Playmobil: The Secret of Pirate Island

Summary: This DVD surpisingly turned out to be one of the best buys. It's lots of fun, for all the whole family. Our 5yo is singing,... something he didn't like doing before, and he's learning a lot of new words and even to our suprise using these new words in the right context at several other moments during the day or in the week. Which at times gives us a lot of laughs, since they will come out so totaly unexpected,.. you can't help to burst into laughs. This DVD is his current favorite. And we suspect it's going to be for a long time. So yes, at first, the animations do seem to lack some detail, and it does look a bit too simplistic, especially at the beginning, but in the end, all that doesn't really matter, you won't even notice it anymore, and it's lots of fun for the kids and the whole family. If at 1st you don't like this DVD, give it a 2nd chance. Let the kids decide wheter is't good or not. The kids age probaby is also a big factor. Our son is 5, he loves it, and is learning from it. He doesn't care for the less detailed animations at times during the movie. I'm not sure how 7 or 8 year olds will like it. Probably a bit, or a lot less, then 4, 5 and 6 year olds. But our 10 year old daughter also enjoyed it. And now for our experience: Bought this movie for our 5yo because he was showing interest in pirates everytime he saw a toy pirate ad on tv (or any ad with a pirate in it). So I wanted to suprise him. At 1st I Wasn't quite sure because the pictures seemed a bit simple. We don't have any playmobil toys, for the same reason. They seem a bit (too?) 'simple', so we never bother to get him playmobil. But I decided to take a risk and get him this DVD. Simply because I wanted him to experience other toys, and dvd's then, trains, cars, caterpillars, ect. Well, ... the 1st time I put the DVD and start watching the movie with our 5yo,... I was immediately concerned that that this was not such a good buy. I found the animations simple, especially at the beginning of the movie thankfully it gets a bit better after a while, but still to me it seemd just too 'simple'. The animations looked sketchy (?), blocky (?), basic primary colors,... I'm not sure how to describe it, but to me at 1st glance all seemed just too simple, and missing some or a lot of details. Our 5yo was watching it quietly, and wasn't really reacting to it. But he was watching it. I shooked my head, and went to do other stuff left him watching the movie. I was thinking, this one is probably going to end up in the drawer to never come out again! He'd probably go back to his favorite old time Thomas the engine DVD. Thomas & Friends: Thomas' Trusty Friends or he'll get a new favorite in the new Thomas Hero dvd Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails we got him together with this pirate one. To my surprise, after a day or three, I caught him singing tunes, I wasn't familiar with. Also he seemed to have a new "lines",... like "show's over", "you're getting sleepy", "after them", things on bones and skeletons??? and several others. After checking with mom and our daughters I came to learn that he has been watching this DVD constantly!!! So I watched the DVD with him during the next wk-end from start to end. I realized that after the 1st 15 minutes it gets much better and interesting. I still find the animations, simple at certain times, as mentioned before, especially at the beginning, but my 5yo seems completely unawarre of this, it doesn't bother him. And I got caught in the story and the songs, he wants me/us to sing with him. So it turned out to be a lot of fun for the whole family afterall. It has been four weeks now, and this is the only DVD he wants to watch. He's only now starting to experiment with the interactive option, which gives severel other scenes, which is also great, and a smart idea of playmobil. He's also experiemtning with the langauge option, he's putting on French, and surprisingly loves the songs in french! Really cool! He likes this DVD so much, we are considering getting him one of the playmobil playsets Playmobil Large Pirate Ship or Playmobil Red Corsair (which is why palymobil made this DVD in the 1st place, very smart of them, but I'm happy they did). I'm also considering the Matchbox Mega Rig Pirates Ship (Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging) . Update (11-apr-2010): Guess what. Just after I finished writing this review, our 5yo ask to watch Cars (Pixar Disney) and after that Madagascar. These are two of his old time favorites (another favorite is Thomas). Ha, so he is still interested in his 'old' favorites. So maybe the craze for watching only pirates and skeletons, is abit over. But it's clear this Pirate DVD has become part of his favorite selection.

Bought this back in 2010 but reviewing in 2011. This was a HUGE hit with my 2 youngest kids and up until recently, they watched this repeatedly. It was more entertaining than educational. They loved the choices that came up and understood how it changed the story. Also, they would watch repeatedly just so they could make different choices and have a different movie each time. As parents, we thought that was pretty clever although we did have to show them how to use the remote to make the different choices, which at first they didn't understand but once they got the concept, it was a whole new world to them.

My son is nearly four years old and is obsessed with all things pirates. Although he has watched Pirates of the Caribbean and really enjoyed it (to my surprise as I thought it would scare him), I was looking for something a little more age appropriate to help support his interest in pirates. This DVD is perfect - the feature movie is about 50 minutes long, is full of catchy songs and its graphics include gentler looking pirates and skeletons to not frighten young ones. Another great feature is the interactive version of the movie, which reminds me of the "pick your path" story books of my childhood. But no worries for busy parents, the DVD will automatically default to one of the two choices at any of the plot "intersections" in about 20 seconds. And of course, all of the characters do look like the actual Playmobil toys, which is a nice tie in to the product line which I believe helps to encourage imaginative play and story telling.

We liked this film when it first came out, ages ago. This is a fun film for family viewing. I wish that they had made some more. The songs are silly, but the kids enjoy them, and that is what matters. We really enjoy Playmobil toys, and it was fun to see all Playmobil items in the scenes, that was interesting.

This video is cute and fun for kids and adults. The kids loved the interactive choices, and I loved seeing the toys I used to play with come to life. There are several really funny parts that made us laugh out loud, and a really funny scene with a dancing octopus (my favorite part!) My kids watched it 3 times the first day, making different choices each time for a different story. A silly rock band appears and sings songs throughout. Cute sing-along option too. Highly recommended!!

I had higher expectations for this - the age range of children that play with playmobiles will likely not understand some of the jokes or even discussion threads that are scattered throughout the movie. We found the "choose your adventure" mode to be annoying. The quality of animation is good, and the entertainment value was had, to a degree, but it's not very high in the rotation.

I like how I got to choose how to play the movie

Awesome video for the price! My 6-yr. old LOVES this because he can watch the movie, or use the interactive movie version, so throughout parts of the movie he can choose which scenario to do. I highly recommend this video. There's also a pirate sing-a-long included.