I received this as a stocking stuffer from my wife... a small gag because of my love of a family guy gag. I open it - it needs a battery - common enough. But can I open the battery compartment with my hands? No! It is sealed with a tiny phillips head screw - too small to get a regular screwdriver into, requiring me to go to my tools to fish out a sufficiently small headed screw driver. I get it opened and go to where I have batteries, careful to hang onto the tiny screwdriver to close it. But does it need a common battery? No - it needs a 9V - the kind that I used to keep around for smoke detectors but now not even smoke detectors use them. So I have to scour the house for a 9V battery, still looking for this to but a smile on my face. I find one and put it in only to discover that in my battery search, I've set down the tiny screw driver which I have to find. Now to close it up. Lo and behold the battery compartment is not the type that unlocks but holds the screw... the tiny screw is completely gone. Lastly - my item completely didn't work. It was getting power because the fan would turn for little bit but there was no waving. This actually wouldn't get a 1 star review from me though because I understand that sometimes items are just defective or break in transit. What makes me write this is the experience of using this. This is an item that needs to just work with limited user setup - it's a gag after all. You can't have users for this chasing down special tools and relatively rarely used batteries. You may say, aren't these your own problems - I'd argue that these are the results of unforgivable design negligence. There is no way the makers of this product actually walked through the total user experience of using this item (which I remind you is a novelty product with no practical application - not a life saving device) from unboxing to end and decided this was acceptable. Instead of getting a chuckle (the intent of the item), I was absolutely enraged by the time I was ready to flip the power switch - and on Christmas morning.

Got a couple of these as gifts for xmas and all were loved and worked well. Only issue is they are a bit loud so for someone using at their work desk might be an issue in some circumstances. Also the one my kids share they put their hands on the fan on the back that spins and it stopped working as well / the fab probably doesn't spin as well so the amount of air or movement of air no longer produces fluid movements. This fan part is easily touched when handling and picking up so my guess is that this could be the issues with inflation and movement that many note in their reviews. The only reason we know what happened is because i saw it happen in real time / it worked fine then my inquisitive kids wanted to check out the fan part and it instantly stopped working as well once they touched it. You easily touch that part on the back when handling (picking up or moving) so it is easily damaged in my opinion, should be held on the sides.

This is my first time doing a review on something other than clothes. I hope I do well haha. Instructions The instructions are pretty straightforward. You'll need a screwdriver to access the battery input. But you can also use an adapter to power the little guy. It does not specify, however, needing to de-wrinkle it first. I wish I used common sense when getting it for my sister's birthday, knowing it would come in packaged up. But you will need to get the wrinkles out for the air to flow through little dude properly (I've heard some people steam the wrinkles out). Product This dude is freaking awesome. The color is so spot on to the real deal. And the motor is nice and compact. It is loud, so if you are using it for decoration or give it to the kids to play, you may want to find a way to work around your situation with that in mind. The little book is also pretty neat. I have yet to read it, but I saw the first page explaining the history of the inflatable man (I think, not entirely sure). Performance Fortunately, we had a compatible adapter to test him with (since I cannot read and didn't get batteries until later haha..). It definitely gives you more power than the 9 volt batteries you'd need. But you get some decently long sessions out of the 9 volt batteries. Though you might get better results the better the batteries are. As I said before, the wrinkles prevent him from moving around very well. This can be solved by leaning the motor a little in a certain direction. But it's a temporary fix. It's not as aesthetic to be holding the inflatable man to manually tilt the motor or having it proped up the whole time. So be prepared for that tiny bump in the road. In conclusion, this is a super fun gadget. It's small enough to be a stocking stuffer if you'd like to wow a wacky friend. Too loud for an office. But could be cute to have em sitting on standby, waiting to put some smiles on some coworkers faces. Definitely a fun little buddy for children (though you may want to be supervising the younger kids). If you're thinking about buying this, THIS IS YOUR SIGN TO GET IT!

First off, this was an impulse buy. I thought I'd take it to work and turn it on occasionally to entertain co-workers who ramble by my cubicle. Definitely doesn't work well with a 9v battery, regardless of the brand.. With a 9v battery, it barely inflates. This is mentioned in the literature, to use a high quality 9v battery. I tried a couple of brand new high quality batteries. It also has an input jack for an external power supply. I tried it with a 9v wall wart, same deal, barely inflates. So, I tried a 12v adapter, and it worked great - spastically dancing and entertaining as all get out.