Lara and I were asked (in our capacity as play experts!) to review one of the new toys from the hit TV series, Raa Raa the Noisy Lion.
Raa Raa The Lion - Huffty's Interactive Train is suitable for children of about 12 months upwards so I was worried that it wouldn't capture Lara's imagination that well but as you can see from the video below, Lara still enjoys playing with trains a lot.
I'll admit that we don't often watch Raa Raa the Noisy Lion because I am not usually around at the hours it is on CBeebies but we have watched it once or twice with Lara's Grandma and on iPlayer so Lara recognises all of the characters and was really excited to see the train when we first received it.
The interactive train comes with one character - Huffty the elephant - and three carriages. Each carriage can take one of the range of Raa Raa characters so the toy is designed to tempt you into buying another toy or set of characters which, like a good mum (aka mug) I did! I bought a set of three additional characters to go into the train and Lara swaps them all around.
Huffty's train is "interactive" in that it plays sounds when you push the train along or when you press down or move the character in the front carriage. Each character causes it to make a slightly different set of noises - there are 15 different phrases in total if you collect all of the characters.
I found the range of noises to get very annoying after a time and so I was glad to have a little variety from the other characters, not just Huffty. Lara took quite some time to work out when the noises occurred but now enjoys swapping the toys in the carriages to hear it play different noises.
Unlike almost all toy trains Lara has tried before, she can actually manage to click the train carriages together herself (a relief to me). I would think that Lara's imagination might be captured more, and that the might spend a little longer playing with this train if she were a little younger but, because she is still relatively new to the program she is inspired to invent her own Raa Raa tales when playing with it.
Follow Raa Raa on Facebook.
Raa Raa The Lion - Huffty's Interactive Train is suitable for children of about 12 months upwards so I was worried that it wouldn't capture Lara's imagination that well but as you can see from the video below, Lara still enjoys playing with trains a lot.
I'll admit that we don't often watch Raa Raa the Noisy Lion because I am not usually around at the hours it is on CBeebies but we have watched it once or twice with Lara's Grandma and on iPlayer so Lara recognises all of the characters and was really excited to see the train when we first received it.
The interactive train comes with one character - Huffty the elephant - and three carriages. Each carriage can take one of the range of Raa Raa characters so the toy is designed to tempt you into buying another toy or set of characters which, like a good mum (aka mug) I did! I bought a set of three additional characters to go into the train and Lara swaps them all around.
Huffty's train is "interactive" in that it plays sounds when you push the train along or when you press down or move the character in the front carriage. Each character causes it to make a slightly different set of noises - there are 15 different phrases in total if you collect all of the characters.
I found the range of noises to get very annoying after a time and so I was glad to have a little variety from the other characters, not just Huffty. Lara took quite some time to work out when the noises occurred but now enjoys swapping the toys in the carriages to hear it play different noises.
Unlike almost all toy trains Lara has tried before, she can actually manage to click the train carriages together herself (a relief to me). I would think that Lara's imagination might be captured more, and that the might spend a little longer playing with this train if she were a little younger but, because she is still relatively new to the program she is inspired to invent her own Raa Raa tales when playing with it.
Follow Raa Raa on Facebook.
