Hippo Magic Reviews

This is the coolest thing! I got HippoMagic , scanned the cover and bam Goldilocks and The Velveteen Rabbit pop out of the cover...THEN they tell me to open the book and keep going on the adventure and nothing else happens. I hold the phone over the marked augmented pages and nothing happens (full page in view). I click the camera and video icons and it just saves videos and pictures of the flat hook page to my media. I can’t get the rest of the AR pages to work. Really disappointed. I would’ve bought many more of these books if it had worked.

Two days after my first review, the developers answered below and HippoMagic updated. Now ALL of my books work! It took some trial and error to get started, but now all pages work when I flip them. This is the coolest and cutest thing I’ve seen. I can’t wait until my baby is old enough to read and interact with the books. Until the , mommy thinks they’re just awesome, and we will read the stories to my baby or look as the cool characters come to life. Thanks for the fast response and fix on HippoMagic ! (We now own 4 of these books, and will be looking for others to make a complete set).

I think the concept is very cool, however I had to come read reviews to figure out how to make HippoMagic work properly. That was very disappointing when instructions could have been in HippoMagic . It turns out your phone cannot be set to silent. Even with the volume up. By the time I figured this out my son had lost all interest in reading. We tried again later and found what interaction is available is fun, however it doesn’t exist on all pages. It would have been much better had the interaction gone directly with the story on each page. We enjoyed the book but I’ll be removing HippoMagic from my phone as it isn’t user friendly and since it doesn’t tell the whole story there’s really no point.

This is a great app with a lot of potential. My 2 year old daughter loves it when it works. We have “Let’s Learn Counting”.
First off, HippoMagic doesn’t always recognize the correct book. When it does, then another problem occurs. After I scan the cover and the next scannable page, it often still plays the cover animation while trying to play the new animation. This happens most with the number 4.
Another problem that I’ve often experienced is when using the pages with the bigger numbers and more things to find. It’s rarely recognizes the finger taps when looking at the off the screen view.
I am using a fully updated iPhone 11.
I hope these issues can be fixed, because HippoMagic has great potential to be awesome!

This seems like it would be a fun feature and my toddler was so excited when I showed her this. Now I just have an upset toddler thanks to HippoMagic not downloading the book. It stops at... you guessed it....69% What’s even more disappointing is that after having this issue on two different phones I look to the reviews I and sooooo many people are having the same problem. And even more disappointing is that the developer responded to a comment in May suggesting they fixed the problem and yet there’s almost another years worth of reviews stating otherwise. I think what I find the most upsetting is that this isn’t just a click bait app. This is on a book in a store advertised towards children and then letting them down. Fix the problem or stop selling the books.

After I left my one star review, I decided to try again to scan our Three Little Piggies book and wouldn’t you know it, it worked. My son is loving the interactive experience and we had fun as a family playing with the piggies. Will definitely purchase additional books! Great fun.

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Trying to download by scanning the cover of the book and it keeps getting stuck at 69%. Boo!

Me and my babies had a really fun time with HippoMagic, however it seems like it needs a bit more development. I had a hard time figuring it out (maybe there needs to be more directions?). Also, the hippo icon wouldn’t scan on some pages and I had to start the book over twice just to make the right app show up. Overall I think it’s a wonderful idea and very fun - I can’t wait to see different books and more development on HippoMagic !

I bought this book not knowing about the interactive application until I got home. We ended up downloading HippoMagic and it is really neat and cool! Not only do the kids get a book but the interactive part makes the book come to life! I cannot wait until my 1 year old gets a little older to appreciate HippoMagic much more!

Really cool idea!

I had to come to the reviews to see if anyone could explain why the sound wasn’t working (I had to turn the ringer on). Having that in the instructions would’ve saved me a lot of aggravation, trying to figure it out on my own. Once I got it working, it was pretty cool. My son enjoyed it!

Wow! What a cool way to integrate AR into a storybook! My only gripe with it is that the user experience was not as easy as it could have been. It told me to scan the front cover but it didn’t tell me that I needed to tap the screen to activate the scan. Took me a few minutes of trial and error to figure it out, but it would have been helpful to have clearer instructions.

I was happy to have a book that was interactive.
I bought the Alphabet book. Before letting my kids have a go, I tried HippoMagic . I’m only half satisfied as only half the story is actually animated (actual page with the hippo logo). A bit silly, since it tells you to make sure the whole book is scanned.
Great concept if you can get it to recite all pages!

Nice presentation of classic tale. I was a tutor in early intervention reading, I like the interaction in this book to help children with retention of story and interest in book. I would recommend this book for all ages but I think 3 and up will get the most from the interactive part. A fun way to introduce new technologies and still retain classic hands on books.

I could not figure out the sound at first: turns out phone cannot be switched to silent. HippoMagic is a bit slow sometimes, but my daughter is mesmerized. As a developmental researcher specializing in children’s media, I don’t love the idea of turning book time into screen time, but you can’t deny the animations are super cute.

3.5 stars. The AR is impressively forgiving of user error, which is very helpful for littles, but as others have noted it’s not as easy as it could be to get started and learn the ropes. Also the touch interaction is a little difficult too which could be discouraging for young users—sometimes it takes a few taps for HippoMagic to register. It’s a great idea and not badly done.

I would like HippoMagic better if it went through the pages on its own without the book. Once you scan the front of the book to prove it was purchased it would be easier if HippoMagic loaded all the other pages without needing to scan each individual page. Also if each letter had an interactive page not just every other letter.

I agree it needs some work. Hard to keep the book and device together. In the end I enjoyed HippoMagic and can’t wait to show my son and grandson.

I bought this book without realizing it came with an app. Once I set it up and got used to working it I showed my nephews and they went crazy! Being able to interact with the characters made them fall in love with the story

My grandkids are going to love these interactive books... I found three of them at the bookstore and I am amazed at HippoMagic!!! The kids have tablets and although their ages three and four they will be able to maneuver through the reality pages easily. What a great find!!!

Amazing use of Augmented Reality with a learning twist. I purchased 4 of the Little Hippo books and the Disney titles are the best.

HippoMagic recognizes the books and pages almost immediately. The real characters make the reader feel they are actually there.

I attempted to follow the instructions. Starts out with scanning the cover that worked okay(ish). It successfully downloaded the correct book all except one time randomly downloaded a different book. Scanning the page technically “worked” it knew what page I was looking at but it was horrible glitching and random things would freeze on the page covering most if not all my screen.

I have already deleted and reinstall for few times. It still doesn’t have any sound and also some pages couldn’t load properly. Pls rectify it, thanks.

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling many times in 2 different iPhone 7 plus phones, they still suffer the same issue — app has no sound despite many uninstallation and reinstallation. Please fix. Thanks!

I like the idea but the hippo doesn’t scan on all the pages where it’s supposed to. It’s very hard for my 4 year old to get the pages to work. We spend far too much time trying to get the pages to scan.

This was a very well designed app and made reading time much more fun! Well done! Kiddos loved it! Now they want all their books to do this.