Personally I love this toy!  It was a present for my son when he was born and was basically as big as him to begin.  I guess at around 6 weeks old he became more aware of the toy, as I think he was watching and listening and certainly kept him quite at the same time as entertaining my daughter who was almost three.

I am really into music and play several instruments and like to find ways of passing my musical enjoyment onto my kids.  This is a fun way of getting small children interested in music and learning tunes.

Octotones has eight tentacles, well he is an octopus!  But conveniently there are also eight notes in a music octave, doh, rah, me, fah, soh, la, te, doh.  This means one is able to play - well if you have some musical knowledge - simple nursery rhymes such as twinkle twinkle, three blind mice, row the boat etc on Octotones.  I also make up tunes and do harmonies - press two tentacles at once.  I think the fact my kids can sing along to Octotones makes it so enjoyable.   

This friendly musical octopus is quite big in baby toy terms.  I think it must be made as an interactive parent child play toy, not only because of its size, but also it's quite hard to squeeze the octopus' tentacles to make the sound.  The "squeaker" is inside the toy at the end of each tentacle.  It is a squeaky kind of noise, but it has a very definite pitch to each note.  

The toy is made out of lovely brightly coloured, patterned, soft textured material, using the primary and secondary colours.  It is edged with a black and white stripy silky material and has a big bulging head with a friendly face.  There is a handle at the top to hold it with.  I think this toy looks really attractive.  The tentacles are in a sort cone shape, with the widest part at the end of the tentacle where the squeaker is.  For a baby of around six months onwards I feel this is very attractive, it feels nice, has different textures, it's very bright and the sounds are capturing.

We play games with this toy.  Counting the legs is a basic one, as is talking about the colours and a little bit more complex is talking about textures.  Harder games include guessing which is the higher sound I played, the first or the second?  My son at nearly three still gets this toy out, however at five my daughter is now past it.

I think this toy costs around £20, and although it really is designed for babies it does seem to have a lasting appeal probably until around 3 and a halfish in age.  It's certainly the only "baby" toy we still have, so I think that proves it's been very good value.

Thank you to my friend who bought it for my son, this was a lovely gift!