Setup and Use
The gray hamster named Num Nums works just like Chunk that I reviewed before. I did run into a few issues with Num Nums that Chunk didn't have. Namely, the rear button on Num Nums broke and wouldn’t activate the mouse. You could only get him to make noises and he wouldn't run around.

I was able to fix Num Nums by removing the motor section and taking out the two screws that hold the battery compartment inside the hamster. The button had come out of its little recessed hole. After I aligned the button cover and snapped it back in place, all was well with Num Nums again. Having to perform minor hamster surgery did give me a chance to see what was inside the hamsters; check out the photos to see what its innards looks like.

Other than the issue with the button, Num Nums works well. There are two buttons, the front button stops the hamster from running around when pressed and makes hamster sounds. The rear button makes the hamster run around. Interestingly, the Num Nums Zhu Zhu Pet Hamster is much more active and will wander off further than all the other hamsters I have. Num Nums doesn’t stop and turn as much, which makes me wonder if it may be programmed differently than the others. Num Nums always ends up lost and my daughter has to search him out. He gets grounded a lot as a result. Overall Num Nums is a fun little hamster and one of the more realistic looking ones of the four I have to test.

I am also looking at the Garage and Car accessory for the hamster habitat. The garage was a bit challenging to build. The bottom section of the garage on my test unit bends in which meant getting the top to snap securely onto the bottom and keep the doors in place was challenging. The good news is that snapping the top and bottom together are all you need to do.

The big problem, I have with the car is that the hamsters rarely ever get into the car correctly when they run into the garage. The hamsters seem to lack the power to make it over the small lip from the garage floor to the car. The hamsters will usually move the car out of the garage, but they can't get inside the car enough to be able to move the car in different directions or in reverse. The hamsters end up falling out of the car and scurrying off on their own.

Needless to say, that makes the garage very frustrating. You can physically put the hamsters into the car and they will stay for the most part, but they still disconnect from the car with more regularity than my daughter can stand. Having the hamster load into the car and just work like they do on the commercial is a bigger challenge than I had expected honestly. Still, my daughter plays with the car and it is one of her favorite parts of the hamster habitat so I won’t totally write the car off.

Please Note: Tips on where to Buy Zhu Zhu Pets can be found in our Zhu Zhu Pets Shopping Guide.