Eric Carle’s Brown Bear Animal Parade
Lovely animation, but not much more
$1.99 Developer StoryToys, storytoys.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 6 or later
On opening this app, you’re presented with Eric Carle’s adorable bear looking out of his cave. Other than that, you’ve got a few trees behind, and a few tufts of grass in front.
What to do? Well, every one of our young testers asked that, then quickly stabbed away at the grassy clumps. On doing so, the bear ventures forth. Keep tapping the same clump of grass and a dragonfly or butterfly will appear; sometimes these appear within a golden circle. “What are you supposed to do with the golden circle?” we were asked. No idea. The golden circle doesn’t seem to hold any special power and may just be trying to indicate a firefly.
A few taps later and we get a bird in a tree and a gray circle. Tap the bird and it’s colored in. A musical note also appears and you get the musical sound for that animal. The gray triangle only seems to appear on the bird we play, and again we’re not sure what it’s supposed to indicate...
Anyway, the bird then follows the bear. Find a gray duck, color him in. The bird and the duck then follow the bear. Find a gray horse, color the horse… and so on. Each animal follows the bear in turn, and each has its own musical sound. Animals you encounter further along the route tend to do a bit more – the frog jumps over lily pads to cross a pond, a cat jumps into a basket from a tree branch and crouches as you color him in.
The finale brings all the animals together; tap them repeatedly for a musical collaboration and confetti falls. At this point, you can record your own sound for the animals. You’re prompted to do this on the first go; after that it took us a while to realize you need to press and hold the animal to record on subsequent plays. This is the standout feature, and our kids really enjoyed putting their own voices to the sequence.
the bottom line. A cute Eric Carle animation with an entertaining voice recording feature, but definitely for a very young audience – and the app could do more for its $1.99 asking price.