Rating: 

See it: Lucky Ducks

The Lucky Ducks game is designed to teach color- and shape-matching to young children. And it does. But unfortunately the format of Lucky Ducks is so annoying, it’s difficult to get through a single game.

The game includes a plastic “pond” that rotates and 12 plastic ducks that “swim” around and around quacking loudly and constantly. Each duck has one of four different shapes on the bottom and players take turns lifting up a duck as they swim by and looking to see if it matches the shape they are collecting. Once a player has collected all the ducks with their shape, they win. Each shape is a different color, so the game also teaches color matching.

We have had this game for over two years and we have yet to play it through to the end a single time. The constant quacking and the sound of the rotating pond gets on my nerves very quickly. (And as a mom who has sat through my share of children’s television, I feel like my tolerance level is high for annoying things if my daughter is enjoying them.)

But really, Ally doesn’t seem to enjoy the game either. She will take it out, put the ducks in the pond and turn it on to watch them swim. But after a few seconds, she turns it off and moves on to something else. She never asks to actually play the game.

The Lucky Ducks game, designed for ages 3-6, is a good idea that just went wrong.

Rating: 

See it: iPlay Makin’ Cents Musical Piggy Bank

We bought the iPlay Makin’ Cents Musical Piggy Bank for our daughter Ally when she was 3 and we were very disappointed.

My husband and I had wanted to find a piggy bank for Ally so we could start teaching her about money. The iPlay piggy bank plays music and oinks, but mainly I picked it out because it has an LCD screen that displays the total money saved and adds to that total whenever coins are pushed through the slot. 

But the problem with this piggy bank is the slot where the coins are pushed through. While the piggy bank is labeled for ages 3 and up, it’s not. Ally didn’t have the strength or dexterity at 3, or even now at 4, to push the coins through the slot, which adjusts to accommodate different size coins. Even my husband and I had trouble when we tried.

Sometimes my daughter would be pushing a coin through, but because it was taking her so long, the LCD screen would be continuously adding to the count as if several coins were being pushed through instead of just one. The amount displayed on the screen was never correct.

Eventually we gave up and just unscrewed the top of the piggy bank and dropped the coins in, which isn’t very much fun for Ally. 

This piggy bank could be a good choice for older kids, but for younger children, I would not recommend it.