The hottest new toy of the year, Hatchimals, are hard to find and if not right off the shelf, very costly to buy 3rd party at this point. With all the stress and cost over this toy, are they even worth it? While only your child can really determine that by the play time the toy gets, I will tell you what my family knows about this toy!
It all started a few weeks ago when one of my daughters turning 9 made it clear that this toy was all she wanted for her birthday. I quickly saw my error not getting one as soon as it hit the shelves and locally I could not find one. I thought for sure with my research skills and contacts I could get one online, but this just wasn’t so. So I turned to my social media and put a shout out to friends and family to help me crowd source my issue. Friends and Family from around the country made plans to hit stores the next day for us. That night though another military family started calling their stores to see if they had a Hatchimal in stock. One did, and that family drove over an hour in the middle of the night to get us one of these little guys and one for themselves as well because they had a child wanting one and suddenly saw the issue I did, that it would just get harder and harder to find these toys. So they purchased one for us and mailed it right out the next day. We got it in perfect condition and wrapped it up for our daughters birthday gift. Thank you Lori and Evan, you saved me! I mention all this because stores are still getting these toys in stock, they just sell out right away, so crowd source for yours too, have loved ones call around to their stores and find out when those shelves will stock with this toy! It is the best and cheapest way in my opinion. I do not at all support buying from greedy 3rd party sellers, those are not the values we need to be rewarding.
Kinds of Hatchimals:
Walmart Exclusive / Burtle / Purple or Aqua
Target Exclusive / Bearakeet / Pink or Black
Toys R Us Exclusive / Owlicorn / Pink or Blue
Draggle / Green or Blue
Draggle / Blue or Purple
Pengula / Teal or Pink
Pengula / Pink or Red
These toys are made in china and sold by Spinmaster.
Included in the very adorable box is: Hatchimal in Egg, Birth Certificate, and Instructions.
Note the top of the package has an egg shape, this is not actually the hatchimal egg. It is cool none the less!
Hatching a Hatchimal:
Soon as you take it out of the packaging the lights inside start to glow and blink. The instructions are not very clear, or at least we felt that way. Note that touching the top of the egg does nothing at all. It is wise to watching some hatching videos to get an idea about what is involved. It can start to hatch in as little as 20 minutes if done right, full hatching takes a while longer, over an hour for us even with constant care. You can tell what the Hatchimal needs by the blinking lights inside the eggs, depending on the color.
My daughter got a Burtle!
She was so happy, almost too happy to be still for a photo!
What color are those hatchimal eyes?
Make sure your child has time after opening this gift to dedicate time to it. I would also advise plan on helping, specially if your child is not a reader yet. Even with our kids reading we all found ourselves looking at the directions over and over to figure out what the hatchimal needed. It was a bit hard to tell some of the colors of the eyes, like light blue, dark blue and then white and yellow.
Not sure if you can tell, but our black cat was all about figuring out what was in the egg too!
Hatching this little toy is a commitment! While you can put it down and come back to work on it later, our child was desperate to get it done all at once! Helpers in this situation are… helpful!
To get this little guy to hatch we ended up all taking turns with care as our kids opened other Birthday gifts.
One of the things that makes this toy so wanted by kids I think is that it is a mystery just what little animal is inside. Our culture is excited and in love with mystery boxes and such videos can be found all over youtube. This excitement is certainly strong in my house with all the kids.
Once it starts to hatch, it took us over 20 minutes to get to that point, it changes a little. The little guy started to make noises and encouraging it to hatch wasn’t as easy as expected. Ours wouldn’t turn unless it was upside down for some reason. It was fun and nerve wracking at the same time! Slowly the hatchimal turns and pushed it’s beak through the shell.
It turned and turned and turned and when my daughter couldn’t take it any longer, she went at it pulling the shell off to help it along!
Finally she had it free!
It played the song Happy Birthday in it’s little Hatchimal way. It was flat out adorable and heart melting!
Next came the baby stage, this meant going back to the instructions and learning a few new things. Each stage has different things you can do with it and little games you can play with it. I honestly expected it to do more I will be honest.
Educational: I think for small children it is educational in that it can help enforce the colors. Also, it helps strengthen memory skills because quickly the kids want to remember what certain colors demand so they don’t have to keep going back to the directions.
While this toy does make sounds it doesn’t really talk beyond parroting back what your child says a few times.
Down Side:
No App!
It doesn’t interact with other toys of it’s kind!
After it hits the “Child” phase, and this can be accomplished in a day, there is no more growing for this toy.
Additionally after just a few days an antenna on our Burtle broke off. No one can tell me why. Not happy with the quality of that part!
After just a few days I have found this toy up on a shelf, it sits and sits with little play time by the 5 kids. The novelty has worn off. The first day I had my other kids asking for one, by day 3 however they had moved on to wanting a Furby Connect because they want the new Furby APP and because the Furby toys interact with one another. Also, because the new Furby is bluetooth enabled the company says that new updates will come out and the Furby will be doing new things over time!
Given all of this, and how hard it is to get a Hatchimal these days, and the price people are paying a 3rd party to get them, I think that getting a Furby that is easy to find and around the same price is the better long term deal. Course a Furby doesn’t hatch and that is part of the magic of a Hatchimal.
What ever you end up getting your child, I hope they love it and you feel it is worth every penny!
P.S. I have a video I of our Hatchimal adventure I need to put up still here so check back!
P.S.S. I highly advise looking at the reviews for Hatchimals on Amazon, people are reporting that their hatchimal was dead on arrival, others report theirs was defective and wouldn’t hatch on their own. The company has been quick to send new ones out though so that is great. Just wanted you to know so Christmas morning wasn’t such a shock if you get a bad one!
I don’t know how much the Hatchimals cost, but I do recall the hoopla surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids, Furbys and Beanie Babies. Sounds like the Hatchimal is one of those toys that’s only fun for a couple days. That being said, I well remember sitting on EBay trying to buy a Furby for my daughter when they were first popular. I’ll do the same for whatever toy my grandchildren want 🙂
I honestly don’t understand all the hype for these Hatchanimals.Whenever I head out to the store, I try to find them but never succeed. My kids haven’t mentioned them yet, so I’m lucky so far 🙂
This is a great review. I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about these this year and I’m grateful my kids are much older and don’t have any interest in them. They are super cute, though.
I ordered one of these for Oscar to play with on his toy channel after hearing they’re the must-have Christmas toy. We haven’t opened it yet but I’m wondering if I should have maybe picked something else instead?! Eek
Louise x
After reading this I am very reluctant to purchase these for my kids. I told them they had to wait until their birthday’s but now I am rethinking that