So I bought this singing bear toy to get my child to sleep.

The box says it has features. Like features.

This bear can read a story, sing a song, play “nature sounds” (which include white noise) and do a mixture of singing a song with nature sounds in the background. Honestly? I have it standing on the table beside me, playing songs as I write this and I’m feeling my eyelids getting heavy.

It’s impressive. Now that I’ve sorted out how to make it work.

UPDATE 2022: there are two possible issues. The first is dead batteries. Assuming your bear doesn’t need new batteries, read on for the second issue…

When I first read it, I couldn’t find anything in the instruction manual telling me how to get this beautiful Starlight Sounds Polar Bear to work properly. That’s because it’s a stupid, tiny note on the very last page of a double-sided instruction manual which naturally opened onto the reverse side (and it wasn’t clear it was all a 100% English manual with double-sided instructions).

It makes me sad that parents around the world will be returning this toy to the shop with disappointed children because of a big oversight in the layout of the instructions. The “note” at the very bottom of page 7 should have been on the front page (the one with the picture of the bear).

Previously we had the Chad Valley singing jellyfish which does three songs, just the melodies, in midi tones, with no volume control. The top of the jellyfish lit up but didn’t project. It was ok until our baby hit about 5 months then it stopped captivating him. The Starlight Sounds Polar Bear projects color-changing stars onto the ceiling and there are three different lighting modes.

It’s everything I hoped it would be.

But it almost wasn’t.

See, when we got the bear it would only play for about 30 seconds then it turned itself off. I followed the troubleshooting instructions in the manual which said to remove the batteries for a few minutes then replace them to solve any issues. Two new sets of batteries later, this bedtime bear still didn’t work properly.

We missed the window to get my toddler to sleep in his bed tonight and my husband took him out in the pushchair.

It’s been 8 months since we were last able to settle our baby in his bed instead of the pushchair (ever since the day we moved to our new home in Ireland) and I was so hopeful that the Starlight Sounds Polar Bear would change that.

I knew from the Little Baby Bum Singing Storybook that sometimes, toys have a “demo mode” so they can give a quick demonstration in the shop. I wondered if the polar bear was stuck on demo mode, but the instructions and box didn’t say anything about that. And I couldn’t find a switch anywhere. I’d even had the batteries out, as mentioned.

I was getting really disheartened and worried that I was going to have to return the toy and buy a different one (I’d had my eye on the Chicco one when I found the Vtech Starlight Sounds Polar Bear in Home Bargains in Derry yesterday; I paid £24.99 for it).

Then I found it. The reason the bear wasn’t working properly. The thing that was making the Starlight Sounds Polar Bear switch off every 30 seconds.

The polar bear has white legs. Next to one back leg, there’s something that looks like a white label. Neither my husband nor I saw this while looking for a way to make the polar bear work better. Look carefully at the photos (I’ve made it easy by circling the label in red):

It’s not a label. It’s the tab that keeps the bear on demo mode. Pull the tab out and discard. Your bear should work now. You might still need to do a hard reset by following the troubleshooting instructions (switch off, remove the batteries for several mins, replace batteries, switch on).

As you can see in my second photo, there’s writing on the tab that says “please remove this strip”. Unfortunately, because of the way these bears are packaged, the tab gets folded so you don’t see that side at all until you are already looking for a tab to pull out.

If they’d inserted the tabs the other way around, or folded the tab in the other direction, it would have been a lot clearer, but with a white tab against white bear legs, it just wasn’t obvious at all that there was a pull tab to take this toy out of demo mode. I felt so silly when I got to the bottom of it, but at the same time, it seriously wasn’t obvious.

The only other issue I’ve had with this polar bear is that I tested the “sound-activated” aspect (when your baby cries for more than 4 seconds, it should light up and play soothing sounds). I varied my cry patterns, loudness and pitch, but it’s not turning itself back on for me. I would want to see this in action with a baby before saying that feature isn’t working on my model, because it might be attuned only to baby voices e.g. to filter out adult conversation or TV voices so it’s not constantly getting activated by the wrong things? I’m not sure.

The voices on the singing feature are good, and Vtech have chosen a strong selection of songs and nursery rhymes to get a baby to sleep. There is a playlist in the instruction manual. The sounds and music are good, too.

There is variation between the UK/Ireland version (where the product is called the “Little Friendlies Starlight Sounds Polar Bear”) and the US version (where the product is called the “Li’l Critters Soothing Starlight Polar Bear) and, like the Toot Toot Cory Carson car range (aka Go! Go! Cory Carson in the US), they have re-recorded the voicing to make it sound a little bit more local.

The volume control is also excellent, and you can make it louder if your baby is trying to sleep in a bigger room (or to make the toy heard over a car engine, for example) or you can make it quieter if your baby is in a smaller room or if you live in the country where the nights are quiet. Except for all those animal noises.

The toy itself doesn’t look very cuddly and I didn’t think it would get a lot of mileage as a soft toy, but my little one doesn’t like cuddly toys anyway. He likes things that light up and make noises. So this was an instant winner.

Now that I know what went wrong with using this as a bedtime sleeping aid tonight, I feel more confident about trying again with it tomorrow night and seeing if we can build a habit of little Jellyfish finally going back to sleep in his own bed.

You can buy the Little Friendlies Starlight Sounds Polar Bear on UK Amazon. This currently says dispatch time to Ireland and Northern Ireland (I tried both my addresses) is 1-2 months (seriously??) so I’d recommend getting it from Home Bargains instead.

Buy the Li’l Critters Soothing Starlight Polar Bear on US Amazon.