Elmo knows your (f***ing) name

Here's my whine, a day early.

Before Christmas I discovered a toy called Elmo Knows Your Name. Cool little bugger... you hook him up to your computer and you can program your kid's name, birthday, favorite color, etc. "Cool," I thought, "a toy for LM and a geek gadget for me all wrapped into one!"

Well, after 15 minutes of cutting tape, twist-ties, and plastic fasteners, and another 15 minutes of installing software, I was finally ready to download the customized settings to the doll. It got about 99% done and then said the download failed. I tried it out and it seemed to be working... it knew LM's name and that it was her birthday, so I wrapped it up for her to open. But when she opened it and tried it out, it played just a bit of Elmo's birthday song, went right into A-B-C, and then apparently hung and wouldn't play anything until the batteries were removed! We tried my wife's computer and she couldn't get the settings to download to the doll at all. So mommy headed off to the store to get a new doll.

So after more cutting and unpackaging (but luckily no reinstalling of software), I tried the download again, and once again it got about 99% done and then failed! This time it at least played the first two songs properly and started the third song, and then cycled through them again (with each press of Elmo's stomach), so we decided it was working well enough to at least give to Little Miss. But I want the stupid thing to work properly!

I went to Fisher Price's help website and went through the troubleshooting walk-thru, and all it says is that if you get an error and the doll doesn't work right, you have a defective doll! What kind of help is that? So today I called a live support tech and he made a few suggestions such as trying a different USB port, but nothing really concrete. I'll have to try a few things, including trying my wife's computer again, and then call tech support again while I have the doll hooked up if nothing else works. I just find it hard to believe that we could have gotten two defective dolls in a row. *sigh*

Serves me right for buying a toy that has to be set up using your computer.

*** UPDATE ***

Thanks SO MUCH to Mommygoth for mentioning the reviews on Amazon. After reading the reviews, I tried turning off my virus software and I was able to successfully download the settings to Elmo. Now that he works properly, he is pretty cool!