Photo-A-Day #3444

I’m not gonna lie, when I learned that I would be receiving a shipment of noisy tweeting and singing birds I was excited for the kids and their reactions, but not so thrilled about what that would mean for Allison and I. We received a large box of DigiBirds from Silverlit Toys to play with and review. Opinions of our experience with the toys are 100% our own. Silverlit Toys are pretty well known for the great remote control cars and helicopters but this is a whole new line of toys for the company. While the birds do not fly they do look and act very lifelike in their tweeting and singing. The kids were so delighted from the first moment the first bird was turned on.

We received eight DigiBirds, a Birdcage, and a Fun House as well as 8 whistles. The whistles double as a stand for the DigiBirds and also a way in which to interact with them. They are also pretty loud whistles. The whistle slips on to two fingers and the DigiBird slips onto the top of the whistle. I like the design of how the DigiBirds sit on the accessories. It is simple enough for my almost three year old son can do it.

With the Fun House and the Birdcage I feel like I have to find some place in the house where they can sit and rock and sing. I could probably put one in Eva’s room and one in Andrew’s. Both kids love the DigiBirds. They love watching and interacting with them. This is no surprise since both kids enjoy seeing the birds at a local retirement home that they used to visit. The DigiBirds each have a distinct look and design on their wings. They are bright and colorful as well.

The birds have two modes. There is solo mode and chorus mode. In solo mode the DigiBird can interact with the child. the child can whistle at the DigiBird for about 3 seconds or blow on the DigiBirds’ chest. The DigiBird will also sing or tweet randomly. They have over 20 songs and 14 additional secret hidden songs that can be unlocked with the free app for iOS and Android. We downloaded both versions of the app and they both work very well.

We first put the DigiBirds App on my iPhone so that we could unlock the 14 extra songs. There are two games that you play to unlock the songs. They are pretty easy but entertaining to play. Once you unlock a song you can click on that song and it will send a tone to the DigiBird and the DigiBird or a whole chorus of them will play the song.

The Chorus mode on the DigiBirds allows them to play together and sing synchronized songs. You start one bird in Chorus mode and that will be the leader. Then as you turn on additional DigiBirds they will emit a tone and then link to the lead DigiBird. We have eight of the DigiBirds and it is a fun thing to see all eight of them playing the same song and moving in sync with each other. We haven’t always gotten this to happening but that is more because my two toy testers kept switching the DigiBirds from Chorus to Solo to Off and back again so they wouldn’t stay synchronized. But I did get it to work on my own and it was fun.

The app works great on the Android operating system also. Eva has an Asus Memo tablet that is hers and we loaded the app onto her tablet. She enjoyed being able to play the games and pick which songs her DigiBirds would play. To be clear, DigiBirds will play the songs in both chorus and Solo mode, however in Chorus mode they are synchronized.

The additional Toys were accessories for extended play. The Fun House can be hung up and has space for 5 DigiBirds at one time. To do this turn the seesaw out and place two Digibirds on the seesaw and two on either side, then attach the hanging swing underneath to add the fifth DigiBird. This of course means that you have to hang up the whole Funhouse to get 5 DigiBirds on at once. You can take off the hanging swing and also detach the seesaw for extended play combination.

We thoroughly enjoyed the DigiBirds and the kids will continue to enjoy their playtime with them. You can find DigiBirds through the Silverlit website, see videos of them on Youtube (Mine is coming) and also on Facebook.