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Friday September 25, 2009
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 For some, rainy or snow days mean parking themselves on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea. For me, it means frantically looking for something to keep my active five-year-old from going stir-crazy. Leapfrog offers parents a solution with its newest toy, the LeapFrog Zippity Learning System ($79.99 list, ages 3 to 5). The device, which looks like the marriage of a Segway and a Dance Dance Revolution mat, is billed by LeapFrog as its new "high-energy learning system." But does it have the chops to keep my kindergartner interested and active?
The Zippity consists of an interactive mat connected to a large, er, stick controller (think: giant joystick) that LeapFrog calls the Bopper, and a wireless console that hooks up to the TV via the included AV cables. The mat has four raised, pressure-sensitive spots, with an orange spot (with two footprints in the middle), a green spot on the left, blue spot above the orange spot, and a green spot on the right. The spots also act as arrows keys to go up, down, left, and right. The bopper stands approximately 23.5 inches tall, and to the right of its base is a large button with a Home icon.
Setup was amazingly simple. Kudos to LeapFrog for the simple packaging
(no monster twist ties from hell). To assemble, you just snap the
stabilizer to the interactive mat. You'll need 6 C batteries: 4 for the mat
and 2 for the console. Then you hook up the console to the
TV, flick the On switch on the underside of the mat and the On button
on the front of the console, and you're good to go. (It helps, of
course, if you also turn on the TV.)
Since the Zippity is a co-branded product with Disney, the eight
built-in games are based on four Disney TV shows--Handy Manny, Little
Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Winnie the Pooh and Friends. Other Disney-based games, such as "Cars" and "Disney
Princesses," will be available later this fall for $24.99 (list)
each.
The games are meant to entertain, but also to teach such skills as letters, numbers,
problem-solving, Spanish, and colors. Instead of walking through the
games with my tester, Jake, I turned on the Zippity and
let him have at it. Instructions were well-stated and simple enough for Jake to understand,
and more important, follow. At log-in, he typed his name in using the
onscreen keyboard and the Bopper. Incidentally, you can log up to three
users for the mat or log in as a guest.
After logging in, Jake was asked to choose which show he wanted to play games for. He first chose Winnie the Pooh and Friends, which had the
game "Darby's Honeypot Jam." In the game, players use the interactive
mat to have the onscreen characters play their instruments. Each
character was associated with a color on the interactive mat. Press the
spot on the mat that corresponds with the color that is shown on the
screen, and that character plays his/her/its instrument.
What was
interesting was that rather than use just one foot to press down on a
particular color, Jake went with both feet. (I'm not even going to describe what he looked like during the free-for-all
jamming.) I liked the fact that the games don't put pressure on players when they make mistakes: Rather, if a kid makes more than,
say, two mistakes, the game goes back to just letting him or her press
anything on the mat.
The Bopper was a bit of a hit-or-miss for me. Though Jake definitely
enjoyed using it, the Bopper was no match for his unbounded enthusiasm. The stabilizer did little to keep the Bopper from
tipping way over. I'm not sure how LeapFrog can fix this, except maybe to
add some sort of suction cup to the underside.
As with all its products, LeapFrog offers the use of the Learning Path system, which allows you to follow the progress of your
child's comprehension of the concept each game represents. But in the
Zippity's case, Learning Path is built-in rather than online; you can access it
when you turn on the Zippity. Other parents may be interested in
using this, especially if their children are younger than mine, but
honestly, I was just happy to have Jake play on the system.
All in all, the Zippity is a solid toy, once that offers children a way
to play "video games" without actually sitting like a lump on the
couch. I'll be interested to see how much more interactivity is
introduced by other optional games (for instance, will "Cars" actually
show a race?), but I was pretty happy with what the device came with. Even better, I have a new bargaining chip for when I need Jake to eat his green beans.
Post by Laarni Almendrala Ragaza
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