The Vtech Discovery Tree is one of the brightest coloured toys I've seen. It instantly stood out to me in the toy shop.

Looks wise:
This toy is the perfect toy for any little child- it's totally neutral, so is suitable for boys or girls. It has a colour scheme of mainly green and orange, but has blue, red and yellow on it too. It looks like a giant tree (albeit with the wrong coloured bark).

What does this toy actually do?
-Unlike most trees, this tree has a pop-up character in the shape of a little yellow squirrel with its nut. The box said it came with pop-up 'characters'- but it definately only comes with one! The squirrel can be pushed in and pulled back out- and it makes a chuckling noise as you do so.
-There are five different coloured balls (red, orange, yellow, green and blue) with eyes printed on them, which you can push through the top of the three. These balls then go down the slide and come out of different holes. There is also a ramp which you can press, to make the balls jump through onto a swing. When you press the yellow ramp it makes the sound of someone getting excited, saying "wwwweeeee". I've noticed that the different balls take different routes down the slide. Some of them go through holes, and others jump down the piano keys.
-There are five buttons on the top of the tree, in the shape of leaves, which have different animals and numbers on. The red button has a number one written on it, and when pressed it says "I'm a ladybird". If the button is pressed again it makes a laughing sound. The orange button has a number two written on it, and when pressed says "I'm a caterpillar". If this button is pressed again it makes the sound of a caterpilla flying down a leaf/branch. The yellow button has a number three written on it and says "I'm a bee". It also makes a buzzing sound. The green button has a number four on it and says "I'm a frog" or makes the sound of a frog. Finally, the blue button says number five on it and says "I'm a bird" or makes the noise of a bird tweeting. The discovery tree also detects which coloured ball you have pushed down the hole and makes noises relevant to that ball.
-On another secting of the tree, there are three more buttons which are also in the shape of leaves. These buttons say A,B and C on them. A is red and has an apple on it. When pressed there is the sound of an apple being bitten. B is yellow and has a bird on it (accompanied by the sound of a bird) and C is green with the picture of a caterpillar on it-yet again with the sound of a caterpilla flying down a leaf/branch.
-The magic piano has letters 'A, B, C, D, E' written across the keys. When pressed they light up and play slightly different tones.
-There are three different leaves attached to one of the branches, when pressed, these make the sound similar to Tigger bouncing off Winnie the Pooh. This has my daughter in stitches!

Finally:
This toy takes 3 x AA batteries, although the one we purchased from Toys r us came with demo batteries included. These don't last very long though.

The dimensions of this toy are: H 38cm, W 37cm and D 23cm

The discovery tree is recommended for 12 months and upwards-I think this is about right as the balls are that little bit heavy for children younger than that.


The discovery tree retails in Toys r us for £49.99- but I have seen this toy for a lot cheaper. We picked it up in the half price sale, and I wouldn't really have wanted to pay much more for it.

My personal opinion:
As much as I love this toy, there are a few things which irritate me about it to say the least.
-It's really loud (there are two different volume levels, but this is still pretty loud even on the quiter setting)
-It absolutely eats batteries. After literally a couple of days this toy sounds 'dead as a dodo'
-I thought they could have been a little bit more imaginative when it came to the second lot of buttons. We already had a caterpilla and a bird, so something different would have been better.

Would i Recommend this toy:
I would purchase this toy again as it has kept my daughter entertained for hours. She loves this toys and it makes her interact and experiment, as she is intruiged as to how the sounds and noises change when she hasn't done anything different. Her development skills have improved a lot since we bought this toy-and she never gets bored of it. I like the fact that it doesn't just teach children one thing-it teaches them different colours, animals, letters and numbers- and even mummy and daddy get fun out of playing with it!
I like the fact that it has a little hatch at the back of the tree where you can keep all the balls-unfortunately my daughter has got wise to this and still leaves the balls all over my house!