Caribu by Mattel

I wish this app had been more upfront about the fact that you have to pay for a subscription to use any of the games or calling/messaging features. How disappointing it was to discover that.

Our wonderful daughter connects with us by FaceTime each week -- which includes our 8-yr-old grandson and 3-yr-old granddaughter, all of whom live 2000 miles away from us. While FaceTime is great -- and our granddaughter is almost always quite actively engaged -- our grandson had recently not been as engaged as he had in the past, so I asked our daughter if maybe Caribu would be a way to offer some activities that would spark his interest. Well, we gave it a go last Sunday, and I was AMAZED that, at the end of 90 min., our grandson still wanted to do "just one more" activity!!!! We began by reading the Rapunzel book to our granddaughter, who is right now totally into all things connected with Disney princesses -- it was a hit! She also got a kick out of scribbling on the blank face of "How are you feeling today?" under the Funny Faces options. She was then quite entertained by what her big brother created on a number of the other Funny Faces choices. And I greatly enjoyed discovering that, on my iPhone screen, I could "mess with" / move around the multiple eyes/ noses/ and mouths he had added to the numerous faces he chose! As for our grandson's other choices, he selected -- and we had lots of fun playing together -- a number of the memory games, sequence games, tile puzzle games, a couple of mazes, and a bit of find the hidden objects, tic-tac-toe, and Sudoku. And, our game plan for next weekend definitely includes a number of the Sing-Along books with our granddaughter -- as well as more princess books! -- and "whatever floats his boat" with our grandson! I'm very much looking forward to it! Oh, and yes... we've decided to set a timer for 30 min. each, so that their suppertime won't get delayed again! Many thanks for making active engagement with far-away grandkiddos possible in this wide variety of ways!

This app used to be amazing! I loved to use it so I could call my cousins who are to young to use real messages yet. This app was so much fun to use! I went on it today for the first time in a while to call me cousin and guess what… 7 DAY FREE TRIAL THEN A LOT OF MONEY JUST TO MAKE A CALL!!!!!!! 😡. I think this app would be amazing if they didn’t force you to pay! I am also a minor so I can’t afford to pay for the subscription. I guess I will just have to find another way to make ONE CALL to my cousin.

We have the iPad 9 with Center Stage. However Caribu does not utilize it and instead cuts off my daughter’s face so my parents can only see half of her. It’s pretty annoying.

We have had this app for nearly 3 years and it’s been wonderful for staying connected with family across the country. Lately, however (seems since acquired by Mattel), we have been having all kinds of problems and bugs. Grandma’s app no longer works because they’re requiring her to update but the OS on her iPad isn’t supported and she is not able to update her OS. So a big reason for having this app has been negated and we’ll be cancelling our subscription if this doesn’t resolve soon. THE DRAWING PAD used to be my child’s FAVORITE activity, but they’ve made all kinds of changes and added a lot of unnecessary stuff. The marker is translucent now which seems like an upgrade but it effectively removed the “large” drawing tool. The eraser has a slider for size now instead of 3 size choices… but doesn’t get large enough any more. Most frustratingly, touch sensitivity is far less responsive so it makes unpredictable marks and we can’t draw small “dots” any more. They added an undo button (which maybe is what’s causing so much bugginess, with the need for higher processing power?), and a zillion stickers — seems nice in theory but without some way to search the stickers, a larger catalog has just made it more cumbersome to find the stickers we want. When we went to “save” a drawing, it overwrote everywhere we used the eraser with a random paint color! My child was heartbroken. I’m SO FRUSTRATED to lose something that was such a boon in our lives. Fix the app, MATTEL!

Living across the world from grandparents, this is a great concept but it doesn’t work half the time. This makes it frustrating and not worth it to try most times we have together.

Email send is not an option with my child, without going into anything deeper. Apps like zoom give you a link or allow you phone message, etc. Children do not normally have access to email, and it’s 2023. This app has a lot of great stuff in it, hopefully that side of tech can catch up. I’ll join if we’ve got choices to connect with them outside of email.

Caribu deserve 1 star because their founders sold the company to another company then filed for dissolution last year and returned nothing ($0.00) to its early investors. Lost trust. If they ripped off their early investors, then they will do the same for customers and employees one day. Unethical founders manipulated investors!

Good app for kids ages 3 to 9 Ps.Send me developer response in 2 days at minimum and 4 at maximum

I’m really pleased with this new Caribu app and love the app a lot l am owing you guys a five stars the one who created Caribu must be really popular I love this app