Hands on with the I Can Play Guitar Toy

Oddly enough, one of my fondest memories of my son will be the day my three-year-old boy dragged the huge I Can Play Guitar box behind him saying: "Daddy, look what you got!" Unfortunately, the toy is designed for children ages 8-11, not toddlers.

I suppose the I Can Play Guitar is designed for the children who dream of being on stage and playing some serious rock n' roll. Of course, there are some parents who would probably not want to see this dream come to pass, but for the age group this guitar is intended for, you can keep them off the sex and drugs.
As I mentioned before, the box was nearly the length of my leg, and just getting the toy out of the box was a challenge. I suppose that shouldn't come as any shock, since toys seem to be packed with enough cable ties to hold the worst of prisoners. The I Can Play Guitar had some kind of plastic locks that held it in the box. These locks opened up with a small twist, but they are most assuredly bad for the environment, I'm sure.

Once you have installed 4 C batteries, which were, of course, not included, you can start playing the Guitar right away. All you need to do is click it to "Guitar", turn it on, and start to shred. Oh, one thing though. It takes a lot of strength to pluck the strings, so you would better off using one of the three included picks.

Hooking up the I Can Play Guitar to the television set was pretty easy. All you do is connect the three red, yellow, and white ports to your television and switch to TV. The program, known as Guitar Wizard, started right away. From there, there were many games to play that are very similar to the popular Guitar Hero game.

In other words, the game plays music, and you are supposed to strum and play the appropriate chord at just the right time. My wife, who can play a real guitar, had a difficult time finding the right chords. After all, a real guitar does not have buttons for fingering chords. The strings were, unfortunately, hard to strum, requiring twice as much strength as normal chords.

However, one of the biggest disappointments of this game is that even though the guitar is capable of making great noises on its own, it does not make them in conjunction with the television. So when you're playing the game and it asks you to strum the guitar, you'll hear the proper sound on the television, but all you here from the guitar itself is an unsatisfying "plunk".

This doesn't sound like anything an adult would appreciate, but for a kid, this might be just what he or she wants. However, you might want to get an older kid Guitar Hero, but this is a cheaper alternative for about $100.