We bought this for my son for his halloween costume.  It says right on the package that basically this is just a prop and is not meant for serious play. Still I would have expected it to last longer than 15 seconds.  After putting in batteries we couldn't get it to work at all...the batteries were new but we decided to try some other new batteries and changed them out.  With the second set of new batteries my son got sound out of it for about 15 seconds and then it stoppped working.  I removed the batteries and put them back in and got it to work another 15 seconds or so.  After numerous attempts we could never get it to work again.  The plastic is very cheap on this unit.  I returned it was was thinking of getting another one but then decided this was so poorly made it wasn't worth the risk of having to return a second one.  I decided to go to the toy section and buy a real one for twice the price, but at least I feel confident it will work for more than 15 seconds.  I will say if you are just looking for a cheapy prop for a costume and don't care about the sound working then this might suffice but I wanted something my son could continue to enjoy past halloween so this ended up not being for us.