Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Exceptional Value, Plenty to See and Do |
| Disadvantages: |
Pieces can get mis - placed |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Oh I love this. I'm sorry but really I do. My son is just so cute when he plays with this and it's given him hours and hours of entertainment since I bought it for him just before Christmas. Why just before Christmas and not on the big day? Well Babies R Us offered a fantastical deal that meant when you bought any two Bruin toys you could get a third one free! Fantastic stuff; especially considering how cheap these toys already are compared to a lot of the brand name toys on the market.
With Bruin I always say you get good value for money and a well-thought out and stimulating toy for your child but with the Discovery Farmhouse I think they really excelled themselves. Priced at 16.99 you get a lot for your money. The best way to tackle this review is going to be for me to walk you round the little farmhouse and point out it's features as we go.
>>>THE FRONT<<<
The front of the house is attractive and vibrant with bright yellow walls and an orange roof. The Farmhouse is situated on a green textured "grass" lawn with a few pebbles and flowers moulded and painted into the design for realistic attractiveness. There's a plastic tree situated on the left hand side that is one of only two "scenery features" you can't actually do something with but it adds to the character of the place nonetheless. There's a big purple front door that opens when you turn the chunky pink key just to the side of it. It'll take baby a few tries to figure it out but it's all part of the fun of learning and thinking for themselves. When the door opens, you'll hear one of three "door opening" sound effects and see a picture of either an elephant in the kitchen, a Bruin Bear in a bedroom or a giraffe in a living room. The pictures rotate automatically every time the door is closed and opened again.
Above the door is a large green push-button door bell that lights up and plays a door bell chime when pressed. Either side of the door are two windows. The first window has blue shutters that are opened by pushing in the flower box beneath it. When the shutters open, you see a picture of a giraffee who calls "cooeee" then the doorbell lights up and a tune begins to play. There are several different lively little electronic tunes that alternate in sequence. The second window has a green horizontal blind that you pull sideways to see a hippo doing the dishes. Opening the blind is accompanied by a "whhhooooop" sound effect. On the lawn beneath this window are three little ducks, a Mummy and her two babies in a row. They crank back and forth and when you slide them to the end of their little track they go "quack quack quack". So cute.
>>>RIGHT SIDE<<<
Ahh now this is my little boy's absolute favourite part of the Farmhouse. In the
centre of the side is a pink garage door with little holes for windows. To open the garage doors you have to press down on a button on the roof a few inches above the doors and when you do you hear the sound of a car engine starting up. Personally I thought this would prove too difficult for my son to work out but no, I stand corrected! After watching me do it a few times he learned how to do it for himself. The floor of the garage is sloped and there's a little blue car included with the playset that sits neatly inside the garage. When you open the doors, the little car comes whizzing out of the doors and down the slope. My son has had hours of fun doing this though at 16m old it's not surprising that he regularly inserts the car the wrong way up and wonders why it doesn't whizz down like when Mumma does it! When he first learned how to open the garage doors he took to trying to ram everything in them but fortunately the compartment inside isn't big enough for anything to get lost or stuck in. On the right hand side of the garage doors is a little plastic tree with a little yellow bird sat on top. You can press him down to hear him
chirp.
>>>THE BACK<<<
At the back of the farmhouse is a pink tractor that's moulded as part of the wall. Again, the building has yellow walls and an orange roof. There's even some trailing ivy detail along the wall to add that extra special touch of detail and interest. The pink tractor itself doesn't do anything however the large purple tractor wheel with grooves suitable for little fingers does. Baby can turn the wheel to get the engine started which involves a lot of vrooming and tooting sound effects. There's also a little orange horn on the front that beeps when pressed down. Next to the tractor is a blue sliding stall. Inside we have two cute little plastic animals; a cow and a horse. The animals fit inside the turn-stall and when baby slides the door shut then open again you hear a sound effect for the
animal that appears. The stall rotates each time the door is slid shut so that the animals alternate appearances. The drawback here is that you have to put the animals in pretty much exactly the right place otherwise they won't fit and my son's spent an awful lot of time trying to ram them in head first and getting frustrated that they won't go in. He knows they're supposed to go in there and can't understand why they don't always fit. The other problem is that with being quite small they can easily be removed and lost.
>>>LEFT SIDE<<<
Here we have a little kennel sticking out of the side of the house. It's yellow the same as the rest of the walls but has a pink slanted room to make it stand out. There's a large arched purple doorway with a doggy sat inside clutching a bone. The whole of the doggy is one button that when pressed makes a doggy whining sound followed by a few barks. My cats feel this is a realistic dog noise. There's not much
activity to be had at this end but it's nice that they've thought to include activities at every angle as a matter of keeping baby interested in viewing the house as a 3D object with things you can't always see. A lot of baby toys are flat with all the activities on one surface and this kind of toy encourages babies to really interact and
explore.
>>>THE ROOF<<<
Well they couldn't possibly leave the roof without a few activities as well could they? Up here we have a roller on the slope at the front of the house. It's green at either end with pastel yellow, green and orange jagged stripes going round the roller along with pictures of Bruin and his friends. I think it's a nice extra to have included and when you give it a spin it sets off one of two happy little tunes that play for a good minute or two. My little boy's been a great lover of music from an early age and often spins this to get a tune going while he plays. Also on the front slope but slightly further up is a pink sliding switch. Again this sets off tunes but a selection of three different ones to those played when the roller is spun. It's a smooth, rounded edged sliding switch that baby should find easy to move however my little boy hasn't really taken note of this - possibly because it doesn't particularly stand out when you look at the toy. As I've already mentioned there's the push button sticking up that you push down to open up the garage doors and then next to that there's a chimney with Bruin Bear poking his head out. If you push down the chimney, the doors to the stables at the back flies open usually evicting the unfortunate contained animal in the process! It sets off the same mooing or neighing sound effect as if you'd opened the slide stall manually. Lastly we have the convenient pink retractable handle that slots down when not in use and can be easily lifted out via two smooth grooves in the roof on either side. It makes getting this toy out and putting it away very easy indeed.
All that for 16.99? Oh yes. This really does rate very highly on my list of fab toys for little boys. It's just so entertaining and I'm sure that's why my son was so quick to learn so many things. Like trying several different methods to action a function rather than always using a toy the same way. He's had to persevere to figure out which bit slides and which bit needs pushing and which way everything opens up. He loves all the different tunes and he's taken to chugging his little car along the floor which is so cute. Learning how the world works is an important lesson for this age group and Bruin have done an amazing job with their Discovery Farmhouse. I'd happily recommend it to everyone with a baby 12m+.
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