Tiggly Shapes review
To be fair, this review shouldn’t happen for a year when Maggie’s in the correct age range for the Tiggly Shapes software, but between her nonstop playing with the shapes and software and having played through it myself I think it’s probably time to write about Tiggly Shapes a bit.
Tiggly Shapes are soft rubberized toys with little pads on the bottom of them that mimic finger touches to a tablet screen. Each shape has either three or four pads that when placed on the screen form a shape the software can recognize.
The basic idea of the Tiggly’s software is match the physical shape to the outline of the shape displayed. This probably works much better for an 18 month old than an eight month old, however Maggie has learned that if she just puts her hands down repeatedly the Tiggly Safari software will recognize her hand slapping as a valid shape eventually.
We haven’t tested out the Tiggly Stamp or Tiggly Draw apps yet but that’s on the agenda for tomorrow.
She also learned how to break out of Tiggly Safari by using the iPad multitasking gestures, which have to be disabled (settings, general, multitasking gestures,) unless you want to come back to a young one in your web browser.
The shapes themselves are the perfect baby toy. Easy to grip, fun to chew, and able to be thrown and retrieved. The software is encouraging when you get a shape correctly. It’s not exactly Grand Theft Auto 5, however if I were a toddler I think I’d enjoy it quite a bit and would have some solid replay value.
The Tiggly Safari app is available in the app store and can be unlocked by putting the correct shapes on the screen at initial run. There are more planned releases of software coming up to add to the existing three out there, and soon there’s also supposed to be Android support. That might be a bit of a pain and a while coming due to some Android manufacturers not bothering to register more than two fingers on the screen, and also the wide variety of sizes of Android screens available.
The correct age range for Tiggly starts at 18 months, and whether the software is doing anything educational for Maggie at eight months or not she loves the colors and shapes. She also loves the physical shapes for chewing and chucking. So using it in an unrecommended age range seems to have worked out for us. Your mileage may vary.
Above video: Maggie playing for 10 minutes with the shapes and the iPad. Not particularly doing what was intended, but enjoying it.
One thing to note about the shapes are they tend to get dirty if put into baby crevasse, and the rubber tends to hold the dirt tightly. A simple rinse doesn’t seem to work it away. Grab some Oxi-clean, put in a bowl, chuck them in and it should clean up nicely. I’m not sure if these are dishwasher safe, but not planning to test it yet.
Tiggly Shapes are available at Amazon for $29.99. You’ll additionally need an iPad and a working Apple ID to download the software from the App Store.
