As my son’s first birthday was approaching my brother asked what would be a good gift. Since my son was getting into drumming, using pots and pans and wooden spoons creating a very organic sound, I suggested that a drum would be a good gift or something that involved drumming. It is funny how sometimes two people have two completely perceptions of what something is. I was thinking of something simple like the standard toddler drum kit you see or even a xylophone but clearly my son’s uncle had a completely different interpretation of what would be a good drum for a one year old.
So the day of my son’s birthday party he received the Fisher Price Lil’ Music Makers 2-in-1 Drum to Conga from his uncle. Right away I noticed that it was battery powered, meaning that the sound was not going to be an organic one. My son loved the 2-in-1 Drum to Conga right away and continues to enjoy it although we had to change the batteries after about four months.
The 2-in-1 Drum to Conga has a drum feature and a conga feature, that you can switch with the sliding of a button. In both the conga mode and drum mode you have the option of playing 3 different songs. The toy has four different buttons that you can push to either hear a full song, hear a song with background music and when your child plays you hear the main part, hear your child play a song without the background music or allow the drum to not play a specific song and allow your child to drum freestyle. With all of these options my son loves this toy, especially playing the full song setting over and over again.
The downside to this toy, beside the fact that it eats batteries, is that it is really loud and doesn’t have a volume or an off switch. Also the drum sticks are attached to the drum by really short strings and there isn’t a lot of give on them making it a bit difficult to drum.
Although it isn’t my favorite toy my son does enjoy it and so I hear it everyday, although not as much as when it was new. My son went through a phase where he would play the little tunes over and over again, he is a huge of fan of music though. The irony is that when Christmas time rolled around that same uncle gave my son a drum that didn’t require any batteries.
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