Since introducing their Go! Go! Smart Cars collection, VTECH has expanded the collection over the last two years to include animals and now, people! New for Spring the Go! Go! Smart Friends Busy Sounds Discovery Home is the perfect 1st playhouse for kids 1+. Like with the other Go! Go! Smart toys, the Discovery home comes with smart points – called Magic Points – that kids can place the characters on to have them interact with the house.
Out of the box, there are a lot of pieces included in the house but everything snaps together easily. You will need a screwdriver to remove a screw from the elevator, and to also attach the section that holds the slide and swing. But in total the set goes together in just 10 minutes.
Three floors high, the Go! Go! Smart Friends Busy Sounds Discovery Home offers a lot of playability for young kids. Inside the house there are 7 Magic points that play a couple sounds a song for each character that you place on them. The house comes with one character Nora, and a puppy, who is not electronically activated. In the living room Nora activates the fireplace when she sits in the chair.
The mail box lights up when she is at the front door, and the toilet flushes when she is in the bathroom. My favorite part of the house, however, is the elevator. It moves the friends between the second and third floor seamlessly as they say various phrases to help teach kids up and down.
Parents who want to expand the play for their kids can add additional characters($8.99 to $17.99), and playsets. Currently there are just 3 sets in this line, but VTECH will introduce a few more as we get closer to the holidays.
We picked up a couple extra friends for the house and loved that each character said something different when placed on the Magic Points. If you listen carefully, they do interact with each other and will sing together if they’re both on the music floor(2nd floor) at the same time.
Just like with the other Go! Go! collections, the Smart Friends set has track to create a path from the front door to the garden. If your kids have any of the previous sets they can connect as well to make a bigger play world. Outside the house there is a swing, slide, and bbq that flips between cooking and done each time you open the lid! 
This section flips in for easy storage and kids can carry the house with the attached handle on the top of the roof.
I really like all of the innovations that VTECH has packed into this house. They have done a great job of creating a toy that balances creative play with electronic play for little ones who are just learning! I also like that the friends shut off immediately when you pull them off the Magic Points. We’ve all had that toy we can’t turn off and I’m happy to say this one doesn’t do that.
