Cool toy, easy to master
351566
Rip-Stiks are cool products. My son(8) got this and was able to master it fairly easily. Due to the squiggling, it is easier to go uphill. Of course, you cannot go uphill on very steep inclines.

He was able to learn it quickly and have fun with it. All his friends also feel that it is a cool toy.
2148197
my 2 y.o. managed to work this puzzle right out of the box, so it doesn't provide a long stretch of play, but still finds it interesting and it's great to practice that eye/brain coordination. it's built well so it should last a while. we lost the rectangle, but it should be easy enough for my BIL to whip up another one in his wood shop.
2351904
This Fisher Price Code-a-pillar is an interesting toy that doesn't teach coding as much as parents might hope, but it does a great job of introducing sequencing in a manner that is impressive and very entertaining for lots of ages.  Young kids will enjoy the music and lights, and older children will be fascinated by their ability to control this caterpillar's actions.  Kids can order the caterpillar's segments to program his movements, with straight and turn options.  The segments are easy to move around and they stay connected with no trouble.  The caterpillar travels at a good speed, not too fast and not too slow.  I had little trouble getting this guy to motor around on carpet.  I then tried it on linoleum with no noticeable difference in speed or maneuverability.

My big reservation with this toy is that it's TOO LOUD!  This should really have a volume control.  I love that you can buy expansion kits for this toy at a reasonable price, and I feel that the toy is still lots of fun with just the original segments.  This toy would be a great investment for a toddler who can grow with the toy and appreciate it on many levels.  This really sucks the batteries though, so be prepared.  The Code-a-pillar teaches sequential thinking and will provide lots of hours of fun for kids  (if you can stand the noise!),
1563100
I grew up with a Marble Magic. I wanted my child to have the same experience of playing with marbles and building. This set fits the bill! It's not a huge set, but the 78 pieces build a nice, fun track. It's nice to have the marbles come with the set. My child played with a friend, and there were enough pieces for the two of them to play. I would recommend a second set or a larger set if you routinely plan on more than 2 children playing at once.

The pieces snap together easily, and hold steady. The marbles run smoothly down the plastic. The fun elements spin easily. The bright colors make it easy to spot the pieces. It's a well made toy.
452751
I bought this for Christmas for my 5 1/2 year old and he loves it! He loves to "couple" things together (a term he learned during his Thomas the train obsession), so I knew it would be a hit. It is really a no-frills toy as it doesn't have any lights or make any sounds, but it's cool to him because he can manually turn the cranks and tow TWO things at once! When it arrived, one of the hooks had come off of the string it's supposed to be attached to and was loose in the box. Thankfully it is very easy to tie back together, although with rough play I'm not sure how long the string will last. Overall, I gave it 4 stars due to the lack of lights/sounds and the fact that the hooks can easily come untied.
1157988
It's a great toy that my son (5 yrs old) and I have a great time with. The only reason I gave it 4 stars and not 5 is we have only had it a month and I want to see the longevity of the item. Otherwise, it was easy to set up with the tool included to bolt on the legs. It's easy to store and move. You'll be having fun with it in a matter of minutes.
3428173
After having a half dozen various helicopters and planes that frustrated his abilities, my 10-year old son found the Air Hog Vectron Wave to be really fun.  He and his friends played with it for a couple of hours bouncing it around the house and the yard.

The run time is surprisingly good, but it recharges very slowly (like 10 minutes or so for a full recharge).  Operating the unit is extremely easy - in fact, there is no "remote control" at all - just a kill switch in case it gets stuck somewhere.  All you do is set it down, turn it on, and let it calibrate itself to the ground.  After two or three ups and downs, it is ready to be played with.

If left alone, it will just hover up and down, but you can grab it by an optional "stick" that comes out the top and tilt it to make it zoom across the room to someone else, who can then do the same to return it.

The downside is that the play does become uninsteresting after a few sessions because of the lack of "remote control" and the fact that it really takes no skill to operate.  Don't expect this to become the "go to" toy in your kids' closets, but for something really easy to operate, its a fun diversion.  Another downside is that if it does bump into something and get tilted, it will skitter off erratically and can become easily trapped in a corner under the sofa, thrashing around or behind a plant, etc.  This is probably the reason for the kill switch.  When this happens, the prop will pick up a lot of lint & hair (especially if you have pets).
2147342
This was one of my five year old daughter's presents.  It wound up being one of her favorites and one of our favorites, too.

The first thing I want to mention is that our Wall-E is stable. I'm not sure why, but he is.  I've seen some videos on youtube where the robot falls over whenever he hits something. Not only doesn't ours fall over, he goes from our flat hard kitchen floor into our higher pile carpeted floor without falling.  He also has no problem moving around the carpeted floor at all, unlike some of the reviewers mentioned.  Our robot stays upright for the most part (out of over 2 hours playing time, he may have fallen over twice at the most).

The remote is simple to use.  Wall-E has a sensor on both the back and the front of him, so we've had no trouble at all with him sensing the remote's signals.  I think we've been up to 20 feet away from him and he still can read the signal and perform accordingly.

He's made out of hard (but brittle) plastic, but seems made pretty well.  His arms go up and down as he moves and his treads are helped along by 2 little wheels on his underside. His treads DO move, however, so those are the main source of his motion.

He talks, sings, dances, and has many movement options.  Additionally, you can program a sequence of up to 15 movements for him to follow at any given time.  I'm pretty certain that you can only have ONE sequence at a time, and not more.  But, we haven't even used the programming except for testing to see if it works. My daughter has a blast using the remote and making him do what she wants him to do.  He only turns to the left, but has several left turn options at any time. So, if you want to have him turn or veer to the right, you may have to make him almost to a full 360 degree turn and then quickly use the straight arrow key right when you get him to where you want him to actually be. It's simple enough for a young child to do and learn fairly quickly.

All in all, this is a great toy and I'm very glad we bought it. Much better than a remote control car or dinosaur in our house! The remote is easy to work with (takes 3 AAA batteries) and the robot itself is very responsive (takes 4 aaa batteries).

[...].
1287639
Very clever and very cool. We are big fans of robot toys at our house so it was a nice addition to our collection. My kids are a little young so they haven't figued out the puzzle part yet. As a toy it was somewhat fun for the kids as first; but, since it's more poseable then articulate (i.e. not as flexible as most toys in terms of movement) the kids lost interest after a few days. So now I get to display it, which is still a good thing.

You do have to watch out for little fingers (and even big ones) getting pinched. It happened to my three year old a few times. I'm not sure how you can avoid it due to the design and the way the blocks can snap together. She's a little more cautious now so perhaps it's one of those things you have to learn the hard way.

It still makes a fun display and once in a while someone will create a perfectly ridiculous pose. We like it
1966715
My 8 year old son loves the Vectron Wave.  The first time we used it he kept yelling  "this is awesome!"  That said, we have not advanced to doing tricks but just enjoy trying to control it without touching it and watching it veer away from things.  Fun enough. I highly recommend reading the instructions first, handling it with the little stick on the top and recharging it frequently.  It is definitely a toy that needs practice and not one that works like the commercials straight out of the box.  We  received this toy free for review as part of BzzAgent.
2124731
I got this toy for my 19 month old son for Christmas.  He can't totally use all the tools, but he likes putting the screwdriver in the screws and turning back and forth, and running the drill (though he's not coordinated enough to use that with the "wood" piece.  And he likes playing with the pliers and hammer.  If he was too much younger, he'd probably only get use out of the hammer.  But he can do something with pretty much all the tools except the wrench.

The tools are plastic, and we haven't owned it long enough to know how durable they will turn out.  But so far it's been a lot of fun for him!
2351213
Neither of my two older kids, (8&10), have ever been into building toys, except for blocks. However, my son does love lights and magnets so I figured it wouldn't hurt to give this set a try, (except for the high price tag, which is pretty painful at first glance).
After a long morning of bored kids watching tv and playing on phones, the delivery van arrived and I immediately opened the magformers up. Tv off, screens off, and I waited.
There are enough pieces that both kids can build comfortably together, with a little sharing, and enough shapes that their imaginations were sparked. It has instructions to make some simple shapes and do some shadow play, but it wasn't necessary. They were both entranced and entertained for hours. Literally, HOURS. The back and forth interaction was fun to listen to, and the buildings they came over with were impressive.
The lighted part was the only minor disappointment, it's a single light up cube that you build around. The translucent pieces 'glow' when it's on, but again, there is only one and it's not going to light up all the pieces. It didn't seem to slow down their play, and i did appreciate that it didn't require batteries, just plug it into the computer usb port for a little while and it's good to go. They mostly ignore it when playing with the set, which is fine, but I might have opted for the other set without it.
Honestly, excellent investment that we've gotten a lot of building fun from.
2227709
Very cool Toothless toy and just the right size for play.  I'm a toy collector, but I also like to play with them too so I can write reviews like this one. For one as for as a action features go, this one has my favorites.  Very cool with the lighting up, roar, and shoot features.  The sounds aren't too noisy, but loud enough for kids to enjoy them for ultimate reenactment experience of the second movie.  It takes a bit of force to pull the tail back and I was worried of breaking it off so care should be taken with that part.  Also the first feature where he just lights up doesn't seem to happen and it skips straight to the roar and baring teeth however the spines and mouth still light up, but they happen simultaneously with the later.  I'm not sure if that's just with my toy or there's a trick to it I'm not aware of.  However I'm not worried too much about that since the roar and light up feature happening at the same time gives him more feel like that accurate to the movie scene.  Also the projectile flies a decent distance, but it compares more to that of Giant Fire Breathing Toothless which isn't too far, maybe 3-4 feet at best.  If you are looking forward to a Toothless figurine that is great at shooting projectiles, I suggest the dive bombing version of him from either 2013 or 2012 since that shoots the farthest for the toy size.
  However this guy is incredible in many ways, very cool how you can pull out the wings so it allows for vertical and horizontal controlled posability, which is something I've never seen in a toy while most of the others only have posability on one plane only for the wings.  One of the wings for mine did feel loose when clicked into the positions like it won't hold it and while it does hold it, if you shake him, it flops down easily so something to keep in mind that you need a eye glass repair screwdriver to help tighten any loose screws that cause the loose wing issue if you get it.  Also the teeth baring feature was pretty cool too.  Overall this toy is unique from the rest in terms of a lot of features besides the projectile shooting that I haven't seen in the others.  Also hopefully he'll last longer than my Giant Fire Breathing Toothless, but so far the quality control on him is better making his price worth it more.
4498694
I was impressed at how easy the LeapFrog learning table was to set up.  Just snap the legs in and you're good to go.  The table has two modes, one musical, the other learning.  Each of the 7 activities on the table responds differently.  My daughters favorite is the keyboard in music mode and she likes opening and closing the hippos mouth.
There seems to be a gap in the ages that are interested in this.  My daughter liked this a lot when she was first standing.  Now that she can walk, she only pays attention to it for a few minutes before she wanders away. Mostly she just tries to climb on it. My 3 yr old nephew, who would not admit to it, likes playing with this.  He likes it because he can name the colors and numbers and sing the songs.
So this is a fun toy for ages 6-12 months and then educational for ages 2-3.  In between, not so much, they are too busy exploring everything else.
4490194
I bought this for my 20 month old and i think I have more fun with it than he does! Its really cool. In this age group, it has to be used with supervision as there are small parts, but i will be a good toy for him to grow with. I would def buy this again.
2944518
I really like this toy. I bought it for my 22 month old and she loves it. It's easy to play with and sound pleasant unlike a lot of other toys on the market. I found myself playing with it too for about 10 minutes.  One thing i didn't like it's how short the string is... It makes it hard to hit the keys. I just cut it off.
257023
This remote control motor is so cool. My son was so interested in this toy. The control was really simple and easy for little kids to use. Very durable and the battery life is pretty good. It works well even after he dropped it many times.