Toys marketed as educational that actually have negative educational effect

[galois]

So we all know that baby Mozart DVDs harm babies' language development, but the thing that's been working its magic with my DS2 is a vtech Thomas the Tank Engine laptop that was given to his elder brother for his birthday.

DS2 knows all his letter sounds (aah, buh, cuh, duh etc) and can read CVC words and similar with no problem but after several days entranced by the evil machine barking out "CAKE - see - ay - kay - ee" he now attempts to sound out words with a mixture of letter sounds and letter names.

So he saw a button that said "press to exit" today. A week ago he'd have been able to read it, even though I don't think he's read "press" before.

Today he read "pee-urr-eee-sss to exit. What is peeureess?"

I want to throw the bloody thing through the window. I will be replacing the batteries with duds and forgetting to buy any more

It sounds a weird way of learning to read to me. Often, letter sounds change because of the other letters around them; it isn't random. So the 'a' in cake becomes 'ay' because the word has an e on the end. The laptop thing doesn't seem to be explaining thaat.

Maybe a teacher can give advice.