Today we engage in some good old-fashioned monkey business with the lifelike Zoomer Chimp Interactive Robot Chimpanzee. Read on if you want to learn all about this fun and excitable primate!
Meet Zoomer Chimp, the Interactive Robotic Chimpanzee
The Zoomer Chimp Interactive Robotic Chimpanzee is just about the smartest monkey around! He can do over 100 different tricks, and has more than 200 unique sound effects. In addition to being able to respond to specific voice commands, Zoomer Chimp can perform a number of cool tricks & can even learn additional tricks the more you play with him. What’s more, this clever little chimp incorporates 3 amazing technologies to help him be the best monkey he can possibly be. These include True Balance Technology (allowing him to stand and balance perfectly on 2 feet/wheels), True Vision Technology (for tricks like following you around or guarding you), and True Expression Technology (for making all sorts of great monkey faces).
Playing with Zoomer Chimp
Playing with this lively monkey is both fun and challenging. It’s fun because he really does do a number of impressive things, like dancing, singing songs, performing flips, standing up all by himself, and even wiggling his hind quarters at you when he’s feeling a bit sassy. It’s also challenging though, because there are certain surfaces that Zoomer Chimp simply does not work very well on. If your floors are all carpeted with rug, you may have a difficult time getting your robotic monkey friend to do many of his best tricks. Standing up and rolling around are particularly difficult for this Zoomer’s main driving wheels (those on his feet as opposed to the ones on his hands). Unfortunately for me, very little of the flooring in my apartment is smooth, and what there is just doesn’t provide as much space for my chimp to run around on as I’m sure he’d like to have. In fact, I actually had to improvise and use a table-top for filming my video review (which you can watch below), and, as a result, I had quite a time trying to keep this extremely fast little monkey from nose-diving off the table on a number of different occasions. I would therefore advise that the first thing you do before picking up your own Zoomer Chimp is to make sure you have (or at least have access to) a decent sized area with a nice smooth surface to it. This will give your chimp plenty of space to move about in and do his various tricks.
Charging your Zoomer Chimp is quick and easy. Simply use the included USB charging cord and any USB outlet (I used the one in my laptop) and wait approximately one hour (during which time your chimp’s eyes will light up in blue). Once he’s up and running, Zoomer Chimp can raise and lower his arms, roll around on his wheels (whether standing on 2 legs or down on all 4), and his built-in speaker allows him to make all kinds of authentic monkey sounds. One thing that this chimp does exceptionally well is facial expressions. There are times when you’d almost think this thing was truly alive. He actually quite reminds me of Curious George. What do you think? Does that make me the man in the big yellow hat? I hope not… I have no such hat!
To get your chimp ready to accept a voice command, all you need to do is press the button on top of his head. One you’ve pressed this button, your chimp’s eyes will turn violet/purple, thus indicating that he’s ready to accept a voice command. In this mode, there are 10 command options that you may choose among. These are as follows: “Go Bananas!,” “Stand up!,” “Sit Down!,” “Do a Trick!,” “Follow me!,” “Let’s Dance!,” “Guard me!,” “How are you?,” “Chimp Talk!,” and “Flip!” You will see most of these demonstrated in the brief video review below, and I have to say that I was very impressed at how well Zoomer Chimp understands these verbal orders. By comparison, I have often had to repeat myself when giving verbal commands to the various Meccano Meccanoid robots that I have reviewed. This chimp, however, never forced me to repeat myself once. He always understood me, kooky accent and all, on the very first try. Most impressive! By the way, the on/off switch on Zoomer Chimp’s back has 2 different “on” settings—one for interacting with him in English, and the other for doing so in French. For those with a preference for some other language, you are sadly out of luck. I guess Zoomer Chimp is a Canadian!
One last thing I quickly wanted to mention was the quality of Zoomer Chimp’s packaging. In addition to the cool jungle pattern on the inside of the box, there’s also a neat banana shaped handle (for carrying the box around) and a very nice monkey face hologram sticker on the front of the box’s outer window bubble. This hologram changes through the various facial expressions as you move it around and view it from different angles. I thought that this was a very neat little touch, and I demo how it works in my video review. A still photograph is shown in the image gallery below. Also shown below is Zoomer Chimp’s USB charging cord and the English version of a special cheat sheet that comes with your chimp to help get you started with key information such as the meaning of his various eye colours and the complete list of usable voice commands.
Examining the Video Evidence
Please take a few minutes to enjoy my brief video review/demonstration of Zoomer Chimp in action. It will give you a pretty good idea of what this little guy can do:
Final Thoughts
So there you have it, the Zoomer Chimp Interactive Robotic Chimpanzee! I can definitely give this guy a recommendation if you enjoy easy to use toys with numerous fun features. I didn’t really get to the point where I was unlocking new tricks through the progressive play feature, but in many ways I think that could be the most exciting aspect of this fun little monkey. After all, as new features are unlocked from time to time, it’s sure to keep Zoomer Chimp fresh and exciting for considerably longer than many other toys. One note of warning, however, is that this chimp does do an awful lot of fairly annoying screeching (various monkey sounds), and those sounds do have the potential to drive one absolutely crazy!! If you’re thinking of buying this for your child, you might want to make sure that they always play with it in a room that you’re *not* in. It’s only for your own sanity’s sake that I mention this. If you can handle some kooky monkey noises, this is a really fun toy!
Gallery of Additional Photos
