Constructables

My 4-yr-old son, who has been diagnosed with a language processing deficit and communication delay, absolutely loves this toy! He is fascinated by things like gears and wheels, and cause & effect; he also likes to sit down and get really involved in building (like with Legos) so this seemed like a good purchase. He has been building and taking apart little vehicles for hours and hours since Christmas morning. The middle piece (engine) has two points on it to push in rotors that turn around and around when it's turned on, and the wheels also drive, forward and backward. We followed the helpful instructions of other posters to remove the "clicker" which is indeed annoyingly loud; it was done easily in less than 5 minutes with a Phillips screwdriver and now runs quietly. I saw one other review complaining of the pieces falling apart, that has not been a problem for us, however the pieces do come apart easily enough for my son to handle it himself. (He plays endlessly with little Legos and often brings me pieces to separate for him.) He does have a fairly deliberate touch with the constructables, so I think a problem with pieces falling off is due to the "heavy-handedness" of younger or just more 'wham-bang' type kiddos... our 21-mo-old certainly has no luck keeping any of it together so loses interest quickly (another benefit as far as I'm concerned since sharing is a serious challenge. ;) ) So if your little builder prefers to drop or throw or whack things together this may not be the toy for you. The toy comes with picture instructions for making 4 different vehicles: airplane, helicopter, race car, and train (only one can be built at a time), but my son has no interest in the instructions and puts together his own creations. If you have a little one that likes constructing, go for it! I'm very satisfied.

This toy is a ton of fun. We purchased it for our 3.5 year old, but the 6 and 2 year olds play with it just as much. It is so simple for them to build vehicles, we can get a little peace and quiet! Speaking of quiet, the clicking sound is very annoying and loud, however...if you remove the 4 screws from the main piece (with the battery compartment) carefully, you will find the culprit. There is a plastic piece that clicks against one of the gears and is held on by one screw. Simply remove it and put the top back on. Tada. Don't let the noise keep you from this cool toy.

So I got this as a gift for my kids. They really liked the idea of constructing a car. I also got the dinosaur set too. At first they tried to assemble something that moved, but that was a challenge as the pieces need to be arranged in the right way for the creation to move. Especially the dinosaur pieces. The feet only fit in one direction or they will not contact the ground correctly. My very low fluff carpet was also a huge challenge for the car and dinosaur parts. The wheels only seem to work good on my berber carpet. It is very compact like you would find in an office building. That and the hard wood, but the car wheels are made entirely of plastic so they slide all over the place. The only thing that saves it on this surface is that the thing moves so slowly that it can get traction. Like everyone has mentioned the noise coming from these things is unbearable. It sounds like a gear is broken in the thing, but it is just this annoying piece of plastic the inventor through in for no reason. It works like a card in bike spokes. You simply take the four screws out of the motor unit and pull the case off. Turn that piece over and you will see the plastic piece making all of the noise held in by one screw. Remove this or turn it around so it will clear the gear that it rubs against. Takes only a few seconds to make this modification. The motors are weak and don't move quickly. The big yellow propeller barely moves around while the car is running across the floor. This may be okay for some, but I would like to see more spin from this. Every moving piece moves at the same speed. But if you think about real life a propeller would move way faster than a wheel and that is kind of the effect I would want when you build the plane. I would also like the wheels to not move at all, but have the propeller spin and let the child move the plane as they see fit. I think that the construction of this toy is great, but could use some tuning. There are many pieces that fit perfectly with one another, but some pieces are too tight and some are too loose. This means you either can't get your construction apart or you can't keep it together and that just makes playing with it a pain. With two sets it would be cool if they could somehow help each other but I have found that where the items connect is not ideal. This is the case for both one and two sets. I have found that my kids are always trying to construct items and then I have to rearrange them so they will fit or move the way they want them. Kids are 3 and 5 if that helps to narrow down where I am coming from. I got these for the 3 year old, but he can only push the pieces together and not construct any of the items illustrated in the kit. The 5 year old want the kit to do more than it does and quickly moves onto the next toy in the room. They do seem to frequently come back to this toy, but only for a few minutes before moving on again.

Best toy ever!!! It is easy to build and to take apart and the highlight of the toy is that after the kids build a helicopter train car or even an imaginary motor vehicle there's a small motor that makes it move forward. My four year old and 3 year old can play with his story 4 hours it's wonderful seeing their imagination while they're taking it apart and putting it back together again. I highly recommend this toy between the ages of 3-5. It is priced well and the kids enjoy every minute of it. This is a perfect birthday present.

this toy was for my 3yo son, he loves to take things apart and put them back together and thats exactly what this toy offers. he can make different vehicles by moving and changing parts around and it even has a motor to make some of the parts move. unfortunatly some of the parts fit very loose and fall out easily, the motor is not very strong so the cars do not move much on our carpet, and the motor is very loud with a headache inducing "clicking noise". our box didnt come with any instructions so we had to follow the pictures on the outside of the box, not that that is hard to do, but we had broken down the box once it was opened so we had to dig it back out. overall my son enjoyed it on christmas, but now he doesnt play with it because it was just frustrating.