THe toniebox
This Screen-Free Audio Device Is a Wonderful Travel or Independent Play Time Toy
We strongly recommend the Toniebox because it is the best screen-free yet technologically-advanced toy we have seen in years, and because the songs and stories it plays are sourced from everything from recent Disney hits to classic nursery rhymes. Both of our kids, ages 4.5 and 8, love the thing. Which is why it’s always in the car on trips.
Few and far between are those toys a kid will use year after year. Even fewer and farther between are toys kids with a 4.5 year age gap like ours do can both enjoy. And in the realm of extreme rarity exists a toy that will also be a pleasure for parents to have around. But that – all of that – is perfectly applicable to a Toniebox. Especially when we’re all sitting around in a tent before bedtime or in a car on a long road trip.
But before I get into the nuts and bolts here, I need to digress briefly, because frankly, calling the Toniebox a toy is too reductive. So, what is it?
A Toniebox is an audio device, and said audio can consist of professionally pre-recorded stories, songs, or nursery rhymes, and the box can also play original audio content you and your family create via its proprietary Creative Tonies.
It’s not some noisemaker, in other words, but is rather a deceptively high-tech device in the guise of an elegantly simple cube that’s operated, quite literally, by pinches, smacks, and setting a little character on the top. (That following setup that takes about five minutes and is the only time the device needs wi-fi – aside from that, Tonies pair when placed on the cube.) The point is, kids can operate it with great ease – I know because my daughter started using one when she was a young two.
And kids will continue to enjoy their Toniebox and all its many Tonies, the little characters that cue the music or songs, for years – I know that because my daughter is closing in on four and the Toniebox and multiple Tonies still come with us not only on long car rides or overnight trips, but they still often “travel” from room to room.
Another testament to the staying power of the Toniebox? Both of our kids love the thing, and as noted they are separated by 4.5 years. But it’s not just the ease of use that makes a Toniebox a kid favorite, it’s the Tonies themselves. The range of properties this company has managed to bring together is staggering. There are Tonies from Disney movies ranging from The Jungle Book to Toy Story to Moana. There are adaptations of classic books like Treasure Island (which, totally serious here, my three-year-old often listens to three times in one day – the whole 20-odd minute condensed tale on repeat) and many Peter Rabbit stories. There are Tonies for calming nighttime routines, Tonies for meditation, and on it goes.
Equal to the vast and growing catalog of material available for the Toniebox in explaining the allure here is the production value of each and every program they offer, if I can refer to the individual Tonies as programs. The movies use music, narration, dialogue, and sound effects to enrich the story telling, and, when applicable, audio clips from the program itself, such as sound effects and dialogue from a Pixar film – Woddy and Buzz arguing, e.g. When we listen to a Tonie of a show or movie we all know, the experience is captivating. When it’s a program we’ve never known before? Just the same.
If you can picture a bunch of kids sitting in a circle on the floor around the RCA as they enjoy a radio drama in the 1950s, the parents sitting a few feet behind on couches and armchairs but no less enrapt, you can picture the situation here.
The difference here is the amazing portability. A lightweight – and durable and soft-sided – Toniebox can be brought along in the car, safely left in kid’s bed, enjoyed in a tent or set up on a park bench or picnic blanket, or used really anywhere anyone wants to hear some great audio content.