Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn® Smart Stages™ Review

If you’re looking for Christmas gift ideas be sure to read this blog! Here are two items that you should definitely put on your child’s wish list (at least in my opinion you should).

Like almost all parents I am very familiar with Fisher-Price®. From toys to swings to highchairs we’ve all grown up with the popular brand in our homes.

I will admit however, that I had no clue what the Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn® Smart Stages™ Toys were all about. That is until I went to The Baby Show in the fall.

For those who attended, you would’ve noticed an awesome display for babies/toddlers full of amazing Smart Stages™ toys. My girls went absolutely bonkers when they saw it! They kept running from toy to toy and after 45 minutes of fun I figured they would be ready for some lunch. Boy was I wrong! Leaving the Fisher-Price® booth caused a huge meltdown, screaming, tears and compassionate stares from other parents as if to say, “Been there!”

So when I was contacted to test out the toys and write a blog about them I didn’t hesitate!

I was asked to test two items: The Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn® Smart Stages™ Chair and the Crawl Around Car. Try saying THAT five times fast!

When the two boxes arrived it was like Christmas morning…for me! Actually, it was more like Christmas Eve in that, once I ripped open the boxes, I then had to assemble the toys.

To my pleasant surprise the assembly wasn’t that bad and actually quite easy to understand. Every part down to the stickers were labeled. When it came to the screws I didn’t break a sweat putting them in place. By the end of the girls’ nap I had the car assembled and my hubby was scrambling to quickly assemble the chair. When the girls saw the new items in their playroom it was pandemonium!

All I can say is thank goodness we had two awesome Fisher-Price® toys for them because when it comes to twins, when you have something new and cool to play with in the house, well there better be two of them!

First up for review, the Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn® Smart Stages™ Crawl Around Car:

This car is so cool that I want one for myself! Almost every inch of it has something interactive for the kids to play with. The key turns in the ignition and makes various noises, the radio plays brief music tunes, the turn signals flash and make noises like a real car, the horn beeps, the engine revs and the front windshield even says something referring to whether it’s sunny or rainy.

The one door opens and also has shape slots for the kids to play and learn and the other side door that doesn’t open has a ball drop.

When referring to the stages: One =12 months, Two =24 months, Three =36 months.

When set to level one this is the ‘Let’s Have Some Fun’ stage, so when the girls hit the radio button it will tell them “radio”. Whereas when they press the radio on Level Two ‘Let’s Learn Something New’ it will tell them, “you turned on the radio.” And for level three ‘Let’s Pretend’ the radio will play music and tell them what type of music they’re hearing.

I’ll be honest, our girls are 20 months old and I usually switch the level of interaction every day or two just to keep things interesting.

Besides just how much fun they have in their car many times I catch them just sitting in it for some alone time, watching cartoons or they’ll bring a book in with them and just sit and relax. It’s really cute.

As awesome as this toy is I do have two complaints: First, I wish that it had two doors that opened. Many times the girls perform a ‘Dukes of Hazard’-type move and hop over the side that doesn’t swing open rather than going around the car and getting in through the open door. My other complaint (and maybe this is just a multiples complaint) is that I wish it was a two-seater! The car is just so cool that the girls try time and time again to get in together. They’re small enough that they manage to squish uncomfortably diagonally into it but if it was a two-seater it would be perfect!

Now onto toy number two, the Fisher-Price® Laugh & Learn® Smart Stages™ Chair:

In all honesty when I looked at this thing I thought, “How much fun can this be? It’s just a chair.” Boy was I wrong!

It has a cute little happy face (that the girls love putting stickers on). The ‘seat cushion’ lifts up to reveal items that you would likely find lost under a real couch cushion. It has a plastic book with interactive pages that turn attached to one arm rest and a ‘remote control’ with interactive push buttons on the other.

When the girls aren’t just sitting relaxing in their arm chair it’s always talking to them. When they sit down it tells them “you sat down”, if they lift up the seat cushion it will ask them to help find the keys. I never imagined a simple chair to be this interactive and entertaining.

The levels are the same as mentioned above and the types of interaction vary. When the girls turn the pages of the book while on level one it will ask them to, “find the carrot” that’s pictured in the book. Level two will tell them something about the item i.e.:  “carrots are orange” whereas level three asks them to be interactive asking, “Can you make crunching noises like you’re eating a carrot?”

The one complaint I have about the chair is that the numbers painted on the ‘remote control’ wear off very easily. I like to wipe the girls’ toys down and the numbers are almost entirely missing after just one month of use.

The chair isn’t as interactive as the car by comparison but the girls really love both toys.

You know how once kids have seen and heard all that a toy can do they get bored with it and move on to the next? The great thing about the Smart Stages toys is that you can constantly switch up what the toys do/say, which means the kids can interact with it differently from day to day. I can honestly say that it’s now been about a month of them playing with their car and chair and every single day they play with them with just as much excitement as the day before!