Infant / Toddler bounce fun

The Fisher Price Bounce and Spin is perfect for older infants - toddlers. My daughter will burst into laughter while bouncing on her dog. Melts my heart!

Cute, but not right for me

I’m not gonna deny that kids find it fun (they do), but putting this side by side with a more traditional style rocker, they preferred the rocker and I did too. I think if you already have a rocker or bounce style toy, this isn’t such a great buy. My other issue with it is that I’m not a fan of bilingual toys. Unless you are actively raising a bilingual child (which is a great choice!) it’s a bit useless. I prefer toys that have a three way switch to allow it to go between french, english or both, rather than toys like this that put the french on the end and have to go through two long phrases.

For kids who aren’t bilingual, the french part becomes just noise and takes away from the learning experience. Similarly, french households would probably want the french first? I feel this also limits its appeal. Learning a second language is never a bad thing, but given the price I feel that they could definitely have a switch that moves between. This also allows you to pick the language your child doesn’t know well. For example, an anglo household who wants to focus more on french learning would prefer to set the toy to simply french.

I’ve made this complaint about bilingual toys before and I stand by it, I’ve seen those toys with switches and for a toy in this price range, I feel it should have one.

Other than that and a few other minor issues that I’ll talk about later, this is an ok toy. The bouncing is fun and kids enjoy it. There’s a button for ABC and 123, two modes and two volume settings. The volume settings are actually great, with a decent amount of difference between them, but it lacks an ‘off’ setting here for folks who need some quiet. It also offers a learning style mode or a ‘dance’ mode.

One of the coolest features is when the child has to ‘bounce’ to activate the next phase of the song. This gives access to a bunch of stuff that’s triggered by using the toy as opposed to hitting a button! While playing the buttons also produce funny noises.

I was a little disappointed in the roller toy. The rattling sound is good and makes kids laugh, but there’s so little multicoloured balls in there that they’re barely visible. Another big problem I had was the base. The toy is designed for carpet and slides around really badly and dangerously on wood floors. Maybe it’s just where I live, but nobody here has carpet and I really feel some non-slip pads on the bottom could make it perfectly safe for both wood floors and carpet; so why didn’t they do that?

The design is super cute, brightly coloured and we really loved that the puppy has soft, pettable ears. Assembly is ok, about 15 minutes, mostly snap together and a couple of screws. It can't be un-assembled for storage and I recommend having a second person to help hold the toy during assembly.

Overall, it’s a good toy, but lacking a few features that I’d expect at this price point. For that reason, I personally prefer a ‘rocking’ style toy, but if you have carpets, a bilingual household and need to run down a kid’s energy; this wouldn’t be a bad purchase.