Mowing the Yawn! (Fisher Price Twirlin' Whirlin' Garden)

Member Name: chrispitts

Product:	Fisher Price Twirlin' Whirlin' Garden
Date:	11/01/02 (599 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funky music

Disadvantages: Limited entertainment

Most parents love Fisher Price. Who wouldn't. If you think about the many multi-coloured, flashing, moving, musical, noise-making child-occupiers you can buy, most of them come from the Fisher Price stable. And, by and large, they get it right. The toys are well-constructed, the kids love them, and some of them even help your children learn!
All of which makes it even more inexplicable that something like the Twirlin' Whirlin' Garden exists.

My wife and I saw the TV adverts, and the box in Mothercare. It looked great - so many things moving at once, a mat for baby to sit on, flashing lights - what more could you ask for? So we bought it as an early Christmas Present for Emily.
Setting up was fairly simple - most parents have probably struggled with "building" a toy, but the instructions for Twirlin' Whirlin' Garden were fairly straight-forward. It's a shame we were missing a part, but that's life I suppose (and it wasn't a vital part).

So, all set up, we pressed the button... and...

Lights
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4 small flashing lights in the centre, by the start button. They flash in time to the music, but are not very big - Emily was not impressed.

Music
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One, yes, ONE song. I admit, the jazzy tune makes a nice change from "London Bridge" and "Winnie the Pooh", but one song repeated time after time after time gets a bit much.

Movement
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The main part of the Garden is a set of 4 turntables (each one turning in an opposite direction to it's neighbours), with bobbles in the middle, which you can stack the pieces on. We discovered very quickly that it was far more entertaining to knock the stacks over, and watch the pieces spin round and round - sometimes even changing turntables!! My suggestion that it would provide good exercise for hamsters went down like a lead balloon. However, we did discover that Emily has a talent for DJi
ng, as she put her full weight on one of the turntables and stopped it moving. "Scratch that beat...".
Oh, I almost forgot, there are two flimsy "flower-things" that move up and down about 1-2cms. You can stack things on them too, though why you'd want to is beyond me.
I believe there should be a see-saw as well, although, as mentioned earlier - this was missing in our box.

Interaction
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Let's be honest - there ain't a lot to do in this garden. Press the button, watch the spinning, knock the stack over, watch the spinning, eat the pieces, break the flowers, watch the spinning. One button, one piece of music, one bored baby, one total waste of money.

Summary: