I was hesitant to get this for my daughter. She was 4 1/2 and I thought I should wait until she's in Kindergarten... WRONG! She wanted it so we got it and it is her FAVORITE! She has about 14 Leapster games and this one was BY FAR the one she plays with the most. And the best part is shes learning upper and lowercase letters and their sounds... its just such a great reinforcer to what she kind of knew already. Awesome.

My son received this on his 4th birthday, and plays this game the most of all 6 Leapster cartridges. He plays them games, repeats the words, and then he took it a step farther...He has a fridge phonics, lowercase letters, and a word whammer (that didn't get used until he got this game), and he is constantly going into the kitchen to spell the words that he learned from this game and then he writes them on a dry erase board. He does the same thing in the tub with foam letters and bath crayons.

It is a great game for pre-reading skills and makes learning to read basic words fun. He actually recognizes words from this game to words in all sorts of printed material.

As for the durability...my son accidently put it in the kitchen sink full of water. We let the game dry out for a few days, and when we put it in the leapster it still worked...no damage to the leapster nor the game.

We have purchased many of the Leap Frog videos, CDs, and Leapster cartridges. I have found them very beneficial in helping my daughter (2 1/2) learn her letter sounds and CVC words. I thought the Talking Word Factory would be very similar to the Talking Letter Factory, but was disappointed. While she can watch the video (we have the video that corresponds to the game) on the Leapster, the games to reinforce the making of words are not very beneficial. The games for the Talking Letters Factory were great and I believe really helped her. It is nice to be able to have an educational "game" to take along, rather than just watching movies on the ipod. I would recommend the cartridge for viewing, but don't expect too much if you are hoping that this will teach your child how to make words.

I bought this and another new cartridge for a long plane trip. My almost 4 year old played this one over and over and over again. She LOVES it. She played it all the way across the country, most of the week while we traveled, and all the way back. And she's still playing it. HINT: I only allow the Leapster for travel, never in the house. It's the one toy that she never tires of after over a year.

And it is hard to hold his attention. But he loves this cartridge. he will watch it for 45 minutes straight. That, to me is amazing.