What We Think Fun Factor: Durability: (what this means) The Good:Toy offers many stages of learning fun, making it a fun, educational, and economical choice The Bad:Assembly is made difficult by irregularly sized screw holes In a Nutshell:Interactive, musical toy gives your child a fun introduction to making music At a Glance Ages:6 month and up Requires:3 AA batteries (included); Philips screwdriver for assembly and for installing fresh batteries

Give your little one an exciting introduction to music with the Little Superstar Sing-Along Stage.

Features include "Instruments" that activate sounds when their buttons are pressed and five fun songs.

An Exciting Experience for Your Little Performer
The Little Superstar Sing-Along Stage features a large picture mirror, framed by exciting blinking lights at the top and an "audience" of smiling, cartoon babies at the bottom. Musical instruments with happy faces sit below: a guitar, a keyboard, a drum, and a trumpet. Each instrument has moving parts that activate sounds. The toy comes with a "magic" microphone, which is really a rattle. Shake it, and the sound of the rattle will activate songs and other fun sounds. The lights blink as the music plays, making a spectacular show for your little one to enjoy.

Sing Songs or "Compose" You Own
The toy includes two modes, which are easily selected by sliding a button at the top of the toy. The "sing-along" mode plays five different fun songs, which are activated by shaking the magic microphone or pressing any of the buttons on the musical instruments. Younger babies will enjoy listening to the music and watching the lights blink. They'll also love hearing you sing along with the songs. (We were happy to find that the toy comes with lyric cards.) As your child gets older, she can learn to sing along with you, too.

Select the "build-a-song" mode for your child to experiment with sounds herself. When she shakes the "magic microphone," a voice singing a "scat" will start. When your child plays with any of the musical instruments, she will hear that instrument play. It will continue to play a "solo" until she presses the buttons on any of the other instruments. Their sounds will then be added to the instrumental piece. For example, press the drum, and a back beat will be added. In all, the toy has three different, jazzy "add-on" instrumental pieces -- even our adult toy testers enjoyed these catchy, authentic-sounding tunes. The toy also says several fun phrases, as well as the sound of cheering and applause, encouraging children to dance or sing along.

Musical Toy Grows with Your Child
While we love all of the musical features of this toy, we especially like that the Sing-Along Stage is designed to grow with your child, which means that your child will get a lot of use out of it while making new discoveries as they get older. The toy stands at the perfect height for six-month-old babies to play with while sitting. They will enjoy looking at themselves in the large picture window, watching the blinking lights, and experimenting with the cause and effect features of the buttons. Our two-year-old toy tester also enjoyed this toy -- she loved dancing and singing along with the songs.

The toy requires just a little bit of adult assembly, which is where we encountered our only problem: the legs need to be screwed on to the toy to allow it to stand, but the holes for the included screws were not sized properly. This made it difficult for us to manually tighten the screws satisfactorily. However, the toy was still able to stand sturdily for safe play

. The Sing-Along Stage requires 3 AA batteries, which are included.

Fisher-Price Rainforest Melodies&Lights Deluxe Gym offers: Interactive gym helps encourage healthy development with music, lights, nature sounds, games, and textures Super-comfy floor quilt gives baby a soft place to rest or play 20 minutes of parent-activated continuous music; three different play modes for variety

Tummy-time play with five linkable toys that can be reposition for your baby. View larger.

Comfortable, Colorful Design
This bright and cheery activity center features a quilt with a silky border and colorful arches supported by an adorable giraffe. A variety of links let you attach toys up above or down below to capture baby's attention. A cushy monkey, jingly toucan, cute elephant, and parrot with spinning paddle invite baby to bat them around, an action that helps develop gross motor skills. You can also place baby on her stomach for some back-strengthening "tummy time." For added excitement, there's a spinner with rattling beads, spinning butterflies, a shiny mirror, and a crinkly leaf.

Three Modes of Play
To suit baby's mood, this gym offers three modes of play. In the first mode, baby's movements set off eight to 12 seconds of lights and music, which helps teach your child about the relationship between cause and effect. Another option is the music mode, which develops baby's auditory sense with 20 minutes of continuous music. Finally, the rainforest mode plays 20 continuous minutes of rainforest sounds while baby plays or simply relaxes--don't be surprised if he's soothed right off to dreamland!

This activity center measures 20 x 32.5 x 32.5 inches (WxHxD) and weighs 4.7 pounds.

What's in the Box
Quilt, arches, and a variety of hanging toys with links.

Kids will have a great time playing and learning about shapes and sounds. View larger.

With large, bright buttons, even little ones will find the controls easily to navigate. View larger.

What We Think Fun Factor: Durability: (what this means) The Good:Catchy music, clever concept, easy to learn and play. The Bad:Console might not be loud enough if your surroundings are noisy. In a Nutshell:Hours of goofy yet educational fun. At a Glance Ages:4 and up Requires:Three AA batteries, Phillips screwdriver

Easy to Learn; Fun to Play
The Hullaballo console is made of sturdy plastic with brightly-colored buttons that are easy for little fingers to find. Batteries aren't included and parents will need to put those in with the help of a screwdriver before play can start. The easy-to-read, illustrated instructions tell you how to play the game, which is a snap to learn. The console also clearly announces the rules of the game each time you turn it on. (It also plays a bouncy song at the beginning of each round that will stick in your head long after the game is over.)

Do a Funky Dance!
The talking musical console adds an element of excitement and unpredicability to the game. You never know what it will tell you to do next! The catchy music and the instructions to "do a funky dance!" at the end of the rounds especially appeal to kids. (Later, when you're not even playing the game, you can say, "Do a funky dance!" and they'll start dancing excitedly all over again.) The pleasing pallette of colors in Hullabaloo are appealing to the eye, from the purple, green, and red console to the multicolored play pads with their slightly retro images. These brightly-colored, sizeable play pads are hard to lose.Yet they are also easy to put away when the game is over.

Get Your Goof On
We especially enjoyed doing the funky dance at the end. We would even do a funky dance at the beginning of each round too-- the music is so catchy you just can't help it! At times, we wished the maximum volume of the console was higher. We also would have appreciated being able to put the batteries in without using a screwdriver. But overall, we found this game to be fun and energizing, with just the right amount of goofiness thrown in. It proceeds at a good pace -- slow enough so that kids have time to process the console's spoken directions, but fast enough to keep things exciting. The rounds are short so you don't get bored. And there are thousands of combinations of moves so you'll probably never play the same round again, not matter how many times you play!