The Mickey Mote showed up in my mailbox the other day and like most of you I had no idea what a Mickey Mote was. My kid, though, had some strange, deep instinctual understanding that this (THIS!) was a thing for him. And indeed it was.
The Mickey Mote from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment is a stripped-to-the-basics remote control in a very familiar mouse shape. Kids in the 2-5 age range use the remote to interact with any Disney Preschool DVD that includes Discovery Mode, the interactive “Watch & Play†feature on the DVD.
Our sample came with a Handy Manny DVD which, when switched to Discovery Mode, allowed the kid to play with the television. It transformed a serious case of couch potato to a much more involved version. He loved it. He quickly figured out the technology and immediately grew power hungry and tried using the technology on CNN, to no avail, but much amusement. Darn, Wolf Blitzer! He would have played with it for hours if I had let him.
The only issue with the Mickey Mote is that it required *gulp* parental set up. While the instructions made it seem simple enough, I ran into a few hiccups. The main problem was that the menu never popped up so that I could select the Discovery Mode, which is required to use the Mickey Mote.
After a few hair pulling moments with the kid frantically pushing buttons to “help”, I finally realized that if I pushed the menu button and got to the root menu, the Discovery Mode would magically appear despite not having been there before. Once I realized the issue, it was simple enough, but it required me to think and what busy parent has time for that? Granted not everyone is as much of a luddite as me.
The Mickey Mote is definitely the wave of the future. It gets kids to think and interact with the television set and their favorite Disney characters in a much more effective way than the shouting at the television set of yore. If you need to park your kid in front of the television set so you can, say, shower or clean something, the Mickey Mote is a great way to make the time more involved. There is no doubt that this will be a hot seller during the holidays.
Here’s the Mickey Mote control in action. Pretty cool!
The Mickey Mote will hit store shelves on November 16th packed with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey’s Number Roundup and Handy Manny: Big Construction Job. It is also available online at Amazon for $23.99:
