Price Tag: $19.99/each
Official URL: littletikes.com
Rating:

I am not one of those cool “musician daddies” who have tons of musical gear around the house. I am however a semi-cool studio engineer daddy that gets to have a few musical things worth playing with. Having this exposure to “real” musical instruments makes one wince a bit at the idea of giving your own child a cheap plastic toy that makes horrible off-note squelches.

So when my better half walked in with the Little Tykes Piano and drum sets, I was not overjoyed. At first. But being the smart woman she is, she asked ME to help set it up. This of course requires the unscrewing of battery covers, etc. (a process far more complex than when I was a kid).

Batteries in place I of course had to key-down a few notes on the Little Tykes keyboard. To my great surprise, it sounded, well, pretty good! No Yamaha baby-grand sound of course, but they had managed to avoid the normal hollowness and add a reasonable sense of fullness and ambiance to the notes that was enjoyable.

My son seemed to like the sound too because he came over to try to play with it. Being the dad, I had to explain to him that I needed to “fully figure out how it works first. Then, and only then, could I safely hand this over to a young man such as yourself”. He looked confused. But then, he is only 20 months old. So I thought I would put on a bit of a concert for him. Alas, despite his age he knew a sour note when he heard it. He took the piano away from me and now only allows me to play with it when he takes a nap. The only downside of the piano seems to be that the functional keys are the white ones, and the black ones are just for decoration. This can be confusing to a child that has touched a real piano before.

The drum set was not quite as effective in design, but still a lot of fun. It does involve some hitting of the plastic drum pads. So whether that promotes good behavior or is simply a good release I will leave to more experienced minds than my own. I can tell you the drums don’t see as much play time as the piano does. From either of us.

Pre-set song buttons run across the top for when you want to “fake it” and impress your child.. At least until he figures out that he can press the same buttons and make the same songs. Oops. These buttons modify the sound of the keys while the song is playing. Cool! (The drum plays: “Love Shack” by The B-52’s, “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter, “Wide Open Spaces” by The Dixie Chicks, “I’m Still In Love With You” by Sean Paul, and “Blame It On the Boogie” by The Jacksons. The keyboard plays: “ABC” by The Jackson 5, “Love Shack” by The B-52’s, “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter, “Allstar” by Smashmouth, and “Wide Open Spaces” by the Dixie Chicks)

The volume is controlled by a rounded knob on the top of each of these instruments. You turn it all the way to the left to turn the instrument off, or you twist it to the right to turn it on and increase the volume. The volume goes from nicely low, to “loud” with a few steps in-between. Nice! We hate toys that only have settings for “loud” and “louder” and they have been known to “get lost” very quickly, never to be found again. (Also known as “placed in the FREE section on Craigslist)

Oh, one last thing. My wife said they both do really well with battery life. Which is good because I hate looking for the screw driver.