Two Digital Guitars for Young Kids and 'Tweens

Digital guitars for kids seem to be everywhere this pre-holiday season. Inspired by the success of Guitar Hero, toymakers including Mattel and Hasbro have made guitars for young rockers to mimic the fingerings of guitar playing, if not really learn how to play a guitar. 

I got a hands-on look at Mattel's Fisher-Price "I Can Play Guitar," the sequel to "I Can Play Piano." To play, you plug the guitar into a TV. On screen, colored dots move up vertical lines and when they hit a horizontal line near the top of the screen, the player hits a corresponding color-coded key on the guitar with her left hand and strums with her right. Players work their way up to playing and strumming together by winning points one level at a time. 

You can switch to free playing through speakers for fun. Either way, this $100 guitar game is all about fun—it does not teach notes and actual guitar playing, but it gives kids, ages 6 and up, the feel of playing a guitar. 

So does Hasbro's Power Tour Electric Guitar, which is designed for 'tweens ages 10 and up. This $70 guitar, a joint project of Tiger Electronics and Gibson Guitar, comes pre-loaded with rock songs, including "Smoke on the Water" and "Wild Thing." LED lights shine, signaling kids to to move their fingers to the correct key to hit, then strum.

No note-learning going on here, either. But plug the guitar into a $50 Power Tour AMP and kids can rock out even louder. They can also plug in their MP3 players to the guitar and jam along with their favorite songs. 

Related: Fisher-Price Brings Learn-to-Play Guitar Game to Kids