A little potty for a little botty! (Fisher Price Royal Potty)

Member Name: pandapaws

Product:	Fisher Price Royal Potty
Date:	04/02/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice shape, lightweight, kids like it, similar in shape to a real toilet, not too girly

Disadvantages: Poo sticks to the back of the bowl, Overflows overnight, tune played at random, no lid

I'll be honest - I own two of these, but have never used either myself :)

Got the first one for my son when we started potty training when he was about 2. When it started in earnest, we picked another up as it was much easier to keep one in the car for 'out and about' trips, gran's house etc.

We were initially drawn to the Royal Potty because of the shape of it. It's throne like, but without the frilly embellishments that make many similar items seem girly. This would be suitable for a girl or boy, but is especially good for boys because there is a detachable green section at the front to prevent anything sprouting out over the top. We've tried a few other potties, and this was by far the best for keeping all liquids pointing firmly downwards.

This potty has good sturdy legs which don't wobble or slide around. I've seen others which aren't as secure, but this one is quite solid. The little arms are a nice touch as well, and may help some children feel secure in the seat, and less likely to fall off the edge. There's no lid, which is a disadvantage as you can't just shut it over to keep the stench inside if you can't empty it immediately for any reason! But it's also a good thing as it's one less thing for the child to forget to do, thereby preventing 'cling-film toilet rim' type incidents.

Underneath the white seat, there is a removeable green bowl which slides in and out like a drawer. Handy, as you just need to pull it out and take it to the loo to dispose of the contents without having to take the entire potty, but it can sometimes stick on the runners slightly, causing a little bit of a jerk as you pull it out. On any other item, you probably wouldn't notice, however if there's rather a lot of sloppy mess inside the bowl, that little judder can be enough to cause a bit of a splash...and when junior tries to be helpful and empty it himself...say no more!

The bowl is a good enough size (sorry, TMI alert here...) for holding two or three wees and a poo or two, but when my son was out of nappies at night but still not using the bathroom toilet, we kept the potty in his room. On a couple of occasions, we would return in the morning to find it very close to overflowing, and the annoying little catch on the slider when you pull it out meant that we used rather a lot of anti-bacterial spray on the floor during those months. I'm sure this could be avoided, and we ended up standing it on a plastic sheet just in case, but it's worth thinking about if you've got a child who produces more than the average amount.

One of the main features of the Royal Potty is that it plays a little tune to reward the child every time they 'do' something. I can't really say too much about the merits of this feature as we removed the batteries after the first week. For some reason, our potty would just play the little ditty at random throughout the day and night, and didn't always respond to something being dropped into the bowl. If my littl'un was fidgeting around while sitting on the potty waiting for something to happen, the movement would also set if off which defeated the object of the supposed 'reward', so we decided against this altogether. To be honest, I think it's a bit of a gimmick. Perhaps some children would be pleased to have a tune played for them every time they used the toilet, but for most the novelty would wear off quite quickly, and it may even get a bit annoying. Certainly for their parents!

The main drawback of the potty is that the rear of the seat-hole doesn't extend quite far enough back. My son has fairly average toilet habits, but every time he did a Number 2, it managed to smear itself all over the back of the bowl. To make this worse, there's a little ridged sensor for the tune-playing device, which is right in the firing line! This needs cleaning often (almost ever poo) as it gets very dirty, and unlike the smooth seat, the little ridges do trap mess and make it much more difficult to keep clean.

The potty is lightweight and sits quite well on the seat of a car (handy if you're out and about and have an awkward child who won't use public toilets!). The models I have are identical to that shown in this picture, except that where there's a large sticker on the back, mine are hollow so there's a handle for carrying it about. I'm not sure what they've replaced it with, but it would be far more difficult to carry without the handle.

In the box, you also get a reward chart and some stickers - again a bit of a gimmick, but maybe handy for some people. We never used it.

All in all, I still think it's the best that was available in this price range (I paid about £20 each for them in Argos) but there are a few drawbacks that prevent it from being absolutely perfect. If you're really efficient then it's probably ideal, but if you think there's any chance that it might overflow, or the cleaning of the sensor on the back will annoy you, then forget it!

Summary: Good, but lose the musical feature.