The Playskool Alphie Robot Review

Playskool has definitely created themselves something special by reinventing one of their classic toys from the eighties, the Playskool Alphie. The new Alphie is much more interactive and fun than his more limited predecessor. His newly redesigned face now includes a LCD display for the eyes which can now change to show emotion, and he now has a wonderfully fun and playful, friendly robotic voice that children will love and respond to.

Alphie encourages children to take part in fun learning activities through the use of special double sided cards with images on them, which are inserted into a special slot on Alphie’s tummy. He comes with 30 cards all ready for use, which teach concepts such as numbers, letters, and shapes. The cards offer learning challenges to children, who must answer specific questions or problems by pushing buttons situated around the card slot. Many of the challenges on the cards are designed in clever ways to try and encourage children to use their problem solving skills. To be successful, they must think through the problems to try and find the correct answers.

There are four available booster cards for Alphie: There’s the letters pack, the animals pack, the numbers pack, and the music/sounds pack. These extra packs provide a whole lot of new opportunities for children to interact with Alphie and participate in new activities that encourage learning and fun.

The Playskool Alphie robot is designed to be easily portable, with a handle on the top of his head where children can pick him up and cart him off wherever they go. He comes standard with a back pack for storing all the cards that he has available for play. The rugged plastic design is meant to stand up to the kinds of unintentional abuse that young and clumsy hands can impose on toys. And if Alphie isn’t played with for 90 seconds, he will go into sleep mode and turn himself off completely on his own, so there’s no need to worry about children running down the batteries by leaving the little robot on when they’re not playing with it.

Cards can be placed in as wished by children, or they can press a button on Alphie’s head which will cause Alphie to play a hide and seek type game with the children and the cards. Alphie will ask for a card of a certain type, and the children must search through their collection of cards until they come upon a card with an image that matches the description that Alphie gave. Alphie congratulates the children when they perform a task correctly, and has quite a large collection of phrases at his disposal to use for these interactions.

With over 350 fun interactions and challenges, the new Playskool Alphie is a wonderfully innovative little toy that’s set to inspire a whole new generation of children to learn through laughter and play. It’s got a brand new fun and playful personality that engages children’s imaginations and helps them build the mental skills that will serve them well throughout their lives. A great classic revised for a new era!

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