Fisher-Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Bouncer
by Fisher-Price
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List Price: Category: Baby Product See more product details |
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Baby Products Reviews of Fisher-Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Bouncer
Customer Review: Best Bouncer out there
Summary: 5 Stars
I originally had this review under the Fisher Price "Aquarium Bouncer", but the name was changed to "Ocean Wonders" and my review got lost, so I have copied and pasted my original review below as follows...
First of all let me say I found out about this product from when my two nieces used this bouncer 4 and 3 years ago. That same bouncer is at my parent's house where we are still using it for my daughter who is nearly 4 months. My parent's bouncer still works after 3 kids and 4 years. I knew I had to have one and was lucky enough to get a brand new one a few months ago when my daughter was born.
We have used this bouncer since she was 2 weeks old. She is now 4 months old and still loves it (not recommended to use for a child that can sit up on her own). The cover is incredibly easy to take off and wash (and great to remove for travel) and looks brand new after every wash. The toy bar also detaches easily making the bouncer a great seat for spoon feeding or set it in front of the television so your child can watch baby videos. We also set it on the kitchen floor so our child can be with us and watch us during meal time. The regular batteries last a long time in it. We have started using rechargeable batteries which do not last nearly as long, but they are rechargeable :).
I disagree with another reviewer about the safety of this item. The soft fabric of the bouncy seat "sinks" back enough with the weight of a baby in it to keep them from flopping over the side. However, it is true that the restraint system is only a 3 point harness rather than a 5 point harness. However, we have never felt that our baby was in danger of falling out of this seat.
Our daughter really enjoys kicking the dangling toys on the toy bar in baby activation mode which activates the lights, music, and bubbles. She then enjoys "talking" to her friends in the sea. There is also a parent mode where the bouncer can be on constantly and will stay on for about 10 minutes before shutting off. It plays different melodies, ocean sounds, and bubble sounds and you can rotate through the different sounds by the push of a button.
I'm not sure if this item has been discontinued by fisher-price or not. It is somewhat hard to find. And when you do find it at a certain yellow smiley face reduced prices store or a well known baby superstore, it is usually not available on their websites either. Our local "yellow smiley face lowest prices always" store rarely has it in stock. The red bull's eye store also rarely has it. You can usually find one at a reasonable price on a very well known auction site (you can find "IT" there) if amazon is out of stock (which lately they have been).
If you don't know what I mean by any of the above stores, contact me and I will tell you more specifically which stores I'm talking about, but Amazon won't post reviews that tell you to shop elsewhere, so I didn't mention any names of any specific stores or websites. :)
Bottom line - this bouncer comes highly recommended and if you do your research you will find that many other parents and their children love it too! Good luck!
Customer Review: Great for 0-3 months!
Summary: 4 Stars
Being a first time mom I am going to attempt to review our purchases as honestly as possible because I know I depended on the reviews so much because it was all I had to go on - I didn't know anyone who had had a child recently so buying toys for me was all new and they are much too expensive to buy and see how they work out.
The bouncer is great. I have put my daughter in the bouncer since she was just a week or two old. Early on- from birth - 1 month I didn't use the activity bar. I couldn't see her very well through it and she was too young to appreciate it so I left it off and just used the vibration function. But it was a great tool to just turn on the radio onto something soft and let her cat nap in the bouncer.
As she got a little older I put the activity bar on and at first all she noticed is the bubbles but after a while developmentally she began to notice and play with the activity bar. It truly is a great accessory.
Pro's
-- Batteries seemingly last quite a while in this toy. There were several times I would forget to turn off the vibrating function and hours later it would still be on yet battery still going strong afterwards.
--Nice vibrating function
-- Baby seems very comfortable and safe in seat
-- VERY easy assembly
-- Baby loves all the different tunes plays 5 different ones. Including no tune at all and just the bubble function.
Con's
-- until your baby is able to play with the toy on the self activiation level - the automatic option only lasts for 10 minutes. So I was constantly having to re-hit the button to make the music keep playing.
-- Take DD batteries which do get expensive but the toy is not a severe battery hog
-- I have not experienced it as of yet but from what I can read the toy may not have much of a purpose after baby learns to sit up. My daughter is 3 1/2 months and can sit if you help her but is not strong enough to do it on her own, however I have not noticed anything of a safety issue..yet. Reading all the reviews on this I have starting putting a plush rug under the toy just incase she falls out (I have hardwood floor -- I'd rather be safe than sorry) but so far I haven't noticed anything that would suggest my baby is not safe in this toy. Some people say they have experienced their children attempting to fall out once they can sit up but so far I have no complaint of this toy and my daughter has been safely strapped in.
As I said, it may lose it's use after the 4 month mark after babies learn to sit up - I havent' experienced that yet - but there are so few toys out there for your baby from 0-3 let me assure you this is worth the expense if you baby uses it for no more time than his/her first 4 months. If I had to quit using it tomorrow we have gotten our money out of it.
Customer Review: Try the New One instead.....Sensory Selections Bouncer
Summary: 2 Stars
I was very excited about getting this bouncer for a shower gift because all my friends raved about it. I had an older bouncy seat for my first child but wanted one with something that had some "turn on" entertainment". I have been nothing but disappointed with this bouncer. Mechanically there have been no problems, thus I gave it a two star rating. HOWEVER, functionally I do not like this bouncer at all!! I found it a pain in the neck to have to remove the front fish panel everytime I wanted to put my baby in it. My baby has acid reflux so to have to hold a baby and lean over to undue the panel on both sides so I could put my baby in always ended up with my baby puking on the floor because I would have to lean over to detach the panel. I think the panel should swing open instead.
When I thought about getting this new bouncy seat I really wanted one with a mobile on top but could not find one. Of cousre now that my bay is basically too old for the bouncy and I am not having anymore children, the perfect bouncy seat comes on the market! ******The Sensory Selections Bouncer ***** has everything I had wanted in a bouncy seat but could not find. As a mother of two I would recommend the "Sensory Selections Bouncer" as it seems to be perfectly designed. A mobile thing above, toys positioned by their hands and no front panel or toy bar needs to be removed before setting the baby inside.
My last thought about this bouncer is about the angle of the seat. I found that the angle was very steep so it was not possible to lay an infant in this seat until they were at least 2 months old. I tried putting a terry cloth car seat insert in the bouncy seat to help prevent the baby from rolling to the side. In addition to the rolling problem, the steep angle didn't even allow the baby to be able to reach the feet/hand toys. I found the whole seat to be poorly designed. Now that my baby is 6 months old I have yet another problem...... now the baby seems to be too big for it because her knees keep getting stuck in the hanging toys and if I try putting the baby higher up in the seat then I can barely get the seat belt on her because the baby's bum isn't suppose to go up that high. My baby only seemed to fit it it this seast between the 2 and 4 months old. I am not sure if the seat I got was some how different because everyone I talk to loves this seat, but I HATE mine! I am going to sell it on craigslist.com this week. I am glad that so many people love it because hopefully I can get $30 for it. Go look at the Sensory Selections Bouncer instead as I think you will really like it. If my baby was only 4 months old I would go out and buy it, but at 6 months she'll be crawling soon. Good luck on which ever you choose.
Customer Review: Water in tank evaporates over time; how to refill
Summary: 5 Stars
My oldest son (5) loved this bouncer, so did the kid we passed it down to, and so does my youngest son.
It's already been amply reviewed but I thought people might be interested in how it ages:
- active toddlers WILL be fascinated with sitting on the chair part, and torture it until it's no longer safe for infants, so put this toy away promptly when the kids are too big to sit in it (we had to replace the seat after my friend's son broke it)
- the water in the tank evaporates over the years so the bubbles no longer do a good job spinning the starfish, etc.
We refilled the tank ourselves with the following equipment:
phillips screwdriver, flathead screwdriver, heat gun, glue gun (or epoxy), big sterile syringe, sterile water
1. remove toy bar so it's no longer getting power
2. unscrew screws in the white part of the toy bar and open it up. Note the positions of the kick toys and buttons, which will probably fall out while you're trying to refill the tank.
3. on the upper part of the tank, search for the plug for the hole for filling the tank. It's sealed on with something like epoxy or hot glue
4. CAREFULLY blast the plug with heat gun until the sealant is soft enough that the plug can be pried off with flathead screwdriver
5. use the big syringe to top off the tank with more water.
We noticed that the old liquid in there made swirling patterns where it met the new water; we reckon that the old liquid might contain something like glycerin to make it more viscous, or preservatives to keep it from getting yucky
6. reseal the plug onto the tank with hot glue or epoxy... actually we lost the plug so we filled a small plastic button with hot glue and stuck that on... time will tell whether it does a good job sealing the water in
7. try out the toy bar in the seat and rejoice if it works!
8. take it out again and replace the buttons and kick toys (orange fish goes on the right hand side, from infant's point of view. The fish face in, towards each other.) Close up the toy bar.
Hope that helps keep some of these excellent toys out of the landfill!
Customer Review: A Must-Have
Summary: 4 Stars
This bouncer is among my favorite baby products. We first used it when my son was about a week old when my parents, my husband, and I stood dumbfounded as it stopped him from crying. It has been an essential item since. It didn't hit every single time in the beginning (it was our secret weapon then) but as he got older it consistently entertained him. At first he obviously could just look at it but it was really fun seeing him develop and first play with the hanging toys and then touch the fish and bubbles on the screen. He is now 10 months and will outgrow it soon (he's already almost 25 pounds) and we will all miss it terribly. Many kudos to Fisher Price -- something about the moving fish and bubbles and corresponding lights, sounds, and music fascinate the little ones. Two other babies in my son's playgroup who did not have it tried it at around six months and were fascinated as well. [NOTE: I noticed that there is a new version and that some stores are still selling the old version. The remainder of this review applies to the older version with the green and purple-patterned seat. The newer version with a blue-patterned seat has more fabric at the bottom and a buckle underneath versus the velcro. These seem to improve the product in the areas I mention although I have not tried or washed the new seat.] The reason that I did not give it five stars is that even though we washed the cover on a gentle cycle and line-dried it, it was very difficult for me to get it back on the metal frame. There were gaps on both bottom edges of the seat which my son got his foot stuck into a couple of times when he was very young, which breaks your heart. I would have given another product a low amount of stars because of this but he was not injured and this product is fantastic in every other way. As a word of caution also be sure the cover is securely fastened to the velcro (the velcro on the underside is easy to miss) or it will sag or come undone (the instruction manual does not mention this). I cannot comment on the vibration aspect because we rarely used it -- he was way more entertained by the screen and sounds. Overall, a great product.