Vehicle Reviews

WWII tanks, hints of some story of "Mars vs Earth", and missions where you do the same thing over and over. The reason I gave this game four stars is because it is a game of strategy, you have to plan your attacks, you have to realize when to retreat, you have to relize what side of your armor is about to break. Other than that the game is spent trucking around the same field of battle for 2-3 missions and destroying about 5-9 tanks. The 2 player "vesus" mode should be ok, but I haven't had anyone to play against yet. It is a decent game, worth ... [the money]. If anyone knows about the Mars troops, earth troops story line (and why the player is on the Mars side) please leave a review on here also.

I received this as a X-mas gift. The car itself is a good size,(it's larger than the 1/24 scale collectibles). It takes a bunch of AA batteries and one 9volt but thankfully some AA's are included with the car. It is rear wheel driven and quite powerful. I just so happened to be in the hospital when I received it so I terrorized the nurses by driving it all around the hospital room. On waxed tiled floors the car is difficult to control as the power of the rear wheel drive makes the car fishtail a lot.
On carpeting, the ride is OK but I find kitchen floors and parking lots to be the best places to drive. The range of the remote is pretty far and there are 4 directional buttons to control the car. Supposedly you can hit the "boost" button to do "burn-outs" however, whenever I push it, the acclerator seems to lock and the car goes smacking into a wall. Not quite sure how it works.
However, for the NASCAR fans out there, this is a great little car. It is durable, I have hit many walls, chairs etc. with no damage to the car. The car also makes racing sounds whenever it is activated. This can get kind of annoying and probably runs the batteries down a bit quicker, but my 6 month old son loves the sounds. My only complaint is that it takes 5AA's and one 9volt and the batteries don't seem to last a long time. However, I must admit, I do use the car a lot. All in all, this is one cool remote controlled NASCAR.

I bought these as stocking stuffers, and my son and I played with them for a while before we got bored, which is always a good sign. We thought we could race them, but they don't really go in a straight line. We're not sure what the pennies do - they seemed to operate fine without them. They do go pretty fast, but they tend to make weird spinning motions and go under the furniture a lot. This ended up cracking us up, which gave the cars an unexpected play value. For the money, a pretty fun toy!

This toy is great but the rechargable battery doesn't work for long (less than 30 seconds after charging for 5 hours). Hopefully it is just a battery problem.

I got two of these switches in my Brio railway system. They come with an infra-red controller that works on up to about four meters distance. The only problem with the design of the remote control system is that it can be difficult only to control one of the switches at a time if they are placed closely together in the track system. It would have been nice if Brio allowed two or more different encodings of the IR communication so that the control of the switches would not interfere with eachother. They have done this on the remote controlled train so why not on the switches?
Apart from this the IR switch works great. It makes noice and lights when operated from the remote control or the buttons on top. If you want to save on the batteries, you can operate it by manual control as well.
A good investment if you want to create a more advanced Brio railway system with battery powered trains, etc.
Now, Brio needs to come up with a left turning version of the switch as well.

My 18mth old son got this as a Christmas gift, and really enjoys playing with it. He likes to put the people in the cars and have the sirens sound.

WOW! I knew that Little Tikes was good- but not this good. This truck is it for two year olds. It is very durable, moves well, and it does something- while being the right size for little hands. We have A LOT of other trucks- either too much detail or not well made- this on the other hand is going the distance. The only problem so far is that the back two doors can come off if enough pressure is applied. However, the snap right back into place. The right truck for a truck oriented two year old and no worries about duribility and parts for the parents.

Well, the store I bought these tracks in doesn't sell the matching blocks to hold the tracks up, so I figured I would take a trip to Ikea and get their package which has 6 of these raised track support blocks.

It appears that the tracks are the same width, they are the same lengths, they are even the same thickness. But the elevation of the Thomas tracks are in fact higher than with this other system. I managed to use the blocks anyway, but the tracks are fairly shaky at the moment and at the apex of the ascent and the start of the descent, the tracks do not align correctly.

Today I will take a block of wood, route out a grove, and cut to the correct height a few replacements. This should improve the situation.

That being said, I have to continue to tell the good part of these tracks. My son Thomas at the moment is 2 years 4 months old. He loves his Thomas the train toys. I sometimes hide it from him for a few weeks at a time so he won't get bored of it so easily. Every few weeks he feels like he gets a new toy since he forgets that he had it. Well, he loves his trains and these new elevation tracks are just great since the add the extra dimension to the tracks. If at some point today I managed to find more of these tracks around town, I'll buy them to add a second level.

Before buying this tracks make sure you can get the blocks that go beneath them

Since I can't buy Thomas the Train through Amazon outside of the U.S., I'm forced to buy this toy locally. It cost an additional 70% over the amazon price, however it was worth it. The major disappointment came when I opened the box and found out that for the high price, I only received one unit. This was a disappointment since I already had a great track layout in mind which required two and the store only had one in stock. Of course it was my fault for not reading more carefully. In fact, the box labelled 2x the other piece and 1x for the T.

At the moment, we only have 2 Thomas engines which are both battery powered and we have a single Brio engine which is a light and sound toy. I don't typically like Brio trains since the Thomas Trains are of much higher quality. When running the Thomas the Train battery powered engines on this track, entering from the stem of the T, the trains would simply drive straight forward without turning. This means the train goes straight off the table. I would have imagined that they would have tested this.

Also, the turn is so sharp that the battery powered trains can hardly make it, even when pushing manually on the battery powered trains, they tend to slide out of the track.

So my son plays a lot with the Brio train on this track section instead. I'll have to go out and buy James without batteries today I think.

My son received this toy as a gift and absolutely loved it. However, it didn't hold up anytime. One of the two plastic wheel tracks almost immediately came off and seemed too big to stay on after that. Also, the plastic pieces that make the bucket lift broke off quite quickly. Beyond that, the batteries died after about the second week as well (and who can afford new batteries every two weeks). My son still plays with it, but I would rather invest in a more durable non-motorized toy.