Baby Einstein Caterpillar and Friends Play Gym

We like:

The movement-activated star that lights and sounds.

The variety of toys.

The print of the mat combining real images and illustrations.

You can attach toys to the mat, not just the arcs above the baby.

We don't like that much, but tolerate:

Polyester fabric is too... "slick" so baby can't gain traction during tummy time in order to crawl.

Rings for hanging toys are not enough. Some of the toys would be too high so we got some extra rings and used then to also hang other soft toys we had. You could get the Bright Starts Lots of Links.

Hope my review helps you.

I like this little gym, but I do have a few complaints about it. I'll start with what I like.

Pros:

* Very bright and cheerful

* Toys are cute and interesting

* Has a small footprint

* Easy to assemble

* I like the music on the Star

Cons:

* It's smaller than I would have liked

* I was afraid the Star that blinks and plays music would give my daughter a stroke. The blinking light was so fast and crazy it scared her, so when we use it, we lay it face down on the floor, which negates half of its purpose

* The material is very slippery, so when my daughter started rolling, she would slip around and then get caught up on the arms

My biggest complaint is the Star and how fast it blinks. Had I known this before I spent the money on it, I would not have purchased this item.

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This playmat is great, and the reason is the light-up musical star. My seven-week old daughter smiles and even coos everytime I lay her down on the playmat and turn the star on during her activity time. It is so cute.

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I really like this play gym so far. We just got it two weeks ago for my daughter who is now 11 weeks old and she seems to like it so far. The toys that come with it are very good, some even labeled in multiple languages (English, Spanish, French) to help when your baby is old enough to identify shapes. The theme of the mat is garden/outdoors but most of the images are based on basic shapes (circle, square and triangle) so your baby can identify them there too. I really like this mat above others I have seen because many of the images are "real life" images that look like photographs rather than the cutesy cartoon drawn images on many mats. This will help my little one connect to how things look in real life as well. The colors on this mat are brighter which I think stimulates better than pastel colors.

Since my daughter is so small still, I traded out some of the toys that came with it (the teether leaf and some of the hard hanging toys) for some softer toys we already own until she is bigger. I gave it 4 stars only because I am concerned the fabric for the mat may be too slick for my daughter to get enough traction to pull up when in tummy timefurther use may prove this wrong.

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I bought this gym for our third baby with a gift card someone gave me because our older Baby Einstein gym was worn out after being LOVED by 2 kids. I am so disappointed we loved the original, but this one has some huge flaws, mainly in the setup. Since the bars do not cross, the gym doesn't just "pop" open when you put it down, so you have to use two hands to set it up (which is not easy to do when you're holding a baby at the same time). It also doesn't lie flat; the edges of the mat curl up against the bars because the clips are so far underneath. Also the toys are huge and made of hard plastic, so they hang down low (even from the top rings, the dog and frog practically hit my baby's head). Lastly, there is no support pillow with this one for tummy time. Unfortunately we washed the mat before we set it up, so there's no way for us to return the gym for a better one.