The cube with two ears is a popular toy for children aged three and over. But the Toniebox in the author’s household has already suffered greatly. The washable fabric cover looks pretty worn out. The stage for the two dozen or so Tonies has at least a crack. But that also means: The mustard green music box is without a doubt one of the top 3 toys in the household.
Mufasa, the Lion King, Leo Lausemaus, Wickie, the Viking boy, the dream magic tree, Dr. Brumm, the little dragon Coconut, Obelix, the owl with the bump, Marshall, the fire dog, sloth Mo – the beloved cube for on the go and at home has them all. Some stories the whole family can share from the first to the last second. With a few exceptions, Tonie has consistently relied on children’s book and TV stars for his characters. That should change now.
Clever Tonies are the new additions that not only entertain curious kids, but also explain the world to them in an age-appropriate way. To do this, Tonie brought the Geolino brand on board. Our author listened to the new Geolino mini Clever Tonies with his children.
The Geolino Clever Tonies are only available as a set of 4. They are in a simple cardboard template. There is also a small fold-out flyer with some safety instructions. At first glance, the Tonies are reminiscent of small robots with a display. They are 4.5 centimeters wide, about 5.5 centimeters high and weigh 21 grams. Clever: The designers gave the minis the typical Toniebox ears in micro format. The “displays” each show a collage with a printed motif on the four different theme worlds that the little listeners can immerse themselves in. The four travel-loving protagonists also got a prominent place.
And these are the topics of the four radio plays in the Geolino Mini Clever Tonies Set:
Total length of the four adventures: approximately 194 minutes
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Each of the four knowledge adventures begins at the pond behind a hill. Ralph Caspers lies there on his favorite meadow and greets listeners young and old. Caspers is, among other things, a television presenter and is best known from TV formats such as “Ask the Mouse”. But the stars of the stories are different: In addition to George the grasshopper, Belle the dragonfly and the clumsy dung beetle Mo explore space, the Arctic, volcanoes and the world’s oceans. And when the 18-legged trio reaches its limits, Ralph feeds the Geolino computer, which answers the questions at lightning speed. And the clever knowledge machine can do something else: It teleports the three insect friends at lightning speed to places where they can see with their own eyes what nature is capable of. They take a trip to the International Space Station ISS, marvel at the volcanoes of Iceland, accompany an impressive humpback whale in a self-built insect submarine and break the ice at the South Pole with the research ship “Polarstern”. There, among other things, they ponder why polar bears don’t eat penguins.
On their travels, Georg, Belle and Mo talk to researchers and experts who talk about their scientific background and report on their work. Once all the important questions have been answered, the three curious little ones return to the pond behind the hill, where Ralph and their insect friends are waiting eagerly with cherry stone cake and star-shaped cookies.
The author’s two 5 and 8 year old boys acted as test pilots for the Geolino Mini Clever Tonies as a set of 4. All Clever Tonies first had to be registered and synchronized. To do this, you connect the Toniebox to your home WiFi, press one of the ears for a few seconds and wait until the blue LED on the top of the box turns green again. This worked reliably as usual.
The Clever Tonies landed on the box in the order volcanoes, stars, planets, arctic, antarctic, seas, oceans. The five-year-old’s first serious feedback: “Dad, Mo the dung beetle dreams of a golden ball of dung in the sky and is sitting on a steaming pile of dung in the desert.” You can hardly introduce yourself to the topic of volcanoes in a more imaginative way. The clear favorite during the test week was another Tonie mini robot. Georg and his friends traveled into space about a dozen times, landed spectacularly on the moon, studied the planets of our solar system and learned the most important constellations by heart. How much of it stuck in the junior’s head? It’s hard to say, because he was usually busy with other “important” things at the same time.
His big brother listened to the stories with a little more focus. He was particularly impressed by the difficult-to-imagine dimensions described in the planetary radio play. The second grader was amazed that the earth fits more than a million times into the sun and has temperatures of up to 15 million degrees Celsius inside.
The idea of developing knowledge radio plays for the Toniebox is great, and the makers have implemented it almost perfectly with the Geolino Mini Clever Tonies. The topics are cleverly chosen and the common thread within the adventures is imaginative and coherent. The stories are varied, which is very important given the often short attention span of the target group. For elementary school students interested in science, the new Clever Tonies are an exciting addition to lessons or books. We think it is at least ambitious to recommend the radio plays for children aged five and over. Parents should be prepared for probing questions from curious kids.
At least one adult in the test household noticed that the original sounds of the scientists and experts, with one prominent exception, were dubbed over by professional speakers. We would have found the original voices more authentic. In total, little researchers get more than three hours of knowledge about space, volcanoes, the Arctic and the world’s oceans packed into funny stories. The RRP of the set of 4 produced by cbj Audio is a fair 29.99 euros.
Transparency note: The test set was provided to stern as a free review copy. The brands stern and Geolino are part of RTL Deutschland.
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