Playskool has definitely created something special for itself by reinventing one of its classic toys from the eighties, the Playskool Alphie. The new Alphie is much more interactive and fun than its more limited predecessor. Her newly redesigned face now includes an LCD screen for the eyes that can now be switched to show emotion, and she now has a wonderfully fun, playful, and friendly robotic voice that kids will love and respond to.
Alphie encourages children to participate in fun learning activities by using special double-sided picture cards, which are inserted into a special slot in Alphie’s tummy. It comes with 30 ready-to-use flashcards, teaching concepts like numbers, letters, and shapes. The cards offer learning challenges for children, who must answer specific questions or problems by pressing buttons located around the card slot. Many of the challenges on the cards are cleverly designed to try and encourage children to use their problem solving skills. To be successful, they must think through the problems to try to find the correct answers.
There are four booster cards available for Alphie: the letter pack, the animal pack, the number pack, and the music / sound pack. These add-on packages provide many new opportunities for children to interact with Alphie and participate in new activities that encourage learning and fun.
The Playskool Alphie robot is designed to be easily portable, with a handle on the top of the head where children can pick it up and carry it wherever they go. It comes standard with a backpack to store all the cards you have available to play. The tough plastic design is meant to withstand the kinds of inadvertent abuse that clumsy young hands can impose on toys. And if Alphie is not played for 90 seconds, it will go into sleep mode and turn itself off completely, so there’s no need to worry about kids running out of batteries by leaving the little robot on when they’re not. playing with him.
The cards can be placed as the children wish, or they can press a button on Alphie’s head, which will make Alphie play hide and seek with the children and the cards. Alphie will ask for a card of a certain type, and the children must search their collection of cards until they find a card with a picture that matches the description Alphie gave. Alphie congratulates the children when they do a task correctly and has a fairly large collection of phrases at her disposal to use in these interactions.
With over 350 fun interactions and challenges, the new Playskool Alphie is a wonderfully innovative little toy that is designed to inspire a whole new generation of children to learn through laughter and play. She has a fun and playful new personality that engages children’s imaginations and helps them develop the mental skills that will serve them well throughout their lives. A great classic revised for a new era!
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