[4][5] Referring to this title, U.S. News & World Report's article "False Promise" commented, "parents have been told that it's their responsibility to prepare children for a multi-tasking, technology-driven future, so they "JumpStart" their babies".

[10] Newsweek praised the game (and JumpStart 2nd Grade) as superior to previous entries in the series, noting they "successfully balance letting youngsters explore" and "using animated hosts to spur them on", adding that they "both understand the concept of reward".

[12] A 2000 Wired reviewer noted that after their daughter experienced the game's music, she "walks away from Barney tapes in the VCR and demands Toddlers".

[17] Early Childhood Education Today notes that "although the graphics in JumpStart Toddlers can be moved for an activity, they cannot be controlled or manipulated into any other form".

[25] That year, PC Magazine's Terri Robinson (quoted in 2002 paper Engineering The Entrepreneurial Infant) commented that "software developers are keen to the burgeoning 'baby skills' market" to "capture the imaginations of your 1- and 2-year olds and provide them with solid educational building blocks".

[32] Stanford University professor Clifford Nass found this trend "disturbing", commenting that "the social context and the tactile experience [of real objects] are crucial to early development".

[26] Similarly, pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton considered lapware like JumpStart Toddlers "an assault on a young child's developing mind".

[33] By this time, just two years after the game's release, JumpStart Toddlers was competing in a crowded lapware market with contemporaries in the edutainment industry.