Its a puppy, and it grows (Mattel Puppy Grows Puppy)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Mattel Puppy Grows Puppy
Date:	30/12/08 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Different from other puppy toys

Disadvantages: Limited scope

I bought this puppy for my daughter for Christmas after it'd been heavily advertised on the children's channels.

~The Product~

As the name suggests its a puppy, but its a puppy with a difference for 4 days it grows a couple of centimetres a day. It is recommended for children over 3 years old.

The puppy comes packaged with a CD for personalising the puppy, a USB cable, a brush, a bone, a tape measure and a certificate to chart the progress of your puppies growth. The tape measure however does not record inches or centimetres, but paw prints, so the child can still record the growth without needing to know measurements.

The puppy is a white poodle, but it is also available as a brown retrievers style puppy. The white puppy wears a pink plastic collar and has a pink bow on each ear, the eyes are also pink, and while that might sound like it looks evil, it actually suits the puppy quite well.

~Playing with the Puppy~

The puppy takes 4 x AA batteries, and seems to work fine with rechargeable batteries.

Nothing will happen, and the puppy wont grow until a plastic tab has been removed . The tab can be found just above the where the batteries are inserted.

You can either continue to use your puppy without personalising it, or you can use the CD that came with the puppy to give it a name.
This is a simple operation, just insert the CD into your computer and follow the installation instructions . There is nothing on the disc to indicate which operating systems are compatible, but I have used it on Vista and XP with no problems.
Next you need to connect the puppy to the PC via the cable supplied. The programme will then allow you to select from a list of children's names, it also gives the option to type in a name. However, as my daughters name was on the list I cannot say how it reacts to unusual names.
After you click to continue, you are face with a long list of puppy names, and after seemingly many hours of going up and down the list, your child can eventually pick a name for the puppy.
Once the programme has finished, you can disconnect the puppy from the computer.

After you have done all that, the puppy will then call your child by his/her name and will tell them how lovely the name is that they selected. This is the only difference between playing normally and playing personalised, during normal play the puppy just calls itself 'puppy'.

Both the bone and the brush have some sort of sensor or magnet, or something that the puppy can sense. Because when you put the bone to the puppies mouth it makes a chomping noise. And when you brush it, the puppy will say how beautiful it feels now.

During the first day in which it grows it says about 10 different phrases, then each subsequent day of the 4 it says another 5-6 phrases. It says things like

Feed me **** I'm hungry
***** let's play
Burp!
Hey I wasn't finished yet
Scratch my head ****
Hi, *****, I'm feeling happy today

(**** being the child's name) Whilst talking the puppy will move its head from side to side, and wag its tail. Its also sings a different song at each stage of growth.

And of course the most important bit is that it grows. It seems that if you lose the bone for a day and forget to feed it, then it wont grow the next day. Otherwise, it seems to grow 24 hours (or the first time you activate it after 24hours have passed) after it first grew. If you feel through the outer cover of fur, you can feel the extendible legs, neck and body, they are easier to feel once the puppy is full grown.

Once the puppy is fully grown, you can eith play with it as is, or you can pet its head in a certain way and it will shrink back down to its original size, ready to grow again.

~My Thoughts~

The puppy is rather expensive for what it does, OK it grows and talks, but the legs don't move backward and forward in a walking movement. They only move up and down during the growing stage.

The outer fur covering is soft, but the dog itself is rigid and not as cuddly as it looks, so its not a puppy for hugging and comforting.

The voice is very child like, but with and American twang. It sounds like an adult putting on a child's voice.

I bought it for my daughter who's 8, but I think really its for a younger child. Not that she doesn't like it, she is quite a young 8 anyway, but I have a feeling that she'll grow tired of it rather quickly due to the limited amount of phrases and playability.
Probably a younger child would be more enthralled by it.

It was a little disappointing for me, because due to the price it was my daughters main present. Luckily she likes it, and thats all that matters really.

~Price~

When I bought it in November it was on special offer at £44.95 from John Lewis, now it is available from them at £29.95.

Summary: Probably for younger children