Unfortunately for parents who like silence, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, "American Idol," and "Hannah Montana" have turned nearly every pop-culture-connected kid into a wanna-be music star. Not surprisingly, a wealth of kid-centric toys and gadgets have flooded store shelves. Some of them might actually help your budding child prodigy on his or her first steps toward stardom. But most music toys primarily offer children the chance to be loud and annoying, without doing much to bring out their inner musician.

The B2 Toys miJam Studio Mike and miJam Drummer are part of a full line of bright-red plastic instruments, which also includes a guitar. Each product seems to include headphone jacks, which is good news; so is the ability to connect to any MP3 player or music source via a standard audio mini plug, which lets kids jam along with their favorite songs.

Sadly, there's little else good to be said for the $20 miJam Studio Mike. The company's Web copy states the mike "will allow young people to experience the fun of jamming by masking out or temporarily removing the original vocals of their favorite tunes." It does this by messing with the EQ of the music coming from your music player, to the point where it's barely recognizable.

It doesn't help that the speaker on the bottom of the device seems to have about the same fidelity as a musical greeting card. Plugging in headphones or external speakers improves things on that front, but doesn't keep save the actual microphone in the device. Despite the large space on the top of the mike, one pinhole is the only opening for kids to do their crooning into. And unless you really yell, the microphone doesn't seem to pick up much, save for the pops and wind noises made by your mouth.

If you manage to sing loud enough to actually make your voice heard over the distorted music, you're making way more noise than the speaker is capable of amplifying, making the whole thing pointless. With ear buds on, the sound of my voice resonating through my head was always louder than that coming through the headphones. Buttons to adjust volume and microphone sensitivity didn't seem to do much to improve the sound. And the "built-in audio effect" is a single button that plays applause and cheering noises, instead of something useful, like adding reverb to the vocals.

The miJam Drummer (mercifully) eschews an external speaker, which is definitely good, but replacing the batteries requires a Philips head screwdriver. That just seems wrong for a child's toy, especially one that's likely to eat through AAA's on a regular basis.

Thankfully, the the miJam Drummer functions better than its microphone counterpart. A pair of button-laden drum sticks wired to a clip-on control box, they allow kids to beat out rhythms without actually banging on anything. Playing drums in the air, the sticks produce sound at just the right time, and rarely emitted notes on the backstroke.

The sound bank included in the sticks is rather limited,consisting of a snare, a couple cymbal sounds, and a few bass beats, kids can nonetheless use the Drummer to practice their all-important speed and rhythm without driving parents crazy. Plugging the Drummer into a stereo or MP3 player allows you to play along to Dokken, like this kid, or even record your performance to annoy your parents with later.

The clip-on control box includes buttons that trigger backing beats, which can be adjusted to different speeds. Still, it would have been nice for B2 to include a simple MIDI-like controller to allow beats to be recorded, layered, and built into something resembling an actual song. A few simple audio effects would have been cool as well, but for the $25 price tag, I guess you can't ask for that much. It's definitely an improvement over the Studio Mike.

The miJam Studio Mike and Drummer are available now in a number of retail and online stores for $20 to $25.