Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My 3 sons each got a Dino from their Grandmother for Christmas. What was thought to be a cool little Dino pet that would glow to a cool turquoise color at night so my boys can look at and ease any nighttime anxieties they may have while sleeping has turned into a VERY expensive and high maintenance project. Mind you, I have THREE of these things to pay for & keep alive. And, for the amount of money & work I have had to do & will have to continue doing in order to maintain these 'gifts' for my sons is not worth the 'cool' or 'positive' effect that these Dinos were intended to bring to my sons when my mother purchased them as gifts for them. After buying the expensive food and waiting for it to be delivered (cost to ship the expensive food is ridiculous as well), then you have to pour some of the water out, along with whatever live Dinos were in that water you poured out, in order to make room to put the "food" (which is basically expensive sea water) into the Dino to make it full. And you do this only to have to wait until the middle of the night, when my 3 kids are fast asleep, to gentle shake the Dino to see it glow a little turquoise for a second and then the glow disappears. If you try to gently shake it again to see the turquoise glow again, then it won't work ... you have to wait a while after shaking it for it to reset (for lack of a better word) and be able to see it glow for a second again. We have had these 3 Dinos for almost a month and my 3 sons have yet to see these Dinos "glow" because they are fast asleep by the time you are actually able to see them glow. And, when I say 'glow' I mean glow a little for literally 1-2 seconds and then it disappears. The picture in the item description is not at all what we see. We literally see a little puff of light turqoise for 1-2 seconds. And the 'glow' is only at the top of the Dino; the whole Dino (as depicted in the picture here) does NOT glow. Actually, I think the picture is of the Blue Dino, which is where you use blue colored food which makes the water in the Dino blue; that picture is not of the Dino actually glowing. And, in order to get your 1-2 seconds of light glowing, which your sleeping kids will never see because they are sleeping when this glowing can actually happen, you have to buy this very expensive sea water every 2 weeks because you need to feed the Dinos every 7-10 days. Yes, you can buy more than 1 packet of food at a time, but your already expensive shipping costs will increase with each additional item you add to your BioPop order. Cool idea, but I am not going to go bankrupt over this and what you get is soooooooo not the time or money necessary to own one of these. And I have THREE of these things to keep alive & take care of. Ugh! Don't do it. There are plenty of other cool, science-related gifts you can get your kids that make you do more work and make you spend lots of money to maintain after you spend your hard-earned money to buy it to begin with. Oh, and Customer Service is horrible. I made 3 phone calls during their business hours about 2 weeks ago and left 3 messages and I have yet to get a call back. I also tried contacting them via email from their website & once again I have not received an email response. Ok, I lied... I did get an email back, but it was an automated email saying that they received my email and that someone would get back to me shortly, which is not true. Never heard from anyone from BioPop. Save your money & your sanity & get your kid something else. Anything else.