Customer Reviews

Fisher-Price Sesame Street Elmo's Learning Fun Laptop

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

My 19-month-old grandson loves to push buttons. This toy is an adorable "computer" with lots of buttons to push, changeable disks for learning while playing, and easy to carry along.

The Learning Fun Laptop is a nice concept. Unfortunately, it did not work out of the box. It doesn't recognize which card is inserted so it asks questions that do not apply to the scene pictured. Since others have had the same problem this just seems to be a very poorly made toy. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I have had much better luck with the few Leap Frog toys that we have.

I was so excited about this toy for my 16 month old daughter. She squealed with delight when she opened it at Xmas. Unfortunately, the thing only worked for about 1 day. Then it TRIED to work but would only get about half way through a word and stop... like the batteries were dying. We replaced the batteries (my husband even checked the batteries with a voltage meter and they're fully functioning) and it still doesn't work. Very disappointing. On the bright side, I called Fisher Price and they're replacing the toy free of charge, so we'll see if the replacement is any better.

This toy is useless. It is insanely loud, you cant understand anything Elmo is saying, its very top heavy so it wont stand up like it shows in the picture. The design is absurd, there no way a child could push the handle down. It says ages 18 and up, but even if your child could understand the questions theres no way an 18 month old could use this toy. It's nice that it has a handle and its portable, but thats all its good for. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone.

The Fisher-Price Laptop toys are plagued with problems. Our brand new Elmo Laptop fails to ask questions for more than 80% of the lever pulls, and mis-reads most of the inserted cards, asking irrelevant and unanswerable questions about other scenes.

The Barney laptop (same company) can be considerably more buggy, see customer reviews here: Barney Laptop.

Be careful with this junk. Very disappointing to have grandma bring a buggy toy brought all the way to the Philippines, only to take it right back for a return.

We got this gift for my 1 year old for Christmas 2007. It worked great, until we tried to change the "disks". Only one side of each disk worked, we finally realized that one of the internal buttons that read the notches to tell which disk it was, wasn't working because if you ignored that notch you would have other disk. I know I didn't explain that well, but if you have the toy you can probably understand, other wise I am just trying to show that we know why it didn't work 1/2 the time, it just isn't anything we could do to fix it.

Anyway, Dec 26th I called FP to see what to do (hadn't quite figured out all the above yet, but know it didn't work right). The lady I talked to was extremely nice (especially given it is probably their biggest complaint day of the year!) and talked me through several things to see if we could get it working (replacing batteries, making sure it wasn't stuck in demo mode). Anyway all attempts made no difference. She said they would ship out a new unit. This made me happy, and I was impressed. As a side note, she thanked *me* for being so nice,, which may have factored into getting the free replacement....

Second unit arrived promptly. Without taking it out of the box I was able to test it and the new one does not seem to have the same problem, however it does have issues with not registering when the handle is pulled (like a slot machine) every time. This is mentioned by other posters. It does work though. My daughter is still not quite ready for it, so I won't unbox it yet. I will fiddle with it a bit more and see if it works better after some use. The disk reader on the first did seem to
work better after a few attempts (although still only 1/2 the disks), so I have some hope that it will resolve to be a useful toy.

With 2 of 2 units having problems, the only reason I gave a 2 star instead of 1 is because FP was great. I hoewver would not recommend this to anyone or buy it as a gift.

On FP's website this toy lists as being discontinued in 2007, so I wouldn't count on getting replacements for too much longer.

Others wrote that it asks questions that are for a different screne. I noticed this too, but how to fix it is, when you push in the disc it will think it's the old one unless it clicks and plays a song.
I don't like that it won't stand on it's own when open it falls over.
And 4 of the buttons broke within the first few days. But I am in the process of exchanging it for a new one. My sons likes it, I wish I could give it a better review.

My 1 year old received this toy as a birthday gift and my 3 1/2 year old was having more fun with it. She is learning her letters and this toy is a great way to help children with quick recognition and the concepts of above, behind, etc. My 1 year old may enjoy this after she's 18 months or 2 years and it will help her with shape recognition and color recognition but not for any younger. My only complaint with this toy is there is no volume control and after a while it gets VERY annoying. It is very durable and every part seems like it will put up with a lot of abuse!

Was surprised this toy doesn't play any songs. Seems like manufacturer missed the mark when they designed this. I agree with one of the other reviewers, the top half (screen half) is very heavy and the toy often falls backwards because of its weight.

When you open the screen it keeps flopping over, and it seems that no matter which computer card you put in, the buttons and the messages seem to do and say the exact same thing. Plus there's no volume control...and this thing is LOUD. Not very educational either...the screen references letters but the keypad is only numbers and shapes. Overall, not a very good toy. Like others have said, you are better off with Leap Frog toys.