My daughter received leapfrog's Fridge Phonics when she was 21 months old. At first we put all 26 (capital) letters up, but it seemed overwhelming for her to have so many. Then we put away all but A,B,C, and D, and let her know that she could earn new letters by demonstrating that she knew the ones she already had. (I'd quiz her on 3 or 4 of the ones she was having the most difficulty with, and if she got them all right she got another letter.)
I'm not sure of the timeline, but by her 2nd birthday she had earned all of her letters, and we bought her the Fisher Price Fun-2-Learn Color Flash laptop. She has learned all of her lower case letters from playing with that. It also has a focus on phonics, not just identification. I think that's a product she can definitely grow into, too. When she is able to use the mouse better, there's a game like pong, some mazes, and some counting activities.
I started her on starfall last night, and she asked for it again this morning. She almost cried when I had to turn it off to bring her to daycare on my way to work. I promised her we would play more when I got home. I learned about that site on this forum, so I'm thankful for the suggestion.
There are some i-pad apps that she's enjoyed as well. There was one she liked that would display several letters on the screen simultaneously, and ask the child to find a certain one. I think that was a good review for her.
We skipped the letter factory, but we have the Talking Words Factory, which is a leapfrog video for teaching phonics and building words out of letters... she'd rather watch Toy Story or Tangled though. For those types of entertainment-only videos, I started putting the subtitles on for her, and now she asks for that. Some children's videos don't have subtitles though.
