I’m participating in a fun new program called Team Mom (see the link in my sidebar if you want to get in on the fun!) and I get to sample new products and write about them here on my blog!

This is my very first Team Mom review, and it’s for the Baby Jamz Jammin’ Microphone. This was actually the first I’d heard of the Baby Jamz line of toys, but apparently they’re becoming popular, since all the preschool moms knew what I was talking about! Baby Jamz is a new hip-hop/rhythm inspired preschool toy line created by Matthew and Solange Knowles (Beyonce’s father and sister.) There are several different toys available – the singalong microphone we received, a cell phone, a dance mat, a musical keychain, a boom box shape sorter, a mix master chair (which sounds way cool) and a music cd full of the traditional kids songs, all sung by Solange Knowles. The toys are available exclusively at Wal-Mart.

My kids were completely freaking out over this microphone. They love music, and they love “performing” music, so I figured they’d be all over it. And they have been! It’s a bummer that we only have one of these microphones, because they’re all struggling to be generous with their turn-taking. Such is life in the house of twins. The microphone plays portions of six different songs. Each song has sort of a hip hop beat behind it, and it plays the music portion only, without words, to encourage kids to sing along with it. My kids got frustrated right away because they couldn’t really sing along with Old McDonald’s Farm – it only plays the “Old McDonald had a farm, EIEIO,” part…on a continuous loop. There’s no place to sing the, “With an oink oink here and an oink oink there…”

The microphone also has a button for recording your voice, but it’s a little wonky. It records a really short clip – not even a complete “loop” of any of the songs it plays, so you can only hear yourself singing along with about four words or so. Also, the quality is really bad – you can barely make out whatever was recorded. Considering the toy retails for under ten bucks, though, it performed about as well as I expected it to. What my kids really like is that there are buttons to speed up and slow down the songs – fun! What I really like is that it has an off switch. Haha! It’s a fine toy, but it lacks something critically important: a volume knob! This toy is LOUD. In my noisy household, it’s doesn’t seem all that loud, but when the microphone is right up near your mouth while you’re singing, it’s also pretty darned close to your ear, and it’s WAY too loud.

All in all, this is probably a toy I wouldn’t buy for my kids, but I probably would buy it for an annoying relative’s kids. My kids are having a ball with it, but they’re having more fun using it as a prop in their pretend play without playing the music at all. I’m more interested in checking out the CD, since we listen to kids’ music A LOT in the ol’ minivan, and the CD sounds like something I wouldn’t mind listening to.

So. Baby Jamz! Check out the line of products at your local Wal-Mart.
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Disclosure: This is not a paid review. I received this item for free from Team Mom so that my kids could try it out and so that I could write about it here. The value of the item is $9.97, which falls under the $40.00 limit set by my membership in the Blogher Ad Network, and as such that allows me to review the item and keep it for our own use, without passing it along to someone else. However, if you really, really want it? Come on over and I’ll let you sneak it out the door.

Update! I felt like I needed to come back and fill you in on a few more things. First of all…the day we tried out the microphone, my son was having the most fun with it, and he even took it outside with him (something I generally do not allow. We have outside toys, and we have inside toys, and never the two shall meet, right?) Unfortunately, I got sidetracked and the microphone got left out in the grass. It sat out there for three days, and during that time, it got covered by snow! Crazy-ass Colorado springtime weather. The next day (Easter Sunday) I went outside in the melty warm weather and retrieved it from the yard. And guess what? Three days of UV rays at an elevation of 5500 feet didn’t fade it even slightly. (Being within shouting distance of the sun tends to fade most of our playground toys quickly!) More surprising than that, the microphone still works just as it did when we took it out of the packaging, even after getting buried in snow. Just like the old Timex commercials: it takes a licking and keeps on ticking! I found that to be pretty refreshing, since most toys seem to be ridiculously cheap and break easily.

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