Review: LeapFrog My Pal Scout & Violet

Written on Jun 9, 2009 by Brian and filed under LeapFrog, Reviews

In early February LeapFrog annoucned plans to release a plush puppy named Scout, or Violet if you prefer purple dogs, to help kids 6 months to 3 years learn first words, early numbers and so on. Talking plush isn’t entirely new, but thus far, we haven’t been terribly impressed by the options in the market. My Pal Scout goes on pre-sale this week and should be widely available soon. We’ve been playing with the pooch for a few weeks now though and are pretty impressed with Scout and love his family-friendly price tag.

My Pal Scout/Violet Learning Skills

• First words
• Daily routines
• Early number sense
• Feelings and emotions
• Animals

As noted, there are plenty of  edutainment plush dolls on the store shelves. But most fall short in several ways, limited content, high price tag, repetitive interactivity – the list goes on. They normally start out interesting, then get buried in the bottom of the toy bin.

My Pal Scout is different in many ways, most obviously the lightweight $20 price tag. But as with their higher-end learning toys, LeapFrog has included a conduit to LeapFrog Connect, a desktop application that lets parents customize Scout and track their child’s learning milestones.

After installing the software, Scout can be connected to the PC with a USB cable located in a Velcro-secured pouch in his back. From their parents can “teach” scout the child’s name. One of the boys who’s nearly three loved pushing Scout’s paw to hear his name. Even better he wanted to next teach Scout his favorite food, which is another other thing Scout can remember. So now Scout can interact with Owen and remembers his favorite food is sausage. Scout can also remember your child’s favorite animal and color.

One of Scout’s key interactions is around music. Parents can customize the music Scout plays as well by selecting up to five lullaby melodies and five daytime melodies to play for your child. LeapFrog provides a library of more than 30 songs and will likely add to it over time. Kids can grab one of Scout’s paws to start the music cycle. For younger kids, parents can start the nighttime lullaby for instance, and leave the soft plush dog to sooth kids to sleep.

Parents can also use the LeapFrog Connect application to print an ownership certificate and coloring pages for kids who are a bit older. All of these features can be changed and managed at any time, so if Scout gets passed down it’s easy enough to teach him a new child’s name for instance.

In our tests kids really enjoyed playing with Scout and it didn’t take long for kids in the 2-3 range to learn how squeezing his different paws would launch different activities/music. Scout’s top left paw launches the daytime songs, which are generally upbeat and interactive. The top right paw launches the learning games where Scout will do things like count hiccups and make animal sounds. The bottom right paw launches the lullaby songs. A single squeeze will play two minutes of music, two gets five minutes and a third squeeze will play ten minutes of music. The bottom left paw turns Scout off, though he will turn off by himself after a few minutes of inactivity.

The range of play with Scout is pretty varied. At the younger end, Scout is a great first plush that has the benefit of playing music and growing with the child as they go on to learn the basics like animal sounds. Kids who are a little older will benefit from the affectionate interaction Scout gives them and the learning games like early counting routines. The kids also got a kick out of Scout’s light-up dog collar.

All the kids who played with Scout enjoyed the experience. As parents consider how best to spend their money, our viewpoint is $20 is pretty much a no-brainer here. Scout offers a good deal of interaction, and not just that, but customized with a few points that will interest kids, like being able to repeat their name without sounding like a creepy robot. We’re almost always impressed with the quality LeapFrog produces and find My Pal Scout to be another top-notch product.

5 out of 5 stars – Editor’s Choice

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