Fisher-Price Triple Hit Baseball

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Product Specifications

Three fun ways to play help kids learn to hit like a pro
Balls automatically pop-up from the base, one after another
Pitches balls up to 10 feet
Hit from a tee or from pop-up pitch
Includes battery-powered trainer, bat and 3 balls

Product Description

Product Packaging:Standard Packaging Product Description

Three fun ways to play. View larger

Develop a real “can do” attitude.

An enjoyable, stress-free way to sharpen their skills. Enjoy Batting Cage Fun Right in Your Own Backyard The Fisher-Price Grow to Pro Triple Hit Baseball will be a hit with kids of all ages because it adjusts to every skill level. Beginners can hit from the tee, and when they’re ready to move up, a simple adjustment switches the battery-powered trainer to pop-up pitch play. And for pros? They learn to hit balls that are pitched to them by the automatic trainer from up to 10 feet away. Before you know it, they’ll be hitting for the fences.

Practice Makes Perfect For budding batters, learning to hit the ball and practicing their swing are fun and easy with this automatic trainer to help them every step of the way. It’s simple to use, no matter where they are in the learning process. With such an enjoyable, stress-free way to sharpen their skills, you may not even have to nag them to practice.

It’s Batting a Hundred for Building Motor Skills and Confidence By swinging the bat, hitting the ball and getting healthy physical activity, your little baseball players are developing gross and fine motor skills, including hand-eye coordination. They’re also gaining valuable insights on timing their swing, following through, and how far to stand from the ball to get the most success. And as they improve, their confidence begins to soar and they develop a real “can do” attitude. For helping your child develop and grow, this play set really hits it out of the park.

What’s in the Box? Includes the Fisher-Price Grow to Pro Triple Hit Baseball battery-powered trainer, one bat, and three balls.

Features: Beginners hit from the tee Rookies use pop-up pitch, with balls popping up automatically one after another Pros get three balls automatically pitched to them from up to 10 feet away Makes learning to hit the ball fun and easy Includes battery-powered trainer, bat, and 3 balls Requires 4 “D” batteries Amazon.com A reasonable gripe against a great number of sporting good themed toys has been their lack of versatility. Once a kid has surpassed the skill level engendered by the toy, the toy is pretty much useless, offering no further challenge to the burgeoning athlete. The Grow To Pro series, on the other hand, evolves with the kid presenting increasing challenges along the way. In this three level baseball training set, young kids can practice first hitting the ball off of a tee to build fundamental coordination skills. Then on the “rookie” level, the ball pops up from ground level as kids practice smacking the ball out of the air. Finally, the “pro” level is a pitching machine, lobbing the ball without a prohibitive amount of velocity, to the batter standing up to ten feet away. Four D batteries are required but not included. –Charlie Williams

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Product Reviews

Super Fun For Young Kids

I bought this as a birthday present for my son who will turn three next month. He loves playing anything with a ball, and especially loved batting with a ball as a 2 year old last summer.I’ve only had this for one day and will certainly updated with more use and after I’ve tested my replacement balls that are on the way. I did put this together last night and gave it a short test run. First impression? Excellent! My concerns have been put to rest so far.DESCRIPTION:This is all plastic. The most “chinsy” part is the tee. However, after putting them together, I feel pretty good that although the most flexible part, it should hold up. That extra give may actually be good for it since it will take the most beating. It seems flexible and and yet strong enough to hold up. Haven’t tested it greatly yet. The plastic in the pitching machine part and the base seem pretty sturdy.The bat is rather thick and firm plastic. It should hold up.The balls are foam and slightly smaller than a real baseball. A real baseball weighs about 6 ounces. These foam balls came in at exactly 1 ounce. Indoors, they travel fine and didn’t break my window! Outdoors, well, I haven’t tested that yet as we just got 14 inches of snow in the last two weeks. I live in a place that is pretty windy, so we’ll see how it holds up. I do not expect these to travel as far as a real baseball and that is perfect for my small yard. But, I feel they could still be hit well into our neighbor(s) yards!The pitching machine is just that, a cheap, toddler version of the real thing. Inside, there is a spinning wheel that spits out a ball once every 5-6 seconds. When you push the button to activate the pitching machine, it will spit out 4 balls before needing to be pressed again. The tee part holds the balls. I’m guessing it will hold 5, maybe six balls. Once again, you only get 3 with the purchase.The balls come out with a good spin and you’ll notice that when hitting a foul ball. It’s nothing too major, but worth noting. The speed is a brisk underhand toss. It isn’t super slow. New 2 year olds who don’t swing light bats fast will have trouble hitting this. Able 2 year olds and above, should be able to adapt and hit the ball. But, the whole design of this is so kids can “grow” into the standard pitching machine pitch of this device. I’m only trying to give a reference point with the most difficult setting of this device.I currently have a typical cheap tee I got for my two older girls. What I didn’t like about it, the tee broke off from the base after whacking it too many times. It also required putting weight on the base. This Fisher Price Tee is weighty enough that you won’t need extra weight. It will tip over if you wack the base, but easy enough to put back up.This uses 4 D batteries. You will need a Phillips to get to the battery bay. From the battery bay, on the bottom of the gray base, there is a wire that plugs into the pitching machine part (blue part.) Then you’ll need to screw a cover that protects this connection area and covers it from dirt and hopefully water. It is a bit tricky, but it was easy enough to figure out and requiring a little muscle. The next part that requires assembly is the two screws that go into the very top part of the tee. Simple. Done.Straight up, this is a typical tee. Also in the straight up position, is the standard pitching machine configuration. It tosses the ball about 10 feet as it says. There is a middle position that pitches the ball higher, more like slow pitch softball, but pitching distance is less. The third position, farthest the tee goes down, pitches the ball straight up in the air, about 4-5 feet straight up.On the gray base, is what looks like a cup holder. This holds the yellow bat, fat end in. It makes storage nice and simple. The three included balls fit nicely into the tee, which doubles as the storage area. It is a bit tricky to get the ball out of there. Either dump the balls out by grabbing the whole thing and tipping it over, or best to use two hands and work up the ball to get it out of storage. You can do it single handed, but not as easy. The two halves of the black tee portion have opening in the sides. Only one has the round hole the balls go in, and where you can take them out of storage. For storage purposes, you could store a couple more balls in the “J” portion on bottom of the blue pitching machine part. Do know that if you don’t remove the balls out of this area when in use, the device is not powerful enough to eject new balls out of the machine. It won’t even allow the spinning wheel to get enough speed to spit balls out. I first put the balls in here after assembly and thought the device was broken. Once I cleared out the front J part and loaded the balls properly from the tee portion, the wheel was able to spin up. You will definitely hear it spin up and that is how you know it works.There is a straight “gate” piece release that holds the balls in the storage area, preventing the balls from reaching the spinning wheel. Every 5-6 seconds after you push the button, this “gate” releases one ball into the spinner that spits out the ball. After the 4th ball, the wheel automatically stops. You have to manually push the button each iteration.FUN FACTOR:Oh, yeah, this is fun, even for a grown up like me! I’m going to have a blast playing with my kids with this. I got it for my son, but my 7 year old daughter helped me test it out, and she loves it and wanted her own!SAFETY:I used my digital food scale to weigh the foam balls. They were exactly 1 ounce. The foam is firm, but relatively squishy. The lightweight, firm, and yet soft foam balls may sting a little if hitting bare skin, but it will not cause any damage, unless maybe a direct hit to an exposed eye. These balls are quite safe for little kids and for most things inside a house, including walls and windows. However, I wouldn’t leave glass cups or vases or any other fragile items that it could hit and tip over. Lamp shades might get shocked and knocked over!The plastic bat doesn’t have a lot of mass to it, so it shouldn’t hospitalize anyone. However, it is hard and will hurt a good deal if it hits someone in full swing. If this is a concern, you can easily get a foam bat and still enjoy this set.REPLACEMENT BALLS:Ah, the sticking point. I did as another poster mentioned and went to the Fisher Price website and tried ordering the cheaper, yet same replacement balls. The website wouldn’t let me order, said it was too busy. Huh? I did not call the number. I looked around and found a different foam ball, yellow ones. A poster there said these were too light and smaller than a typical baseball. Perfect! I pulled out the included foam balls and compared with a baseball. The Fisher Price white foam balls are indeed smaller than the real thing and weighed 1 ounce as mentioned before. Based on this, I ordered the dozen yellow foam ball set (I DID NOT get the Juggs foam balls.) I’ll update my post when I get these and can verify that they work with the Fisher Price set. Here’s to hoping! With shipping, these were about the same as buying a dozen straight from Fisher Price.UPDATE 18 MAR 2013:I received the Diamond Foam Baseballs (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009W8I30/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) today and gave them a test run. In one of the reviews on that product page, a reviewer though the yellow foam balls were a little smaller than regular baseballs. I hoped that meant these might be the same size as the Triple Play balls.The Diamond Foam Baseballs may be a smidgen smaller than a real baseball, but I think that is only because there are no real seams on the foam balls. The Diamond balls are visibly a tad bigger than the Triple Play white foam balls.The Diamond balls weighed in almost 1.5 ounces, so they are a little heavier than the Triple Play balls. The foam is also a little more firm on the yellow Diamond balls than the white Triple Play balls.The good news is that the yellow Diamond Foam balls do work just fine with the Triple Play system! However there are some points to note. First, because the Diamond balls are a tad bigger, they actually get tossed out faster, higher, and farther. You will not want to randomly mix the Diamond balls with the Triple Play balls. However, since the Diamond balls came in a box of 12, just stick with these and you’ll be fine. It may be too fast for your younger two year old, so that is where the Triple Play balls have the advantage. On the flip side, having the Diamond balls will add a little more challenge for the advanced toddlers.Some more notes - between the foam balls and the harder foam of the pitching wheel, this is what allows the forgiving nature. Because it seems to work a little harder with the Diamond balls, it may have an impact on the battery life. I won’t know the battery life situation until after my son’s birthday, which is a little over a month away.

Great tee ball. Iffy pitch machine.

I bought this for my 18 month old, knowing it would probably be too big for him, but that he could grow into it. I mainly got it for the tee part. He loved it, but the bat was hard for him to swing. This wasn’t a problem since we happened to have a smaller bat. He hit the tee itself a lot and it showed no wear. The balls it came with are soft and squishy. They bounce a decent amount, so it’s not totally safe for inside. A few went off my tv with no problems, though.The reason this review is 3 stars because the pitch machine was very spotty. There is a piece inside that is supposed to drop down to let the ball roll to be pitched. It doesn’t always work. In fact, after a while it pretty much stopped working altogether. I will have to fix this or replace it.All in all, it’s pretty sturdy. My kid and nephews love it. I just wish the pitch machine worked more consistently.

3 yr old ..

I literally had to wait until after christmas to write this review because I got this for my son as a gift. I read reviews saying this was loud and honestly, it’s REALLY NOT bothersome once so ever. I was expecting some motorcycle-like sound coming from it and its more like a gentle hum. Neighbors haven’t complained or even noticed. It’s perfect for a 3 yr old..not too fast or force of ball the it shoots at isn’t some impossible speed. Definitely for fun and toy purposes not if you’re some crazy sport fanatic stage dad/mom. My son loves it therefore I do too, and Recommend it!

It’s not really worth it. Disappointed

Got this for my son who is just starting to play baseball. It’s very loud and takes a lot of batteries. It only comes with three balls so ideally you would want 5 at least. It would be fine with more balls and if once you turn it on it shot more than 3 balls at a time. Basically you have to push the button every minute and retrieve the balls every minute so it defeats the purpose if you were trying to get this so you don’t have to pitch to you kid every time.

Both LOVE IT! Be sure to monitor them because the …

This is so cute! We got one for our 18 month old and one for my 2yr old nephew. Both LOVE IT! Be sure to monitor them because the balls do come flying out and our little guy got one to the face. He was fine, more spooked him but defiantly has some power to it. They love turning it on and having the balls shoot out and chase them down and then playing the standard T ball. This is a toy that will grow with them…BUY IT!

Great preschool gift!

This was a gift for my four year old nephew. He totally loved it. It is perfect for his age group. I imagine by seven or so it won’t be as fun and he will need something bigger but for now he was able to get it out of the box and hit the ball right away. Seems sturdy enough. I’m very pleased. The only thing I would say to better it would be to add more balls.

Love this for getting him outside and active

My grandson loves this. He is almost three and loves baseball. We gave this to him yesterday and he was thrilled. He was able to operate it right away and was hitting the ball across the yard. His dad was able to help him with holding the bat properly without worrying about pitching the ball. We were lucky it started to rain or we may never have gotten him in the house. Love this for getting him outside and active. I would highly recommend this product. We would like to get a few extra balls but not sure where to purchase them.