200
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #161,320 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
Better for the 8 and older kids
My daughter (9 years) was given this as a birthday gift and absolutely LOVED it! She has two younger sisters and so to be able to stash her cash in a secure place was very appealing. Some things I liked about it:
1. Any card will work as the "ATM" card to activate the machine
2. If the "PIN" number is forgotten, you just remove the batteries and it resets the machine so you can set a new PIN.
3. The slot for putting in your money is just like a vending machine. It doesn't sense the value of the bill so you have to enter the amount deposited manually.
4. If your child is diligent about entering the amount withdrawn when they take money out, the machine will keep a tally of your balance. For a child learning the value of money, this is a very cool feature.
Some things I didn't like about it:
1. There is a slot for depositing coins, which the machine CAN sense the value of. However, the coins go into the general compartment, and clank around within the compartment - would have been nice if the machine automatically put each type of coin into a certain slot.
2. The vending slot for depositing bills also just stuffs the money into the general compartment. You have to open the bank every so often to ensure the bills are not getting jammed up.
This is a great product for the money and I highly recommend it. It's probably better for kids 8 and up.
Update Nearly One Year Later (last review was from December 2004)....
Ok, so we finally had to change the batteries on this thing and of course the package instructions have long since been lost, which provide the manufacturer preset pin number. So after a few futile efforts to reset the pin, or at least get her hard earned savings out without breaking it open, we searched the internet for the manufacturer Summit Products Inc. web site to get another copy of the instructions. It was surprisingly VERY difficult to find. So you don't have to do the same leg work, here it is: [...] Once I got to their web site, finding and printing the instructions was quite easy and the atm is working like a champ again and my now 10 year old is quite happy!
