When I was a child, I absolutely loved stuffed animals; I had such a massive collection residing on my bed that they threatened to push me off should I stretch out or roll over in the middle of the night. One of my fondest wishes at that time was that some of my favorite stuffed animals could be more life-like and animated. Granted, this was in the 70s, and the closest things we had to robotic toys back then were those obnoxious stuffed dogs that came with a wired battery pack so that they could walk a few steps, bark, and then walk a bit more. These toys certainly weren’t huggable, you wouldn’t want to sleep with them, and once the initial trill of watching them do their “thing” wore off, they would invariably wind up in the bottom of a little girl’s toy bin.

Fast forward thirty plus years (ack! did I just admit that?) and we find that little girls still love their stuffed animals, they still hug on them and sleep with, and they still long for a more realistic “pet” experience. Gone are the wired yap-dogs, and in their place we now have much more life-like and animated animals such as those in the new WowWee Alive series.

I was sent their Lion Cub, and from the minute I opened the outer box, I knew exactly who I would employ as its primary “testers”. My boyfriend has two daughters, ages 5 and 9, and they both love stuffed animal; their beds bear silent testament to this fact. Would this particular toy get any type of special treatment once they had discovered its capabilities? Or would it end up in the bottom of their toy bin like the yap-dogs of yesteryear? There was only one way to find out…

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