In an effort to find something other than current events and my own mundane daily activities to write about, I have decided to start a series of toy reviews, maybe once a week or so. I figure I spend as much of my time playing with these toys as the baby and perhaps it may be helpful and or entertaining in some way for some of you.
I will attempt to rate each toy on an extremely highly scientific rating system that I just made up. The toys will be rated on a scale of 1-5 in five different categories, 1. Child enjoyment, 2. Parent enjoyment, 3. Annoyance, 4. usefulness (in keeping my kid occupied and/or quiet) and finally 5. staying power- that is, will the toy last more than a few weeks before it gets cast aside to be tripped over and eventually hurled in the trash.
Today we will discus Tempo the Tiger Musical Broom by the Baby Genius Company (seen above). Tempo is one of the company's many characters, most of which I am not familiar with, and his likeness was used as the basis for the singing broom, which is supposed to make cleaning fun or something like that. I decided to get it for Av at Christmas because she is always grabbing and trying to eat our actual broom (along with everything else in the house).
Apparently a jazz musician from New Orleans, Tempo's voice sounds like a cross between Luis Armstrong and the guy who does the Allstate commercials. The broom features a tiger face wearing sunglasses as the base, with the bristles coming out of his neck and a moderately long handle. He features several 'fun' sounds and sayings available by touching his nose, pushing down on the bristles or pressing a button on the handle.
Among Tempo's sayings are 'I love to sweep!' 'Great job!'and 'Sweeping is fun.' Of course, there is also a short song that he sings. Set to a tune mysteriously similar to 'When the Saints go Marching in,' the 20-second jam goes something like this...
'Now sweep that broom,
Now sweep the room,
Please, sweep, sweep, sweep the broom,
It's fun to clean with that tiger,
Tempo the Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiger.'
Yeah. I did that from memory. Sad.
So, how does tempo stack up?
1. Child enjoyment- Av was a little cold toward Tempo at first but has warmed up recently. She doesn't play with him much, but she likes to look at him and she likes his voice. It seems like she enjoys him but isn't quite sure exactly what his deal is yet. She will not help sweep with him, though. Mostly she will just want me to make him talk and sing. (She can't quite figure out how to press the nose button herself). 3 points.
2. Parent enjoyment- The primary reason for purchasing Tempo was to have something to give her when I take the real broom away, and in that area so far the toy has been a failure. As for me, there isn't much opportunity to play with Tempo other than pressing his nose. The song is kind of dumb and the 'realistic' sweeping noises are less than perfect, but overall I find Tempo to be fairly non offensive and fun to look at. 3 points.
3. Annoyance- It is the classic conundrum faced by parents: we want to avoid buying anything that makes noise, especially if it sings, but most kids don't like quiet 'boring' toys. Tempo has a nice balance. The song, as I said, is pretty dumb, but it is like 20 seconds long and can't be played in isolation (you have to listen to all the other crap he says before the song plays). It can get to be a bit much if she leaves him face down on the ground, as his nose will just press against the floor and repeat his dumb sayings, but for the most part it is tolerable. 4 points.
4- Usefulness- As I said above, the primary reason for buying Tempo was to become a distraction from the real broom. This has been a failure. I really don't think she gets the correlation between the two at all. Sporadic playing aside, the broom doesn't serve much of a purpose as she is too young to clean and I fear that when she is old enough the toy will be a little too lame for her. 2 points.
5- Staying power- Although Av doesn't use the broom to sweep I feel like it could be one of the longer lasting toys in the house. She plays with him sparingly enough where I don't feel like she will get sick of him, and I am still leaving the door open on that whole 'play cleaning' thing. More importantly, the thing has an off button and isn't very big, so if it is pissing me off I can just stick it in a corner until I cool off. 4 points.
So, Tempo the Tiger musical broom scores a 16 out of a possible 25 points on the official TBF Toy Rating Scale. I tend to think that other Tempo the Tiger toys are probably super, super annoying, but the broom is OK to stay in my book.
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