Lights, sounds and four friendly little characters teach the child colours, numbers and shapes. The unique spin on this electronic learning toy is that it also teaches spatial awareness. The four cheerful characters introduce concepts of front, middle and back (seats in the aeroplane).

Beyond its educational benefits Flying Friends works as a cute toy aeroplane in its own right, with working wheels, moving front propeller and a great joystick to provide real aeroplane noises. All this with a carry handle too.

Flying Friends provides two modes of play "Learn" and "Game". And especially for every parent driven mad by those oh-so-loud electronic toys, Flying Friends even has a volume control for quiet play.

(Suitable for children aged 18 months to four years). Supplied with demonstration batteries only, requires three AA batteries. --Victoria Mackenzie

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Manufacturer's Description
Is this merely a fun electronic toy or educational? The aeroplane plays some songs, has flashing lights and makes brilliant aeroplane noises as the joystick is moved. But you may find this proves distracting from the educational objectives of teaching colours, positional language, shapes and numbers.

As three, small plastic passengers are moved around the plane they may tell you where they are sitting in relation to a friend, or alternatively they may say the colour, number or shape associated with the particular row. If a young child is moving the pieces around quickly it's not always easy to associate the information with the detail on the plane. Therefore, the recommended age of 2 years and upwards is appropriate because the child needs to be at an age where they can focus on an activity and listen to an instruction. The smaller pieces may also pose a choking hazard to children under the recommended age.

Two good features are the volume control (two settings) and automatic shut-off, where if the toy has not been used for 30 seconds he will turn himself off. The toy takes 3 AA batteries.

Whether you personally love or hate noisy electronic toys there is no denying that children like them and this one will be no exception. If you are purchasing this toy specifically for its educational potential you should consider that adult help would probably be needed in order to take advantage of the educational aspects. --Adele Webb

The Flying Friends Plane is a plastic plane on which the windscreen offers a convenient carrying handle, and is filled with four characters, three of which are removable. There are three rows on the plane, each of which has a colour and shape assigned to them. In game mode, the plane instructs the child to place a character in a particular row and announces what the child has done i.e., you placed Leap in the blue/middle/square row. Certain elements of the toy are complicated and it may be confusing for a younger child. It was hard to ascertain what shape was assigned to which particular row of seats. It was also difficult to know what each removable character was called and the instructions call for the characters by name. Also, it was easy to knock a character once it was in place and the plane then stated that the character had been removed from its seat when it merely wasn't seated very firmly and to the child it looks as thought the character was still in place. The less complicated elements of the toy appealed far more to my two-year-old. Pressing the music button made the lights on the plane flash and produced a flying sound. Touching the joystick made the engine sound. We did not realise until reading the instructions, that touching the pilot would count the passengers in the plane but again, this would rely on them being firmly placed in a slot. Blissfully, for parents, the toy does have a volume switch and it does turn itself off if left unattended for a time. In all, my two-year-old son tired of the toy since there were so many functions which were too much for him. However, this he may find the more complicated functions much more fun to play with as he gets older. If this is the case, then the toy would be well worth the money as it would last and be played with for a number of years with the age and ability of the child determining which elements of the toy are enjoyed. Further testing required. --Janice Papworth

The Flying Friends Plane is quite a sophisticated piece of playware. It's a plane with three rows of seats. Along with the permanently fixed-in copilot are three removable "friends". When you take them out or put them in the plane, the toy recognises which character you've moved, and comments, for example, "You put Leap in the front row". There's a Learn and Game setting (along with the merciful off button), and dual volume control. The Learn setting mainly comments on who's sitting where. This can be a tad confusing because a row is referred to by its colour, position or shape of the button on the side. The Game setting issues instructions such as "Della forgot her hat. Take Della out of the purple row". The plane has a fairly wide vocabulary so your child can play with it for quite a while before it starts repeating itself. There are lots of flashing coloured lights. My 18-month-old son's favourite feature is the music button which plays three catchy tunes and the joystick which makes good flying sound effects. Downsides are the slightly muffled sound quality and the somewhat disjointed speech pattern characteristic of string-words-together toys. Altogether this is a toy that should keep children interested for a worthwhile length of time and it seems robust enough to withstand toddler handling. I hope LeapFrog make replacement packs of figures though: one of our "friends" has already had to be rescued from the washing machine. --Giskin Day