Review on LeapFrog Blues Clues Handy Tracker by Bohyun Rossetti

My son is 4 years old and loves Blues Clues & You very much. I chose this toy for him mainly because Josh tells it and he is Josh's biggest fan. (He likes Josh more than Blue!) To be honest, we were both a little blown away by this toy. It's rather limited only by the blocks that come with it. He was able to quickly figure out how to play Blues Clues and control the toy. However, on his first try, he was immediately frustrated because one of the clue paths involves Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper, and the character designs on the blocks look almost the same. I even had a hard time understanding why it wasn't working when I came to help. I ended up having to look at the instructions that show all the pictures to understand how these two things differ visually. Once he got over that snag, he really had fun. However, after working through all the combinations that work with blocks, he wanted to know why he couldn't do more. So my conclusions from this were: it's probably better for younger kids aged 2-5 who take longer to figure out there's only a limited 3 clues they can do with it; and it may be better if you have already invested in this series of learning blocks. At his age, I don't buy any more dice, so he's limited in what he can do with the ones that come with them. That means he gets bored quickly. Now. It's well done. It's easy to use for kids (except for the image issue I mentioned above). It has a volume control (!) so parents will appreciate that it can be turned down below the volume that comes out of the box. The blocks are held together, which is good so they don't get lost or separated easily. The base unit looks just like Josh's Handy Dandy notebook and features voices and sounds from the show that kids will love. For us I would give a solid 3.5 stars. But since I can't give half a star I would give it 4. It's fun and cute, but not perfect. And I feel like the age range is a bit wide to keep a child's attention at the higher end of the range. Overall my son loves this toy and has a lot of fun with it. But without extra blocks, I guarantee it will soon just be a toy parting with its parts in our basement playroom.