Short Take: Baby Alive

I have a 4-year-old daughter and she likes to watch Dora the Explorer. It seems for a while every commercial between Dora was for Baby Alive. All I heard was that she wanted the baby that pee pees and poo poos. So I did what any dad who does product reviews would do -- I called up Hasbro and had a sample sent. My daughter was a little upset that the only Caucasian baby was a blonde, she wanted one with dark hair like her. Still she was literally beside herself with excitement over Baby Alive.

The key to this doll is that you can mix real food and feed the baby along with water she drinks. The stuff literally goes right through the baby and is deposited in the diaper. Feeding the baby is much like feeding a real tot, which is to say food gets everywhere. The Baby Alive had it on her face, her shirt, her diaper and my daughter was coated in a healthy dose as well.

Still she had great fun and changed about 100 diapers. This is one of the catches of the doll. The food doesn’t last long and it only ships with two diapers. You will need more diapers within an hour. The little diapers are designed specifically for the baby and they cost about the same as diapers for a real baby. We ended up getting some newborn diapers from a friend whose baby had outgrown them. They are a bit large, but my daughter is absolutely ecstatic that her baby wears real baby diapers.

There are a few things you have to be aware of with Baby Alive. Namely, you have to give it water after each bite of food to get the food to go down. After a feeding, you have to flush the system with a full two-ounce bottle of water or the insides of the doll will get moldy. If your daughter is like mine, after a while she is ready to play something else, which often leaves mom and dad to do the cleanup. Still my little girl loves Baby Alive and has lots of fun playing with the doll.

Verdict: Baby Alive is very fun for little girls and is very messy. Did I mention it's messy?

Buy your Baby Alive here.

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