Yeah, I've seen that too. I've seen it more, actually, with the points system coming out, and it sort of confuses me - I always thought that comments were there to give your take on the toy once you owned it, almost like a mini review?

But, regardless, I believe that it takes into account both the votes from anyone and the votes from the reviews to give an average.

I doubt a product's overall star rating reveals very much at all, and I think that's true on amazon as well. The general public just does not have the skills necessary to click on a rating for a product in an informed manner. They rate the shipping speed of a random order on a product's page, or complain about unrelated things in comments, or critique a product on an amazon seller's feedback page . . . it makes me sad for humanity.

That said, if you look over the star ratings given by reviewers with whom you've agreed in the past, it's a huge help in narrowing down choices.

I always wished that when using the stars to rate a product it has a summary of what that star represented like they do with the "bees" and "vrooms" because 3 stars to me might not mean the same thing to someone else.

It's everybody's votes averaged out. Not sure if they weight the reviewer's votes higher, but I suspect not.

Hmmm.. I didn't even think you could star a product unless you reviewed it. But the star-before-its-come-o ut thing might possiblyyyyyyy also be related to people who received it before it came out from EF to try it and the star rating's just up while the reviews sometimes don't come out till a bit later.