Customer Reviews

Password Journal (Boxed)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

We got this for our 5 year old daughter for Christmas. This was without a doubt her favorite toy that she received. She has a six year old brother and the idea of keeping him out of her journal is very important to her.

Setting up the journal password is a bit difficult. The key seems to be to "whisper" the password. If you speak loudly the system seems to not understand or get overloaded, I am not sure.

But, the "whispering" of the password seems to add to the enjoyment of the experience for my daughter. She feels like she is keeping a secret.

I would say one time out of three the book will not let her in when she says the password, but even then it is simply fun and makes her laugh, "intruder alert."

So, to those of you who bought this, try to whipser the password, see if you have success. Those of you considering it, know that it is great fun, and well worth the price.

Attempting to set up the Password Journal, half an hour later, had me shouting in anger and frustration and my little 6 yr. old daughter disappointed and crying.

Thanks to Amazon's great reviewers I knew that this is was coming but the deceiving TV advertising campaign conditioned my girl into wanting it so intensely, me reading what others had to say about this over-hyped item had no effect on her. She simply wanted it and she had to have it. In the end, I had to hope against hope that everyone describing their experiences with this toy was wrong and ordered it. Now, a few days later, we both agree that this is not what she expected.

WHAT I DID LIKE ABOUT PASSWORD JOURNAL:

- Nothing but my little girls likes the fact that it sometimes opens when she says the password.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT PASSWORD JOURNAL:

- Batteries not included (3 AAA's).
- As I was inserting the batteries, the contraption woke up and demanded that my girl said the password and confirmed it. It seems it took the vibrations generated by my screwdriver to be the password because it accepted it.
- Since my girl couldn't imitate the noise of a screwdriver, it refused to open.
- To reset it, had to unscrew the crew closing the battery door and had my girl scream her password as I was inserting the batteries.
- Once it finally opened, all we found inside was the cheapest possible notepad of a non-standard size, probably impossible to replace once used, some cheap plastic stylus and nothing else, except of a UV lamp - that's exactly what my kids needed, a little cataract.
- Attempting to set the time and date is were we stopped. This brain-comatose device is suppose to understand human speech but the claims are slightly exaggerated. To set the time, for example, you must say 'change time'. 90% of the time, this is interpreted as 'change password', 'change date' or simply not understood. In the rare instances when the command is fully understood, you are supposed to say the year's digit, one at a time as in 'two' [beep], 'zero' [beep], 'zero' [beep], 'nine' - can ANYONE explain why you have to say two-zero-zero on a toy that was launched in 2004? Anyway, it usually gives up after the first 2 or 3 digits so the time is never set. Want to tell it to turn on the light? No problem, it will ask you for the new password. And on, and on, and on it goes.

I must admit that I was partially wrong. Even though many of the advertised features - time/calendar, voice commands - don't work and never will, our girl is happy with the fact that the PJ opens at the sound of her saying her secret word and she can hide her secrets in there - we did succeed in setting a password, eventually. And, if she is happy, then I am happy but, the grown-up in me says that, while the concept is good, the implementation is not.

I was convinced that this item was defective because the set up was so difficult. My 8 yr old never would have been able to do it on her own. So unless a parent helps, it would be useless. The journal prompts you to set the date and a password, which is simple enough, but it continued not to accept the information until we did it over and over. Now that it's done, my daughter is enjoying it, but my son figured out that any word that sounds a little bit like her password will open it. So, that kind of stinks... Oh well.

We bought this for our 7 year old daughter who is very interested in keeping a journal- and even more interested in keeping her younger twin sisters out of her stuff. The journal is so secure that even our 7 year old is not able to open it WITH the password. We have reset the password 10+ times (every time she wants to open it) and tried a variety of combinations- long words, short words, words ending in vowels... all to no avail. Once she was really unhappy when her 4 year old sister managed to get it open with a word that wasn't the password and she couldn't. Skip this and buy one with keys....

After a multitude of attempts, we could not get this to work once. Not once. Set your money on fire, you'll enjoy THAT more than this toy.

When I was 6 years old I saw a commercial for this and I was BEGGING for this.When I finally got one,my Momma put the batteries in and we made sure it was in right and guess what!IT DIDN'T WORK!What a waste of [....]!

On the plus side it looked pretty nice,the pen and light worked....that's just about all the pluses.

Grade:D-

Password Journal works on the principle of voice recognition. A password is recorded and then - in theory anyway - the plastic unit will open only to the sound of your voice. Except it doesn't - well, it does on occasion and at random. This was bought for my daughter who was extremely excited about it. Unfortunately, in her determined - but unsuccessful - efforts to open the unit she resorted to shouting the password very loudly, rendering the whole notion of a "secret" password pretty much invalid as it could be heard all around the house! The bulky plastic unit contains a cheap pen, light, and a basic blank notebook that could be bought for a few cents at a local store. My daughter, as young as she is, recognised this as a bad purchase and was happy to see it returned. Hard to believe that this item is priced at [...] in the UK as at any price it would be a waste of money. One important lesson learned though: don't believe everything you see on TV.

This journal is ok. We had to do the initial set-up several times. My husband and 6-year-old daughter were very frustrated. After that, it worked pretty well. She played with it for a few days but seems to prefer the simple, spiral-bound journals we get in the dollar bins at Michaels!

Overpriced and flimsy. It took nearly half an hour to set the password!
Because it took so many tries and a relatively loud voice, I doubt the
password is very secure.

My 9 year old daughter wanted this so bad for Christmas so we got it and setting it up took more effort than we both were willing to give because you have to set the password as soon as you get the second battery of three in and we weren't ready so it chose the first sound it heard which was "what?" so we have to reset the password and it took about 5 tries to get it right, then setting the date took a couple of times as well as the time. You have to pretty much speak like a machine for it to understand you. Now for the product itselfs material wise it just feel cheap as anything and will probably break quite easiliy if accidentally dropped. On the plus side my daughter likes coming home from school and checking to see if there were any intruders. When you open it with your password it says "X amount of intruders" today. The light does come on when you give the command but when asking for the time it always gives the date. I would recommend getting a nice book journal that comes with a lock and key.