4.0 out of 5 stars
They could be better, but they're still nice.
Reviewed in the United States on 8 October 2019
I purchased these crinkle books as a result of looking for "new toy" options to get my 15-month old son for an upcoming road trip. (For context, my son is already walking/running and talking, with over 200 words in his vocabulary. He started talking at 6-months old and learns at least one new word pretty much every day.) Anyway... back to my efforts to get ready for the road trip... With all of the other preparations left to do, I didn't have much time to look at a lot of toys. But, most people seemed to like these well enough to give them a decent rating. I like the illustration style in these crinkle books a lot more than in others I looked at, especially in the "Sea World", "Fruit", and "Vegetable" books. Honestly, that was a pretty big factor in why I decided to get them. The illustration style in the "Vehicle", "Animal World", and "Number" books are not to my taste, but they're crinkle books, not wall art... so I decided to get them anyway. The illustrations in the "Number" book don't strike me as intuitive. Example: The "2" is made to look like some kind of dragon/lizard thing with 2 snails pictured separately at the bottom. Not a big deal, just a little weird.
However, buyers should be aware that the book titles seem a bit awkward, as they are in the singular instead of plural forms ("Number", "Vehicle", "Vegetable"). Additionally, most of the vegetables pictured in the "vegetable" book aren't vegetables, they're technically fruit; corn, peas, tomato, peppers, eggplant, and pumpkin are the seed-bearing fruit of the vegetation... not the vegetables themselves. This probably bothers me more than the average person. But, my kid is picking up concepts at an unusually high rate and I'd rather he be exposed to accurate information. So, just in case anyone else would want to know in advance, the "vegetable" book is mostly *not* vegetables.
Previous reviewers mentioned a blaring error of "cherrie" instead of "cherry". But, in mine, that error is nonexistent. It must have been fixed in a revision, which really pleases me because that means the people behind this product care about what their customers have to say and are open to improvement/fixing errors.
I don't yet know what my child thinks of them since I plan to only bring them out while on the road, when he's getting really fed up with being in his carseat. But what my kid thinks of them wouldn't necessarily help you figure out what your kid will think of them since each one is so different. It should be noted that my son not getting to play with them yet also means I can't tell exactly how durable they truly are.
While there's always room for improvement, overall, they seem like a decent product. If the "Vegetable" book was all truly vegetables, the illustrations were all of the same, nicer quality, and the titles were pluralistic, I would definitely be giving these books 5 stars. As it is, I think 4 stars is fair.
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