Product Description

Miuchiz are the latest in virtual companions. They're interactive, digital, colorful characters that you can personalize and stylize. Each fun friend comes with a full-color screen, touch-screen response and motion sensors. Play alone, with friends or even online. Your most important mission is to become part of the Miuchiz community. Once you plug your Miuchiz friend into your computer, you open up a whole online community called Miuchiz World, where you can engage in chat sessions with friends and download cool stuff to your handheld unit.

Each character offers a different type of fun in both One and Two Player Modes. Activities include wirelessly interacting with friends, giving gifts, calling out to other Miuchiz characters and competing in games.

Includes one electronic handheld game, color touch screen, motion sensor, USB cable to connect to your computer, IR sensor for two-player mode and joy pad and buttons. Requires 3 "AAA" batteries (included). Measures 4.75"L x 2.75"W x 1"H.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121340 in Toys & Games
• Color: Spike
• Brand: MGA
• Model: 331636
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x 8.25" w x 1.50" l, .40 pounds

Features

• A virtual companion with three modes of play, including on-line plug-in capacity.
• Spike the cat (from the Pawz tribe) can catnap, eat, explore, chat with friends, play games, and much more.
• Easy to navigate in every mode.
• Players can download games and activities from their own computer onto the handheld.

Amazon.com Review
Spike is a feline with plenty of "cattitude"! Welcome to a whole new world of virtual friends…the world even has a name: Planet Mion. Players can interact with the Miuchiz personal digital character (Spike, of the Pawz tribe, in this case) in all the usual virtual companion ways (keeping Spike fed, rested, trained, and groomed), but then they can step up the action by plugging the unit into a computer’s USB port to go online to Planet Mion. Here Spike interacts live with any other Miuchiz characters that happened to be plugged in—anywhere in the world (Earth, that is)! He can explore alien landscapes, connect with new and old friends, hunt for gold, and play oodles of games. The three main modes of play—single player, two player, or on-line—allow Spike’s Earthling friends to interact with him any time, anywhere. They can even help Spike trade items with other Miuchiz pals. Keep in mind that in the on-line mode players (with Mom and Dad’s help) will first have to set up an account and download software to their computer. Twenty-first century kids, savvy about technology, will have no problem navigating through Planet Mion with Spike. Parents can rest assured that, even when entering the on-line mode, there are enough checks and balances to make sure all interactions are kid-friendly and age-appropriate. Requires three "AAA" batteries (batteries are included for demonstration purposes only).--Emilie Coulter

From the Manufacturer
Miuchiz are the latest in virtual companions; digital, interactive, color characters you customize, personalize and stylize! The first virtual' friends to feature full color screens and, Miuchiz also come with touch screen response, motion sensors and train and feed them play. Now you can play on your own, with your friends, or online!

Customer Reviews

Awesome!
This is the coolest new electronic! It is very simple to set up, and I could play with it all day! My friends have them too, so we connect! It's cool because you can go on the computer with her too!!! This is all new to the bratz things and its one of the best! This new item, Miuchiz Bratz is a MUST-HAVE item!

Big Headache!
Save yourself a big headache. After my seven year old daughter was 'sold' by their TV ads, I bought one for her. The hand-held game works fine, but my daughter is bored of it (after 2 months). Each time she tries the online experience, however, I must sit in front of the PC and spend over an hour downloading/installing the latest version of the software, rebooting my PC, and trying to re-connect to their website (of course this is in the middle of when I am trying to cook dinner!). After updating the software, it asks me to update it again... I am sent into a circular loop and then it cannot even connect to "Planet Mion." I suspect they spent 99% of their budget on the ads, and 1% developing the product.

Cool start, but not quite
I have an Inferno and my 2 kids have other Miuchiz of their own.

The concept is really neat, but they are still quite limited. There really isnt a lot to do in miuchi world yet, so you can get a little tired of it after a few visits. Earning miuchi bucks to get stuff takes a lot of effort. However, they are supposed to add new things to the online world regularly.

Playing wirelessly with another miuchi owner has been problematic for us and you can only play tic-tac-toe and rock/paper/scissors and/or exchange items. Again, they say they expect to add new features.

With Inferno, I notice that often when you go online, he wont have all the items he took from his closet prior to connecting. Also, when viewing items on the handheld that are in inventory, they often do not display colors and just show up as a shadow.

Looks like all users online are connecting to the same server. Performance is sometimes pretty bad. Other times you can't find anyone to duel with etc..

On the plus side, they were very smart to make software updates possible on the handheld via the USB connector. This means they can improve the handheld experience without requiring you to buy a new handheld. With other virtual worlds (e.g. pixel chix) you are stuck with the world and features you start with out of the box. Miuchiz has the right idea.

Based on my experiences and feedback from my kids, you may want to wait just a bit longer before you spend your hard earned cash as right now it becomes a pixel-chix sort of experience pretty quick (i.e. get kind of bored with it). Maybe by Christmas they will have added enough to miuchi world to make it more worthwhile.