My son loves anything with flashing lights and music. This toy has both of these things and more! It teaches them shapes, colors, letters and numbers. He's been fascinated with it ever since we got it 3 months ago. He's now 9 months old. We (the parents) still love to play with it! There are so many options and different ways to compose music, so you'll never get bored with it. When you move the animals up and down they make noises in notes going up and down. We always laugh when we move the cat up and down and up and down as we get him to sing "Meow, meow, meow, meow" in high and low ascending and descending notes. It's hard to describe but once you hear it, you'll understand. I agree with the other person that the paint has easily scratched off around the mirror. I also worry that the animal figures moving up and down seem to be getting a little more wobbly the more we use it, but I don't think there are any safety concerns with this toy. I always try to find toys that I can get a lot of mileage out of (that are versatile, creative and will keep his interest for a long time). This toy definately meets those criteria. My son plays with this piano every day of the week! It's definately worth the money and beats any other toy piano currently on the market.
This is one of the few electronic toys I have unqualified praise for.
To teach our children about music at a very early age is one of the best things we can do for them. Aside from the hours of pleasure, learning techniques and pitches will stand them in good stead in later years. This piano has several innovative features which I have not seen on any other children's keyboards. The first (which is a double-edged sword) is that the notes don't go up in tones, but in thirds. Where we would normally see the black notes are the notes in between. This could be confusing as a child starts to learn a standard keyboard, but the advantage is that when babies bash the notes indiscriminately it sounds quite harmonious, playing chords instead of discords. A great relief for parents :-)
The second innovation is the sliders along the top, each with an animal holding an instrument. These work as sliders do in a recording studio, allowing baby to make each instrument louder or softer, or even to play just the saxophone part of each song. This helps them understand how the music is pieced together and to see how recording of music works. Excellent. There is also a spoken word setting, in which the sliders play animal noises, and the note keys say letters and numbers, but this is much less important than the keyboard. A well made, enjoyable, educational toy which will delight your little one for many months
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My daughter received the Fisher Price Animal Band Piano as a 1st birthday gift. I was pleasantly surprised with this toy to say the least! After I played with it myself (for a few hours at that!), I realized how innovative this toy was! First, the 4 animals each represent a different instrument (they are pictured with that instrument). You can slide the animals up and down just like a real "mixer". There are 4 pre-set songs and the best thing about this is that you can play along on the piano with the "accompaniment" and the melody will NOT play while you are playing! How cool! On the same lines, with each of the 4 songs, the key changes (including the key represented by the actual keyboard keys) so that you are always playing in tune with the song that is playing! Another amazingly innovative perk that you might not notice until you spent some time with it yourself! Maybe the fact that I myself am a musician makes me a little biased in favor of such a musically creative toy, but my now 18 month old daughter still considers this toy one of her favorites and dances right along with the pre-set songs.
The only negative I can see in this toy is with respect to the lack of clarity of the speaking voice (in ABC/123 mode). I also though it odd that a toy geared toward this age would designate the primate as an "ape" rather than a "monkey" (as most kids this age will identify any primates as monkeys not apes), but that's a minor point.
All in all this toy is extremely enjoyable (both for the adult and the child), innovative, engaging, and fairly educational. The Fisher Price Animal Band Piano is easily one of my top 5 favorite children's toys (both for my daughter and for myself!).
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This really is an amazing toy. Our favorite feature is the melody buttons, because the music is pleasant and fun, but not too loud (and it's so cute to see our 15 month old daughter dance around). It's very durable it's been repeatedly stepped on and thrown, and it still works great. I also like it because it actually works like a keyboard/piano, which helps to teach cause and effect. And best of all, it has a volume switch on the back, as well as an on/off switch on the front! I highly recommend this toy.
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My son just received this toy for his first birthday, and he is not the kind of baby who will play with one thing for a long time, but this keeps him entertained for hours sometimes! He loves it and I love that it teaches shapes, colors and more.
I got this for my 8 month old daughter & she enjoys playing with it. The rattle isn't very loud so she isn't entertained by it very long, but it's a cute size, just big enough for her hand to hold. I like that it's machine-washable!
