shop-for-collectible-toy-car

good puzzle
I think this puzzle is good. My daughter has been playing with it since she was 6 months old. It has held up to her roughhousing and her spitting up in the speaker. The animals sounds are accurate.

Excellent, but only without sound!
The sound puzzle seemed to be a great idea when we received it as a gift for our 14 month old son. What better way to learn animal sounds and hand-eye coordination? Until of course, the puzzle started making these animal sounds. And never stopped. The animal sounds are HORRIBLE. They're electric, raspy, and downright miserable. More so, the puzzle makes this sound at about any time, it seems to have motion sensors or light sensors or something, so whenever, we walk past our son's play room on the way to the kitchen, a pig "oinks" or what passes for an oink. Finally, the red handles on each puzzle piece look pretty low-quality and I'm afraid of them falling off (choking hazard!!) the puzzle pieces.

Overall, the product looks great, and would've been perfect for our son had it not been plagued with so many horrible animal sounds. Take the battery out and enjoy it as a simple puzzle, in which case, it then costs too much.

Toy is great - without batteries!
I'm pretty sure Melissa & Doug outsourced to Satan when making this toy.

I really liked it - until we put batteries in it. Like another reviewer said, there is no off-switch for it. And the toy is not high-tech enough that each animal only makes its own sound when you put the right piece over it. So when your child tries to put the duck in the horse spot, it makes the horse sound (which sounds like a dying horse by the way, and the sheep sounds like it's being murdered).

I also have had it start making noises when it got dark in the room it was in - which is quite disconcering when you are alone in the house.

It's a really cute puzzle. Just save your sanity and don't put the batteries in.

There is no spoon, er, off-switch
This is a well-built wooden puzzle by Melissa and Doug (who seem to produce little other than well-built wooden puzzles) with eight farm animal pieces, each with a peg for easy removal from the board. When the pieces are placed in their slots, an electric eye causes a somewhat tinny animal sound to issue from the speaker at the top of the puzzle board.

But there is no off-switch. If you want to turn it off, you'll need a small Phillips-head screwdriver to remove the battery from the back.

The reason that this is an issue is that, if your kid is anything like mine, one of the pieces will vanish immediately, never again to be found. (In our case, it was the cat. Ducks and cows are great, but they've got nothing on cats in his eyes.) And the electric eye in the missing puzzle piece slot will activate every time the lights go out in a room or even a shadow passes over the puzzle.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Ever thought you had your toddler almost asleep, and then had a pet's shadow cause a puzzle in the room to begin meowing at him, waking him up? I have.

I don't think it's reasonable to ask toddlers to not walk off with puzzle pieces and hide them who-knows-where, so be warned: Whatever piece they fall in love with is the animal who will announce that the lights have gone off or a shadow has passed over the board until the puzzle finally powers down.