Product Review: Leapfrog Learn & Groove Guitar

Another of The Boy’s Christmas presents for 2011 was a Leapfrog Learn & Groove Guitar (RRP £15). This brightly coloured, chunky, noisy piece of plastic has been a very popular plaything since.

The guitar itself is sized just about right for The Boy to hold comfortably (he’s approaching 18 months – age guideline is 12-36 months). Like many of his noisy toys, it has two sound level settings, so it doesn’t have to be blaring at you in order for little one to have fun.

There are three settings for the song you play – either numbers theme, animals theme or music theme. After selecting your theme, you play the song by using the blue swish shape to ‘strum’ and start the song. You can continue doing that to keep the song playing, and each time you strum the animals wheel spins, and depending where it lands will alter the verse of the song – There is one dog, two sheep, three piglets, four kittens and five ducklings on the wheel, so depending on the theme you’ve chosen will alter which aspect of each animal image the song features. The green button on the neck of the guitar is pressed for music that plays instead of or as well as the main song, adding to the feel that the child is playing their own song by individualising it. In addition to this, there is a setting for both English and French – so you can introduce your child to learning another language from a young age, and it works in the same way so you can use the numbers theme, animals theme or music theme.

Another well made toy, this has also been bashed about a bit, taken from home to various different locations for entertainment upon arrival at our destination, it has provided lots of fun for The Boy as well as refreshing my basic French skills, as well as being a nice noisy toy that The Boy can treat quite roughly without worry of it becoming damaged. While The Hairy Hounds Of Hell aren’t keen on the louder of the two volume settings, especially when it does the animal noises, it is an educational but fun piece of kit that will help develop co-ordination, language skills, as well as encouraging learning the names of animals and numbers.

The Boy received this as a gift and the person who brought it was lucky enough to have found it pre-loved in a local charity shop and didn’t pay the full RRP for it. I would say that this RRP is quite expensive for what the toy is and what it does, though having said that similar things are similarly priced, though I think £10 would be more reasonable for this item.

Educational, fun, creative and robust, this noisy guitar gets four and a half out of five from Summer Mama and The Boy!