Customer Reviews

Fisher-Price Puppy Grows & Knows Your Name Retriever

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought two Puppies that Grow for my 4 yr old twin girls. They had seen commercials on tv and knew what the dogs were supposed to do. For the most part, they love them, but we had two problems. The first was that the girls wanted the puppies to know their names; when we tried to program them, one of my daughters' names was on the list that the puppy has preprogrammed to learn, my other daughter's name was not. It was such a bummer to tell her that her puppy will never "know" her name. Then, on top of that, the batteries in her puppy were low when the dog arrived so her dog never grew! It took me a while to figure out that that was the problem b/c the dog sang and moved its head and wagged its tail; it just never grew! So one of our puppies was growing day by day and the other just stayed little. I felt so sorry for my one daughter. We did replace the batteries after a few days and that worked.

Perhaps there is something wrong with our puppy?
"Professional" toy reviews I read on this toy said that there were questions in the personalization program that we were never asked for when personalizing our puppy (we only had to name the puppy and enter our child's name. That's all it ever asked for. Reviewers claim it asks for birthday, friends names and other things as well!).
Our puppy also only says one phrase. It doesn't sing, as professional reviews have stated it would. Nor does it have any phrases other than "Hi (child's name) I'm so happy to see you."
I thought it should at least wag it's tail or move it's head a little in response to petting, grooming and playing with it (would have been a cute feature if it had). It just says one phrase and grows a little every day. It quickly became a boring and disappointing toy to my DD.
I'm sincerely hoping mine is broken.

If you get a MSVCR80.dll error message trying to load the CD with Puppy Grows... you will need to uninstall or remove Windows Defender from the Add/Remove Programs on your Control Panel. Got these instructions off an MSDN forum page; once I uninstalled Windows Defender, the CD loaded and I was able to download the names of my child and the puppy in under 5 minutes. You will need an A to B USB cable... if you have a card reader, or some other similar device then you can use the USB cable that comes with that equipment(not a camera USB cable), if not, you'll have to buy the cable separately.

I got this puppy for Christmas. I love the song that the puppy sings when he grows. I like that we can reset him and see him grow again. I like that he knows my name. I like that he is cute: he is blonde and has big eyes and a purple bone collar and a cute tail that sticks up. He wags his tail and asks me to brush him and says thank you when I do. And I give him a bone and he makes slurping noises.

I was lucky my name was on the list. And the name I wanted to call him "Sunny." I wish I could walk him and that he came with a puppy dish and that he had a poop bag and really pooped.

I think other girls would like this dog because he's really fun.

K age 5

We gave this toy to our 4 year old daughter for her birthday in September. She loves it and it's one toy she plays with every day! The dog does sing songs after it reaches full growth. You can also shrink it back to its smallest size. We also have not had to replace the batteries since September. We will be getting her the poodle version for Christmas!

The product does not include the USB cable and no where on the box is this noted. Will be very disappointing to any child opening as a gift and not being able to play w/it. I called Fisher-Price and complained and was told that any printer cable would work. NOT SO! Please be aware that toys have a notated section on the boxes that batteries, etc are required. This does not! Another $10. and gas mileage spent to locate a cable.

I bought this toy a month before Christmas because I had read that it needed to be programmed and I wanted to do it in advance so it would work correctly when it was opened. There was lots of misinformation about the "Knows your Name" feature. I thought you could play the names in the store. This is not true. I had downloaded the manual and so I called the customer service number to ask if the dog "knew" my daughter's name. I spelled the name and pronon-unced it. The man assured me that it was on the list of over 3000 names the dog "knew" so I bought it.

Later, when I tried to program it I found out that my daughter's name "Olena" was not on the list. I called customer service to find out if the name coud be added and downloaded. This service is available for the Elmo and Dora Know Your Name toys, which sells for $15-$20 but not for Puppy Knows Your Name (and also Grows) for $40-$60. This is definitely a weak point, because that is part of the advertised appeal of the toy. I found a name that was similar and told my child that the dog had an "accent" but children are very attuned to names and she complains regularly "When will the dog learn to say my name?" However, it basically stopped another type of bickering when her older sister plays with the dog. It only belongs to one name. I rate this as good.

It also knows its own name, chosen by my daughter, which fortunately was on the list of names. It doesn't liearn anything else, unlike Elmo, Dora and other toys in this line.

Now for the other features. Does it grow? Yes, it grows every day, then it shrinks back down to the original size. My children were delighted by this feature.

The dog is not a plush toy. It is hard plastic covered with a loose stretchy fabric. I chose the retriever because the brown color looked like it would hide dirt more than the poodle, which is white. The tail looks like it could break if it fell from a height, but after six weeks the toy is still in good shape. It has grown and shrunk at least twice.

I put new batteries in it before I gave it to my daughter because the toy was in the store available to "Try Me". Week batteries apparently slow down the growth. It is still on the same batteries after six weeks which I rate as good.

The songs it sings are catchy and my girls sing along. It wags its tail and looks cute. It doesn't move around. I rate all of these as good features.

Overall this would a highly rated toy if I didn't have a problem with the dog "knowing" my daughter's name. I rate Fisher-Price/Mattel customer service at zero for giving me wrong information about this. The same customer service rep assured me that I could call Customer Service and add a name if it wasn't on the list, allthough he said this could take a month or more. "Knows Your Name" is part of the name of the toy. This add-a-name feature is only available for the Elmo and Dora dolls.

This is really a big mistake on the part of Mattel. The fact that the toy incorporates the child's name really personalizes the toy. If it also had some other customizable sentences this would be aa real winner.

As it is, my six and nine year-old daughters like it. It's cute. If you are sure your child's name is on the CD they will probably like it.

My daughter received this toy for Christmas. Before you get started, it is VERY important to put fresh batteries in right away. You also need to have a standard USB A to USB B cable to properly program it.

The first time the puppy was removed from its box, it grew. Then it grew 4 more times over the next 4 days. With each growth spurt it said some new phrases and sang a new song once it was fully grown.

The puppy does grow with fresh batteries and we measured it each time and wrote it on the back of the puppy certificate.

My daughter (age 7) loves it! It has done exactly what we expected and we are pleased.

I am very pleased with this toy.We didn't have any trouble with programming the name in as it was on the list.My niece just loves it and was very happy to recieve it.It seems to work very well and the quality is excellant.

Impressed by what grandmas were saying about this product and all it could do, I gave into my daughter's Christmas wish list and bought the dog. Apparently, earlier versions knew about the child's friends, places, and other cool stuff. The new CD only allowed you to choose a name from a pre-determined list for both the puppy and child. There were no other options. The fisher price website was useless to find out why we couldn't access anything else. The first day my daughter played with it for about 5 minutes as it did very little. The next day it was more interactive, but our family's interest was to only bang the puppy on the head to try to make it grow. Squawkers McCaw and Snugglekins Monkey were much more enjoyable.