Calling the Kettle Pink

My daughter received this annoying toy for her birthday- it's a little pink Laugh & Learn Say Please Tea Set



ugughguhgughgughguhgugh!!!

This is one of the worst excuses an appeasement toy attempting to pass itself off as educational.  The teapot sings.  It sings and speaks in a fake British accent.

It's quite amazing to me that FP couldn't just a British voice actor to record the content on this travesty of a toy.

The toy has the standard FP selector switch to select whether you want to learn, listen to music, or "play" (which just means that the teapot makes sounds without any voice content- like a pouring sound when you tip the pot).   Now, here's the tirade:

1. The music setting only has two songs (which feels like of like a rip off when you look at the other appeasement toys that come with at least 5).  Because the singing is an American trying to sing in some sort of Essex or Surrey accent, they're really difficult to understand. And one of the songs is NOT "I'm a little tea pot"- kind of an obvious miss there, wouldn't you say?
2. The pot is supposed to teach manners and how to say Please and Thank you.  At least on the ABC setting, it says each of those once.  One of the songs also says Thank you once.  With that frequency, I'm not sure I would have called this the "Say Please" tea set.
3. There is NO volume switch and the freaking thing is LOUD (but difficult to understand so it really just pisses you off to listen to it).
4. The lid is difficult to open and close- it seems to catch a bit.  
5. "Inside" the teapot, there is a little compartment that shows the poorly painted outline of a teabag floating in water.  You'd think that they could have at least made the compartment big enough to hold water- or- whoa, actually made the tea kettle functional with the water going in the top and out the spout,  but NOOOOOO.  It doesn't do anything.  My 1 year old daughter has solved this design flaw by putting her sock in it.  It's the most entertainment she gets out it.
6. Finally, the purpose of the tea cakes- uhm, this seems the sad effort to make the teapot not a 5 minute appeasement toy, but have some sort of "educational" value.  The three cakes are different shapes and sit in three different shaped lipped 'holes' on the plastic doily. 

So, I would recommend, if you're looking for a tea set of your child (a girl OR a boy- my husband drinks more tea than I do), that you get a different one.  Get one that actually works and you can teach your child songs to sing while s/he is playing.  They'd actually learn how a teapot works (go figure!) and you'd save yourself the frustration of listening to garbly, faux-British singing.