Customer Reviews

FunKeys Specialty Starter Kit

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

My 8-year old son loves the UB Funkeys, plays it every chance he gets, and has already acquired several new Funkeys. It's a little like Club Penguin without the monthly fee - though the cost of the new Funkeys would pay for several years of Club Penguin so it's not clear you're saving anything. Still, it'll be a hit for most preteen kids. BUT...

You've got to get it working first. The out of box installation fails - you have to download a driver patch from their website (which is now fully operational - it wasn't working properly when I installed, which colored the experience). The patch has to be installed during product installation - read the installation instructions on both the toy and the patch very carefully.

Another major glitch occurred after my son had been using it for a while. The Funkey software "phones home" on startup, and suddenly decided it wanted to download and install an update. It did this when my son started up the game, with no prior notification and no request for confirmation. Unfortunately, the installation failed because my son does not have administrator privileges, and afterwards the game was unusable. I had to reinstall, which lost all history files, so my son had to start over (fortunately, the game is fun enough that he didn't mind).

In my opinion, there's no excuse for not requesting confirmation and permission for a download, or for assuming all people playing a toy aimed at preteens are administrators. There's also no excuse for not providing an option to preserve player history on a reinstall. So the Radica people deserve credit for creating an addictive toy, and also deserve a slap to the face for not understanding some basic principles of user-friendly software design.

I ordered U.B. Funkeys for my grandson's birthday. He has had a lot of fun with it. I then found the Funkey's at Wal-Mart, so you can broaden you base without having to wait on an order. Amazon's price for the starter kit was much lower than Wal-Mart.
It does get old - quick, unless you purchase more Funkeys.

Stop before you buy this. Target has all of these for more than half the cost less. I was so irritated to find many items listed here so inflated. Who do they think we are? The smaller "rare" u b funkys are only 5 dollars at Target and the beginner kit was 14.00. Don't get had by these pirates. Shame on Amazon for allowing this.
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I also found inflated prices for the idog amped. It is only 27.00 at Target, not 57.00!!!OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My 8 yr old son loves this interactive world. The setup is easy and it appeals to both boys and girls.

I got this for my son, who uses an older Windows 98 machine. It refused to work at first, until the website support eventually got it working. (After needing to install an unzip program on the Windows 98 machine. PKUNZIP is proprietary, Mattel!)

He enjoys it, but he doesn't realize how incredibly slow it is. If he ever sees a friend playing it on a faster computer, he'll get sick of it instantly. Characters crawl along the screen. The program is a total system hog, which is probably okay for Gigahertz-level CPU's, but not for the older computers that families tend to pass on down to their kids.

I bought this for my son for Christmas. He loves it! I didn't have any problem installing it, worked like a charm the first time. I even took it to a friends house he had a playdate with, and they installed it no problem. I bought a bunch of them at Target for $4.49. He still loves Webkinz, but these are so much more economical. The ages say 8+, but he is only six, and plays with it no problem.

My kids got the starter kit 4 days ago and have since gone to 4 different stores looking for new characters. At $5-$8 a pop they have purchased 7 new ones in just 3 days. They have been hooked-until today. Immediately after the Login process a screen pops up asking you if you want to create a unique user ID for chats etc. If you select "no" it tells you that you will not be able to participate in many features of the product. My 10 year old decided to go ahead and create this new user ID. It does tell you at the end of the process that this will replace your old login info..no problem right? WRONG!! At login only original user IDs are available for selection, you cannot type in this new ID that was just created, therefore you can no longer gain access to your acct. After searching the website & google to figure out how to fix this, I discovered this is a universal problem with the system & there is no solution. The only thing I can think to do is reinstall the software which will force all 3 of my kids to start from scratch. And we will still have to deal with the pop up at login at the beginning of every game. With my 5 year old playing this game, I am sure we will find tgame (aside from the fact that you have to keep buying new characters to progress in the games), but today I say, my kids wasted a whole lot of their money & I hope they will consider returning these to the stores!!!

I can't believe that Funkeys haven't caught on and gotten as HOT as Webkinz cuz they're really Cute and Fun little collectibles. It would of been a whole lot more fun if it were Multi-player like you play with others around the globe and able to chat/make friends with other UB Funkey owners. My favorite Funkey is Wasabi !! You should get yourself one cuz I know you wont regret it !!

My son begged for this for his birthday, and he was disappointed. He now just plays with the figures and pretends with them. He is 7, so maybe an older child would like this. The computer game is just "Blah." Shrug your shoulders and buy something else...

My daughter received a Funkeys starter kit for her birthday. When I went to install it, I learned that it does not install on a Vista 64 bit machine. All of my computers are Vista 64 bit machines.

When I called Mattel help regarding this, they tried to blame it on Microsoft and the Operating System. The support person did not have a 64 bit solution. Looking on the various forums, this has been a reported problem for YEARS!

So warning to all purchasing this toy. It does not work on Vista 64 bit. Don't buy it.