What Else Could I Have Spent £50 On? (eSpecially My Barney)

Member Name: Redhillmum

Product:	eSpecially My Barney
Date:	30/07/01 (306 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unusual, Can be personalised

Disadvantages: Need a PC and Internet access, Expensive for what it is, Repetative

Something a lot less infuriating and more educational than this!

Ok, so I didn't pay £50 for mine (I couldn't have afforded to). I think it's a lot to spend on one toy for a toddler. We all know what their attention spans are like and how they like to play with the empty boxes now don't we?

Last Christmas I went into my local Dixons and was served by a nice friendly young man who asked me 'Are you ready for Christmas then? Got all your presents?'

How pleasant I thought, until he said 'We have these toys on offer, they were on special at £25 but we're selling them off at £12.50!!!!!’.

Now, how could I refuse?

Yes, I had bought all of my daughter’s presents but even if it didn't work properly I didn't intend to take it back it was worth £12.50 if we just used it as a cuddly toy.

The first thing I did when I got back was to check the Argos/Index catalogues to try and find one and compare the price. Low and behold there it was £49.99!!!!!!!

Bargain.

It was easy enough to set up. You basically have to have access to a PC and the internet to use this toy as all of the activities are loaded from the my Barney website.

Load 3 1.5V batteries in him (these are kept in by tiny screws in the cover, so don’t worry they won’t be able to take them out) and connect him to the internet.

You are supplied with a bright pink cable with two connectors and an additional phone jack fitted. One end fits into your printer port at the back of your PC, the other connects to your printer cable and a little telephone jack (like your telephone one that fits into your wall), which goes into the back of Barney.
There is a switch on the lead so you don’t have to keep removing it every time you want to use your printer.

Barney has a velcro strip down his back which covers the opening where you insert the jack, download the softw
are and when it has loaded he says ‘All Done’ and you just disconnect and he is ready.

Then all they need to do is squeeze either his tummy or right hand to make him speak.

Just a little tip before you start, to stop him speaking press his right hand twice (it took me a while to discover this and I was going around the bend in the meantime).

You have to listen to the same thing over and over and over again, until you re-programme him with something different.

The advertisements say you can personalise Barney (child’s name, hair colour, eye colour, favourite food, birthday etc) which I thought sounded brilliant and was under the impression that he would say different things each day directed directly at my daughter.

Well, it does say something different each day but you have to download it which although a novelty at first soon wears off. You can’t load more than one thing at a time either, so he will sing or tell you it’s a nice day etc but not both.

The nursery rhymes seemed to be quite good at first sight/sound but once he has recited them he sings it again in a ‘funny way’ ie Incy Wincy Spider climbs up the flower pot etc.

My daughter found this a little confusing as she is used to the original rhyme and doesn’t understand when he comes out with gibberish.

There are over 30 activities that you can download which are available until 07/01/02, what happens after that date I don’t know, so download all that you can now, just in case.

Lots of these though are Americanised especially the alphabet and there are things about Thanksgiving and Fall so our kids wouldn’t have a clue.

Basically, in my opinion he doesn't interact, he is something to listen to and copy. He doesn't respond to something your child does, except speak when his hand is squeezed!
All in all, I definitely wouldn’t pay full price, but
if you weren’t sure, then I would pay a visit to www.mybarney.com first to see what he actually does.

He sits at the back of the cabinet now with the rest of my daughter’s teddies and dolls, she has no interest in it anymore.

Am I glad I didn’t ‘fork out’ £50.00!

Summary: