My Honest Pomsies Snowball Review! Best Affordable Interactive Plush Toy for 2018

It is the big day! I finally received my Pomsie Snowball last week from Amazon, and I uploaded my unboxing and video review on Youtube yesterday.

Since a day has passed, it is time for my honest review of this much anticpated interactive plush toy for 2018.

You can check out my Pomsies Guide here.

First, my Youtube video:

As you can see in the video, Pomsies Snowball arrived in a bubble-wrap envelope, that was thankfully easy to open. The plastic packaging was the typical sort for these toys, and scissors opened it easily. I was able to disentangle Snowball from the thin cardboard by snipping 6 plastic ties on either side of her and pinning down her tail.

She comes equipped with her own single triple AAA battery, but I kept my own on hand. An orange tab in the toys’s battery pack can be pulled to enable the toy to start.

The toy is turned on by pressing down on the pink nose for 1 second. She immediately awakens and her eyes shine at least 3 different colors. She has a greeting which sounds to my poor ears as “Let’s play!” I will say one of my criticisms of this toy, and it may reflect personally on my hearing, is that some of what she says is unintelligble.

However, that doesn’t really matter too much, since most of what she says is simple enough to understand with context, and the instructions supplied by the manufacturer.

Pomsies Snowball with teal eyes indicating a content or happy mood. I love her soft teal and white color.

According to said instructions, she has three areas that are touch sensitive, not including the nose. These are: 1) just behind the back of the head, but up towards the crown 2) the forehead, and 3) just under the pink nose [essentially the “mouth”]. When the Pomsie is first turned on, it is in “Pet Mode” by default and responds to touch in these different areas.

Touching these areas will stimulate her to change eye colors, or satisfy her simple needs. For example, if her eyes turn yellow, she wants to be fed–stroke her “mouth”, and her eyes will return to their normal teal color.

And speaking of eye color, there are 5 basic lights. When turned off, the eyes are clear/white. When turned on, the default color of contentment is teal. Hunger is yellow. If her eyes turn green, she has the hiccups, but I never was able to get Snowball to have hiccups. She only gets this when overfed, and it is possible I have not fed her enough.

Yellow eyes indicate hunger. Put finger on mouth to “feed”.

Pink eyes are a sign of “silliness”. If tickled, she will return to normal.

Blue eyes are a sign of illness, and she can cough, sneeze, and shiver. Mine has not coughed or sneezed yet, but she has shivered. If you hold her tight, she rapidly goes back to teal eyes.

One of the main selling points of this interactive plushie is the fact that Pomsies act as a toy that encourages children to exercise.

This exercise mode is the “dance mode” and holding down the pink nose for 1 second (after having been turned on) activates the dance mode. The Pomsies will play a tune consisting of a “Meow, meow, meow” tune, that encourages the child (or yourself, heh) to dance or shake the Pomsie vigorously. After a few seconds, the Pomsie’s eyes will glow red and she will emit a whistle encourage the child to freeze. She will then start up again with yellow eyes. The music will play an accelerated tune to encourage faster movement. Her eyes will also show rainbow colors, cycling through all the eye colors of teal, yellow, red, green, blue.

According to the pamphlet provided, Pomsies make up to 50 sounds, and I have yet to find all of them. Apparently different combinations of touching, tickling, shaking, etc will eventually bring out these hidden sounds.

Snowball at rest

Now for the Pros and Cons of Pomsies

Pros

1. Affordable. Really affordable. For under $15.00 this little toy does quite a bit to entertain children, and to get them to exercise.
2. Wide variety of colors and Wal-mart exclusives that make them fun to collect. I love Snowball, but even I want the unicorn Luna.
3. It comes with the requisite toy plastic brush, but it’s not really needed as the hair is not to long, nor difficult to clean.
4. Seems pretty safe–battery case is on the back, and screwed in, so children won’t accidentally get out the battery on their own.
5. Goes into sleep mode fairly quickly when left alone — it seems about 10 to 15 seconds.
6. Won’t accidentally come on by itself to terrify everyone at night. Once you’ve turned the toy off by pressing down on the nose for 3 seconds, it’s off. But even if you don’t do that, the toy pretty much just shuts off.
7. Wire tail is limited for wrapping around things too tightly, but it makes a convenient handle to swing or hold the toy.
8. Encourages exercise. Heck, it got me to moving!

Cons

1. Not easy for me to understand what this toy is actually saying. Again, it doesn’t mean it’s too hard to understand the toy’s requests, I just can’t always tell whether a given sound is snoring at first, or whether a certain happy warble is actual words or nonsense.
2. I personally find the voice to be high pitched and annoying, though in all fairness, the Pomsies are far from unique in this when compared other toys. It seems to be a given, that all children’s talking toys MUST be given a squeaky  Teletubby voice. Supposedly children like this, but when I was a kid I actually hated it, and I hate it now. But perhaps other children like it just fine, and if they do, good for them, this toy is meant for them anyways.
3. At times the mood changes of the Pomsies are almost TOO fast. It’s a minor quibble, but I would like it if the shivering, purring, etc ran for about 3 seconds, not a nanosecond.
4. Now this might be a rather odd “con”, but my mother watched me play with this toy in dance mode, and said, “Isn’t that a bit of a dangerous message for very young children to encourage them to shake a stuffed animal for fun? Couldn’t that mistakenly teach a 4 year old to shake their little baby sister or brother for fun?” Now I don’t know how seriously to take that one, I would think a young child would understand the difference between a toy and a baby, but if you feel it is a concern, just remind the child that babies are never supposed to be shaken and a Pomsies is not a baby.

Over all, I am pretty satisfied with this toy. I feel it will one of the biggest toys for the 2018 holiday season in terms of price, variety, and the numerous features packed into one small soft and cute toy. If I could change one thing, it would probably be just the voice, which as I said earlier annoys me, but I guess we can’t expect children’s toys to have a voice like Alexa, calm and soothing. But again this is coming from the perspective of an adult.  Children will likely be delighted with this wearable toy, that is much softer and comforting to hold than Fingerlings or other similar plastic interactive toys.

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