Wimmer-Ferguson Infant Stim-Mobile
by Manhattan Toy
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Our Price: $26.99 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: Baby Product See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Wimmer-Ferguson Infant Stim-Mobile
Customer Review: We love this!! (Still using at 18 months... please read on!)
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes! We are still using this at 18 months: I now keep the little disks in coat pockets or my purse and use them while travelling. We work on our words: shapes - colors - objects (cat/fish/boat/house/bee...)
And for the infants, this mobile is wonderful because you are able to stimulate the baby visually at the different stages of their vision development: starting out with very simple black and white images and getting more complex.
Most mobiles seem to over-stimulate or under-stimulate. So many beautiful mobiles are for adults and not the babies! The little one's are lying in the crib looking at the feet of a bunch of critters =) The Infant Stim-Mobile's disks all face down (which of course means it's not the most attractive for nursery decor.)
But that leads me to the next point: It is very easy to remove this mobile. We chose to leave it down most of the time --- and put it up at different times during the day to ensure our son could have some real "down time" and didn't have to look at anything.
I've never posted a review of anything but was just helping a friend create her registry and I was raving so much about this one I promised her I would share our experience! We really do love this mobile and guarantee you will too. (The one "downside" is that I wish the disks were a bit more interchangealbe - not all pictures are designed to face down - but as I mentioned, a year-and-a-half later and it's the longest used baby item in the house... $20 well spent!)
Customer Review: Piece of junk, terrible quality
Summary: 1 Stars
This product should be in the hall of fame solely based on it's ability to achieve such a high number of positive ratings from parents hoping to stimulate their child's intelligence. Don't be fooled, it's a piece of junk. I had such high hopes for this, and even at a $15 purchase price I feel ripped off.
Pros:
-Nice images with high color contrast
Cons:
- Simply horrible construction. The pieces of plastic could not be more cheap, and one of the nubs cracked right off during assembly. The arches and misc plastic pieces probably cost all of .20 to manufacture in total.
- The image cards do not easily fit into the attachment nubs, and do not hang straight as a result. Maybe this changes over time, but right now from an underneath view you basically see a card slanted sideways. Not interesting IMO.
- The bar that attaches to the side of the crib is a terrible design, and it is LAVENDER. Seriously, it is not white at all. It clashes completely with the rest of the product, contrary to the image on Amazon and the product box.
It's just cheap and hideous, really. The idea is good, but they should be ashamed at the execution. The cheap thin plastic and non-
matching parts should be an embarrassment to any manufacturer who claims to me making toys to stimulate a child's thinking and intelligence. There was clearly neither thinking or intelligence behind this product.
Customer Review: Custom Modern Mobile
Summary: 4 Stars
I really like the designs on the cards and it was enjoyable piecing together my own custom mobile for our nursery. The mobile looks fantastic with our mod white crib and fits in perfectly with the rest of the room.
I give this product four stars instead of five due to the following:
1. I agree with others who say the cards should be made of thicker plastic or wood. They're suitably sturdy and are unlikely to be damaged by regular use, but I would have preferred a bit more heft. Perhaps the company designed them this way so they'd move more easily?
2. I also think a small motor would have been nice. This mobile moves for a minute or so when I give it a push and then it settles again. A tiny quiet motor would have been a bonus. Either that or a more dynamic manual motion design. I think part of the reason for the absence of a motor is it encourages the baby to kick and bat at the mobile to make it move, so that's a good thing, but before baby can do that it's going to mostly hang there decoratively.
Cool mobile. Could be a bit better designed. Definitely buy if you don't like the fancy flashing noisy spinning plush (and ugly) mobiles that make up most of the rest of the common market. This one is lovely and your baby will make it move eventually.
Customer Review: Needs to be redesigned
Summary: 2 Stars
We got the stim-mobile for our son when he was just 3 weeks old. He has used it for the past three months. He does look at it, and it has become a familiar part of his "landscape". He prefers looking at lights and black and white objects that move, so these things grab his attention away from the mobile.
I can't tell what effect it has on him. I do know that the plastic clamp and wand assembly looked so cheap, we didn't even try to use it. We put an eyebolt in the ceiling and hung it from a cord. The adjustment hooks work very well for raising and lowering the mobile. The card attachment is not secure on the mobile and this makes moving and changing cards difficult. Some of the holes punched in the card were too small to hook onto the mobile. But my biggest concern is that the plastic that the cards are made from is translucent, and when I look up at the mobile (as my son can only do) I see both the image on the side facing him AS WELL AS the ghost of the image on the reverse side. I can only imagine that this makes it very difficult for his brain to see a clear, crisp simple image, which is the whole point of this thing.
Customer Review: Fascinating, But Flawed
Summary: 4 Stars
My 2 month old baby absolutely adores this mobile. Whenever we put her under it (it's attached to her crib, but she still sleeps in a cradle), she stares up at it with great interest. Even better, it often elicits smiles and laughs!
Many reviewers are disappointed that the mobile doesn't move, but, personally, I don't think that's a problem. Sometimes I move the mobile for her, but it doesn't seem necessary. She's perfectly content when it's stationary.
Here are some of the downsides:
1) It didn't come with all of the pictures shown :/ We got two sets of the same pictures. I'm not sure if this was a mistake or if this is what everyone gets.
2) Switching out the pictures is not easy--the holes are small and the cards are not flexible.
3) The mounting arm, a huge chunk of plastic, is rather unattractive. It was, initially, kinda painful to install this in my daughter's otherwise adorable (and nearly plastic free) nursery. But. . . she does love it, so I'm over it.
It's not a perfect mobile, but I'd still highly recommend it.