"WOOOOOOOAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! I'm a Piggy Bank, with some coins big and small. In lots of colours, you can learn them all! We've got red and yellow, we've got orange and blue, what's your favourite colour? Here's some green ones too! Let's count the coins! From one to ten! When we're all done, we'll count them again! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, [dooby, dooby, dooby, dooby] eight, nine, ten!"

This catchy jingle, is just one of three sung by the Fisher Price Piggy Bank each of which neatly summarises aspects of its entertainment value. A second jingle really hammers matters home: "I am a Piggy Bank, I have a Piggy snout, You can put coins in my slot, and you can take them out. The coins go in the top. Can you hear them drop? Come on and open up the door so we can play some more."

There is an 'off' button, and a volume control... but actually I have grown fond of this sturdy plastic pig, with his twisty tail and protruding snout, and I like to belt out the songs at full pelt. You press the snout to get her to sing/sneeze/apologise/oink/giggle/snort, though I must confess that Baby CrazyEgg does not really do this, even though she enjoys the sounds and songs too. It occurs to me as I write that the Peek-a-shoe Octopus we also have, shouts out "Press the music button to hear a song!" and then Baby presses it, so clearly the fault here is with the design and I shall have to write to Fisher Price urging that they add a similar feature to the Piggy Bank. Meanwhile I shall start impersonating Piggy's voice and urge Baby to "Press my snout to hear a song!" She'll soon twig I'm sure.

Ten plastic coins are included with the Piggy Bank, consisting of five large and five smaller coins. They are red, yellow, green, blue and orange as the Piggy's song states. They are too big to swallow, they are apparently good to chew, though this applies to many things. Each coin is decorated with an animal head on one side, and the same animal's bottom on the other, with the animal looking round cheekily: a sheep, cow, dog, duck, rabbit are depicted. Rather oddly, most of them have four eyes. I cannot fathom why, but I think we can all safely dismiss Mr CrazyEgg's suggestion that these are in fact 'horns'. Because the animal heads and bottoms are shown in relief they could also be used to make imprints in play-doh.

Helpfully the bigger coins depict an adult animal, the smaller coin in the same colour depicts the baby. Well... mostly anyway. For red, we have a cow and calf; blue, a duck and duckling; yellow, all good, both rabbits; orange: adult sheep, baby...puppy; green ... possible adult dog, baby... lamb. They've got them mixed up at the expense of hours of taxonomic and biological confusion. Perhaps this is why this model ended up in TK Max at £12.99.

Baby CrazyEgg has had this Piggy Bank since she was 14months (11 months corrected) and now she is 17months (14 months). She is very small for her age, and her development is mixed in that her fine motor skills are very good, but her gross motor skills are a bit delayed. Because she mastered the Peek-a-shoe Octopus, where you put balls down chutes pretty quickly, we thought the Piggy Bank would be a good progression: it's the same concept, it's just you have to turn the coin to fit the slot. Despite many demonstrations Baby CrazyEgg prefers to simply slap the coin on top of the Piggy and point at Mum or Dad. We line it up. Then she taps it in. "Dop! Dop! Dop!" she says, and the Piggy counts or plays a tune depending on whether it is set to learning or music mode. The Fisher Price Piggy Bank states that it is suitable from 6 months, and this probably is about right in that at this stage many babies will be challenged by the concept of posting and can use the Piggy Bank and coins to learn this skill over the course of many months. For Baby CrazyEgg, a coin poised to drop is very enticing and she will crawl the length of the room to get to it and push it in. If your six month old can post the coins themselves, they are a genius.

Although Baby CrazyEgg cannot yet post the coins herself, this is still a toy that she will play with by herself. She enjoys opening the door and taking the coins in and out the easy way. The door is opened and closed quite roughly, but is clearly designed to withstand a typical baby onslaught. It is fair to say though that Baby CrazyEgg is smaller than most and one of the things she likes best about the Piggy Bank lies on the underside of the pig.

Fisher Price always have safety in mind, but it is worth noting two potential hazards if your baby is small. Baby CrazyEgg is 14 months corrected, but still in 6-9 month clothes. The Piggy Bank is made up of two plastic halves that are screwed tightly together. The screws are well hidden at the bottom of narrow shafts in the piggy's trotters- they are big enough just for a screwdriver. However, they are also the right size for Baby CrazyEgg's fingers. When she pokes them in they can get stuck. Combine this with the heavy weight of the Piggy Bank and there is a nasty finger breaking incident potential.

Overall, this is a great toy, which Baby and I can recommend.

12/11 ...Breaking news: Baby CrazyEgg has got a coin in by herself!!

© CrazyEgg 2012