Otamatone Japanese Electronic Musical Instrument Portable Music Synthesizer from Japan by Maywa Denki Studio Award Winning, Educational Fun Gift for Children, Teens & Adults - Black

I stumbled upon this by chance and bought it to entertain the kiddies at a holiday visit. I thought it was so neat that I tried it out myself but found it to be really small and that I couldn’t work it too well, but it quickly became evident that the difficulty was with my larger fingers of my adult size hands that barely fit on its tiny fret board because when put it in the much smaller hands of my ten year old niece, she instantly took to it, could play it much better and liked it a lot. Although it still seems more like a toy than an instrument, I like that it was unique and cute enough to keep her and her younger sister entertained for a bit and that it gave them something to play with that stimulates some kind of artistic creativity. To me the sounds it produces are a little annoying, but the kids seem to like it. If I had to guess, the average age range for this is probably between 7 and 11 (I say this because my 6-year-old wasn’t nearly as interested as my 10-year-old) and that’s just basing it on the size factor of how the larger your hands and fingers are, the harder it’ll be to use (but still have to be large enough). Any older and especially for adults, I’d say that the larger more expensive deluxe model would probably be much better and that I myself am interested in trying out and might order soon. I recommend it because it’s cute, unique, affordable and that it did make a great gift for my 10 year old niece.

This is a cute product and works well. It's fun to play with and easy to use.

This is a great product. It is fun to play with and it has many different sounds. The only problem is that the rubber tears easily so it needs to handled gently. Even though the rubber tore it can easily be repaired and it still works.

They are so much fun to play! All the kids loved them! Even the baby loved it!

My son love this Otamatone! It’s perfect size, and a cool color!

Pretty disappointing. Way to take a really cool and fun idea and just cheapen it into the dirt. First off, it is about 1/4 as loud as you would think it should be when it is on high. You have to be in a quiet room and even then you just want to turn it up. The internal hard body that is inside in the bulb/mouth are very large so the mouth is mostly full making it hard to manipulate it much. And since the speaker(s) is/are right near the front, when you do Manipulate the mouth, it makes almost no difference in the sound. It does not change the resonance much if at all. The box is covered with warnings about how the unit may not play all 12 notes... I mean really? Who's idea was it to skip quality control and instead print on the box that you just might be getting a dud? I am not going to return them, but had I known what I know now, I wouldn't have bought them. There are much higher quality toys out there for 40 bucks.

This is cute. Works well. Different tones and volumes. Instruction booklet.

Bought this for a Christmas gift exchange. You always know you chose well if your gift gets stolen multiple times, and people keep messing with it, long after the gift exchange is over. This was definitely a hit. Now, I want one for myself!