Manufacturer’s recommend ages: 6 months- 36 months
My recommend ages:  1-3 years

When Elise was one-year old, we were visiting friends who had a daughter about the same age. Elise found this jolly, colorful puppy toy from the toy box and began carrying it around. Puppy only made these wounded, dying-like sounds (batteries with only one nanojoule left), but she was still enchanted. Our friends told us that Puppy was a huge hit with their daughter, hence battery depletion, so we decided to get one for Elise.

Fully juiced, Puppy is, like, MEGA-jolly. It has two modes that you activate by pressing one of its feet: musical and learning. Puppy belts out jolly children’s songs, names body parts when you press them, and introduces the ABCs, 123s and colors.

Elise really enjoyed the songs, especially Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes, which she kept playing in an insane loop.  The music, and sound, in general, is of good quality. In fact, a little too good. On the highest volume setting (there is a secret switch on Puppy’s back to switch from off to a lower volume setting, to a higher volume setting, akin to a Stepford Wives robot), Puppy can get rather grating. It’s great that he’s so enthusiastic all the time, but at high volumes, you kind of want to throw him out the back door for a time out.

Also, the instruction manual does not warn you that Puppy may start up his shenanigans out of the blue (possibly due to hyper-sensitive innards). The first time this happened, I was walking across a dim-lit room and nearly had a heart attack, thinking that Puppy had come to life and was going to do me in like Chucky. (This is preventable by turning him off while not in use.)

Despite transient possession, Puppy has still be a lot of fun for both of our kids, who seem to get a kick of making him giggle and make sounds, especially the songs. I’m not sure how much learning they are actually getting—I tend to think of lot of today’s toys try to cram in the learning when kids should just play – but Puppy is entertaining and cuddly.