side or the right side of his stroller bar. The other reason given by the web site is, I think, a bit more reasonable. They suggest that it helps improve the motor skills of both hands. As my son got older he took great pride in being able to undo the straps. Of course he would then toss the toy away – look they bounce! So we often played fetch, but the toys did not suffer from their flying trips, and my son learned about gravity and the various levels of his mother’s patience. If I decided I did not want to play anymore I would put the toy he had recently tossed into the back of the stroller instead of back onto the stroller bar. I liked that there were three separate toys, because even if one of them was temporarily taken away, my son still had the remaining two to play with.
The Toys!
My son's favourite was the Yellow Chick. It was the first one he was able to successfully manipulate on the stroller bar and it remained his favourite until we stopped using the set. The chick’s body feels solid, as opposed to a fluffy stuffed animal, but it is covered with soft fabric. The chick’s solid plastic arms form a loop between the stroller bar and the chick’s shoulders so the chick can do summersaults, similar perhaps to those odd pink birds one can buy that rock back and forth pretending to sip from a plastic cup. My son liked twirling the chick, and when he was in his teething stage he liked biting on the chick’s beak (poor chick!). The chick has two floppy legs that wiggle about when the stroller is in motion.
The next favourite was the Sliding Beads Set. This is a set of brightly coloured beads (2 blue, 2 red, and 2 green) strung on to a solid plastic, bright yellow tube that cannot be moved or adjusted. The tube sticks straight up from the stroller bar, like a three dimensional letter M where the top of the M has been twisted a bit to make the beads’ trip around the tube a little more challenging. It took my son a few months to master this toy, because it required a manual dexterity that he did not have when we bought the set. At first he would just nibble on the beads, then he discovered that the beads could be rotated, then he realized he could move them up and down one side of the tube, and then eventually he was able to send them back and forth across the tube without any problems at all.
His least favourite was the Honking Horn with Pull Teethers. This is, yes, a horn that honks! One end has a yellow fabric bulb for the honk and the other has several hard plastic teething shapes that are attached with short strings. The tinylove.com web site says the teethers are detachable, but we never took ours off. Despite the fact that this toy was designed to be a teether my son never used it in that way, he preferred the chick and the beads for some reason. It was also quite a long time before he was strong enough to squeeze the horn’s bulb to make it honk. The one feature my son did like was that the horn was attached to its Velcro belt with a piece of string that was just long enough to allow it to be twirled around the stroller bar, which my son enjoyed doing – wrapping it around one way, unwrapping it, and then wrapping it around from the other side. This toy was actually the most popular with strangers. People would often come up to the stroller to chat with my son, and they would always comment on his stroller toys. Invariably they picked up the horn and made it honk, which would make my son laugh, so I liked this toy because it gave my son an opportunity to interact with new people.
PackagingThe toys come in an excessively large, but sturdy, clear plastic package with a strong, molded plastic handle. It was quite tempting to try to find a way to reuse the package as a toy carrying bag, but the possible dangers of leaving a big plastic bag around the house for my son to play with was enough to make me toss the package into the recycling box. As attractive as the packaging was I would have preferred it if the company had kept it simple, avoided wasting so much material, and just placed the toys in a size appropriate container.
What type of strollers are the toys suitable for?
We have the Peg Perego Amico Sherpa '99 stroller which comes with a detachable stroller bar. With the bar in place there is plenty of room to attach each of the pieces from the stroller set. The main reason we stopped using the Tiny Love Stroller Set was that my son became the right size to no longer need the stroller bar. Without the bar there wasn’t any place to put the toys, so I put the set away to keep for my second child. Since the toys attach to the bar with an adjustable strap I assume that they would be suitable for almost any size stroller bar. If in doubt, perhaps you should conduct a quick test in the store before buying them.
Can you use the toy set somewhere other than on a stroller?
The tinylove.com web site suggests that the toys can be attached to other Tiny Love products such as their Car-Bar Plus and their Super Car-Bar. They also suggest that you can attach them to shopping carts. I never tried that though, because it would have been too much work (for me) to take the stroller out of the car, take off the toys, put the stroller back in the trunk, and then go into the grocery store. Besides I used to keep a stock of inexpensive plastic fish-shaped teething rings that could be easily attached to the shopping cart and then put back in my purse when not in use. However, as long as you can get the Velcro straps safely around a railing, tube, handle, … etc. then the toys could be attached to almost anything.
Durability
After over a year of use this is the condition of our set:
The Sliding Beads Set shows no signs of any damage.
The Horn has lost its honk, sounds like the title for a new children's fable :-), but otherwise remains in good condition.
The Yellow Chick does look a little worse for wear. Structurally it is still perfectly sound; there are no rips or tears in the fabric. It just lost some of its brightness and turned a faded yellow colour. I've washed it, so it is clean for my second child, but it lacks the bright yellow it had when it was new.
The Velcro straps did not lose their grip on any of the three pieces.
Drawbacks
Since the horn is attached by a string it would sometimes dangle over the side of the stroller, causing it to get in the way when I tried to close the stroller. I made a point of keeping the horn as the middle toy on the stroller bar to prevent the problem, but once my son was old enough to move the toys around I had to remember to check for the horn before I tried to close the stroller. The only time I saw this as a safety concern occurred when the horn got stuck when I opened the stroller preventing the opening mechanism from locking into place. I had not noticed that the horn was stuck, so I put my son in the stroller and headed out for a walk. At the first curb we came to the stroller started to collapse when I tried to lift it over the curb. Once I realized what was wrong I quickly fixed the problem, and it never happened again.
Would I buy the stroller set again?
Since our set has lasted so well I do not need to buy a new one for my second child, but I would not hesitate to purchase it as a gift for someone else's new baby.
Like many baby toys, though, it is the type of item where a child would only need one set, so if you are planning to buy this as a gift you may wish to make sure that no one else is buying it too. However, according to their web site, Tiny Love does have a 30-day money-back guarantee (from the date of the receipt) so you might be able to exchange the item if the child ended up with multiple sets.
Where can you buy it?
We bought ours in a little toyshop while on vacation in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Since then though I have seen it for sale in several big name stores, including Sears and Toys 'R Us. If you visit the tinylove.com web site you can search for a store near you, or you can order directly from the web site. They say they deliver to the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Price
I suggest you check the tinylove.com web site for the current suggested retail price, but the price ranges I have seen vary from $13 to $20 depending on where you go.
Final thought
This stroller set was such a hit with my son that I am looking forward to using it again for my second child.
NM
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 20 Type of Toy: Baby Toy
Age Range of Child: 0 to 12 Months
Product Features: • A detachable honking horn with pull teethers which may be detached from the strap, for mouthing, teething and exploring up close...More at Albee Baby
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