Customer Reviews

Fisher-Price Sesame Street Elmo Knows Your Name Cell Phone

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

We bought this phone for our 6 month old despite the age rating of 18 months. I think we wanted it more than he did! It's really easy to program your child's name into it. It took me about 5 minutes. (I do recommend that you go onto FisherPrice.com and double check that your child's name is available in Elmo's data base.) Our son LOVES this toy and we have since given it to two of his friends as gifts. They love it too! The toy is not overly loud like alot of his other toys so it's great for restauraunts, airplanes and other places that your child might need entertainment.

How hard is it to put NOT MAC COMPATIBLE on the box and how hard is it to MAKE IT mac compatible? HEllo....

No fewer than 4 adults and 2 computers were used trying to get this thing to say some other name than "Michael" - I see others had the same problem. After my husband and I both tried it, and the download said "100% successful" a million times, we gave it to my cousin to try it on her computer, thinking maybe it was a problem with mine. She tried it and the same thing. She finally took it back to the store, thinking it was defective, and got a new one. The new one did it too. After we all were ready to throw it through the window, it was discovered that there is some kind of tab you have to pull out of it in order to activate it. NOWHERE in the detailed instructions does it tell you this (we kept it in the box because we were going to wrap it back up for Christmas. Apparently you have to take it out of the box). PLEASE put this little detail in the instructions!!! This is why I gave it 2 stars - the kid hasn't even seen it yet - just based on the difficulty on programming.

I can connect the phone to my computer and have it recognized. I can click and get a 100% complete message downloading and installing the name, but it never does. I never get the name I downloaded. I've called tech support a number of times. They ask the same lame questions, did I plug the phone in using the USB cable, did I download the name I wanted, did I have the exe file on my computer, did I right click or double click the file, did I have the Elmo icon and how did I click on that. All the time I did tell them I was able to launch the software. When the phone wasn't connected it saw that the phone was not connected. When the phone was connected, it showed the download progress bar and then said it was 100% successful, but it never said the name I downloaded. I found the name on their web site, clicked on it, played it to be sure it was the right name and then downloaded it FIVE times, in different places, incase it was corrupted. Installed it in different places incase there was a corrupt file on the computer, changed the batteries in the phone, took the phone apart to be sure there was no try me tab broken off. It never worked. What a lot of trouble for nothing. I spent over an hour on the phone and another couple hours on my own trying to get this thing working properly... no luck.

Why wouldn't the Amazon bullet points mention that this toy is not for Mac? Here, I'll help you: "WINDOWS ONLY if you have a Mac you will only get an Elmo cell phone not an Elmo Knows Your Name Cell Phone."

Ok, after reading the reviews regarding the phone being stuck in demo mode, I took mine apart and looked at it.

Looking at the back of the phone on the bottom right, there is a small slot where the demo tab goes in. If you remove it, you SHOULD be able to program it with your kid's name. If that's not the case, take out all the screws (and the batteries) and open the phone. across from where that slot is, there is a tiny white switch, that flips depending on whether or not the tab is in. Using a small screwdriver (or something similar) toggle it to the left (against the case). That should do it!

If not, flip it back and forth until it "springs" against the case. You'll then be able to plug it in and program it.

Between my husband and myself we have spent over 35 years in school and it took both of us hours to figure out how to download our niece's name on this thing because we didn't unpackage it all the way before we did it. We bought it as a gift and unpackaged it enough to get to the plug to download her name - downloaded it using 3 computers at least a dozen times. I went back to the reviews and found someone who gave it a bad review because there were no instructions saying that tab in the back of the toy had to be removed before it would say the downloaded name. It was 1AM - I took the plastic off the back, pulled the tab out of the toy and it started saying her name. Took another 30 minutes to repackage it so we could wrap it up for her. FP should put as much ink on the front of it telling you to remove the tab to get it to say the downloaded name as it does telling you the default name is Michael. All of the effort was worth it as our niece loves this and it entertained her on the 4 hour ride back to her home since she loves Elmo above all other things. The look on her face when Elmo said her name was priceless.

What kind of toys are being produced only for PC users nowadays? MAC users are unable to download a name because the process involves downloading a .exe program that requires a PC. Leapfrog has got it right! No .exe program required to download a child's name onto the leapfrog toys. It does it right from the website while the toy is plugged in. Inexcusable Fisher-Price, Mattel, and Sesame Street! I'm glad my child received this as a gift and that I did not pay for this toy. The box was thrown away so I cannot exchange it. I guess the kids at church will have fun with it when I donate it.

I wish we could have made it to the 100% dowload stage... We could not get the website to work and create our file to download. Tried it on 3 different computers, and updated the flash player on 2. We could never get the file to generate on the website correctly and download to our PCs. We were very dissapointed, and took the phone back. Great idea FP, but you executed it in a very cheap and poor way. Great product, poor software and internet support. IMHO you delivered only 50%... I was also a little dissapointed in the actual build of the product, seemed like a cheap paint job over plastic, that came off rather easily...

My daughter got this gift for her 1st birthday and loves it. My daughter's name is a bit unique and I was pleasantly surprised that Elmo had it. She loves to push to the buttons and you can see some sort of happy recognition when she hears Elmo say her name. I do have some problems with the phone. One being that if you are a Mac user, you will have to find a PC to download the name and the second being that the paint does not seem to be that durable. My daughter has had her toy about a week and already some of the paint around Elmo's eyes and fingers have chipped off. Is this normal wear and tear? I'm not sure, and it was dropped on the sidewalk, but the novelty of phone and cuteness of my daughter with it overrules any grumpy feelings I may have for it.