Zhu Zhu Pets Review

I must admit until recently I had not heard of Zhu Zhu Pets. They are part of the latest animal loving craze and are a hamster pet toy made by Spin Master. 

If your child is an animal lover then they are sure to like this toy. They are totally cute just like real hamsters but they also have the added bonus of being colourful and quirky with little characters. 

Zhu Zhu pets also have their own little play areas and adventures with hamster balls, and hamster wheels. 

We were sent a Zhu Zhu Pet called Mr Squiggles. Along with him we were sent a Hamster Ball and a Hamster House play Set. 

Lets start by introducing you to our first Zhu Zhu pet Mr Squiggles! I love everything about this cute little hamster. He is bright orange with a friendly face and a furry tuff of hair on the top of his head. He also comes with a gold belt that you place on his waist. (Or at least I think it is meant to be a belt)

Lily is super pleased with him and thinks he is "SO CUTE". 

So we have established that the Zhu Zhu pets are cute and cuddly. But what else do they do? Quite a lot actually. 

Each Zhu Zhu Pet has buttons you press. One on its head and one on its back. It also has a sensor on its nose. 

The pet has 4 modes of operation. Explore Mode, Nurture Mode, Dance Mode and Sleep Mode. For explore mode you press its back once. This then starts your hamster adventuring. On a flat surface it will move around the floor making sounds as it does. It's sensor means that when it bumps into something it will automatically move backwards and change direction. 

For Nurture mode you need to press the back of the head. This way you can give your pet attention without it running away from you. In this mode it makes all sorts of cute noises. While in this mode you can tap its nose which holds the sensor and then you can feed it. It will make eating noises when you do this. 

You may then want to make your pet do a special secret trick which is dance. To enter this mode you press its back for 3 seconds. The hamster starts to dance and sing for a few short moments and then will go back into explore mode. 

If you want to turn the hamster off, which seems to be something I struggle to do when Lily is in bed and I want to keep the thing quiet. Then you leave it be for four minutes and hope it doesn't make a sound. It did also seem to turn off by pressing the back button a few times and you would hear it make a sleeping sound but I could not find that in the instructions so not sure it is actually turned off at this point. 

When you have figured all the ways you can play with your Zhu Zhu pet. You can then introduce things like the hamster ball and play area to it. 

The hamster ball comes in 2 pieces and also has a base that you put the hamster on which keeps it more steady. The ball is a little tricky to get together and at times didn't feel like it was going to line up, but it did eventually go together. The hamster attaches to the base really easy, you pop your hamster in and its ready to go. You then need to press its back and pop down the lid for it to start moving around the house in its ball like a real hamster would. I did find at times it would walk around for ages and be exploring everywhere. But also at times it just seemed to stop before it even got going and I had to press its back again. 

For some reason Lily wasn't to keen on it in the ball. I think because she wanted to be able to hold and pick up the hamster. but her friend came round and played with it and she thought that the ball was brilliant. 

After playing with the ball we decided to get out the Hamster House Play set. This also came with a Zhu Zhu pet which was purple this time. When I took it all out of the box there was some assembling to do. Okay, ALOT of assembling to do. I started to do it while Lily played with her other Zhu Zhu pet. But I just about managed the round hamster house part when I gave up as I just couldn't work out what went where. I didn't find the instructions too clear for this. So I left it until later so my partner who is better at building could give it a go. He didn't find it easy, but he managed and we finally had our hamster house with ramps and slide.

The set comes with stickers so your child can decorate the house themselves. Lily loved doing this part. It was now time to play with it and Lily couldn't wait.

We placed one hamster in the house, and pressed its back. It started to run in circles and then headed up the ramp. A few times the hamster seemed to get stuck in the ramp and would only go up so far and then go back down. But also a few times it did make it up and scurried down the blue slide and started to run around the carpet. Lily helped the hamster move when it was stuck and so it didn't seem to bother her. When trying to make the hamster go up the slide, sometimes it managed it with ease and sometimes its sensor would hit the side and it would back up instead of carrying on up it.

The round part of the house has little doors, you could either have them open or block them so your hamsters stays inside the house.

Overall Lily has really enjoyed this toy and it has been great to play with. It does have a few things that kept going wrong,like the hamspers getting stuck and Lily kept breaking the ramp as she pushed the pink roofs closed but luckily that wasn't too tricky to fix for her. 

This is the perfect toy to buy if your child is really wanting a pet but your unable to get one. It does lots that a real hamster does and more, and you don't have to clean up after this one. 

The Zhu Zhu Pets are £12.99 each and can be bought at shops such as Toys R Us, and Smyths Toy Store. You can also buy the Adventure Ball which is also £12.99 and the House at £29.99. 

Does your child love animals? Would they love this toy?