A 5 year old delight

I bought this for my son and he loves it. I showed him how to build it with the instructions provided. He played with the Mega Jump for hours. Great price for the product.

Awesome toy!

I got this for my son for his birthday and he LOVES IT. He has been playing with it nonstop. It has kept him very entertained. I would recommend this if your kids love hot wheels. It will keep them busy!

Not well done

Simply put, this set was a massive disappointment. One of the first things I expect a toy to do is work well and here's where the Hot Wheels set falls short. It's not like this is a twenty dollar toy, no, it's a high cost and for that I expected it to do what it said and well. It failed utterly at that.

Basically, the cars are rarely able to actually complete the track (with the exception of set C. Gravity Drop) and mostly just end up flying off and crashing. Not in a fun way, though, more of a frustrating way. It works so rarely that both kids and adults became annoyed. So for one good track, I feel like this set is worth half of what they're asking and frankly, I'm more than a little disappointed. While there are some good aspects, they don't do enough to take away from that fact that this set just doesn't deliver on its promises.

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Design
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This is built to be a lot more sturdy than the older style Hot Wheel sets, made of hard, shiny plastic that's easy to build and gives a smooth track for the cars. The colours are bright, the design features are cute and overall the design is nice.

The problem comes with the concept. So basically this is a fold up 'set', which when unpacked has three different configurations they recommend for pre-built tracks. I'll talk about those further below. One of the cooler things about this track is that those 3 configurations are not all you can do. Kids can experiment and come up with their own tracks, connecting to other 'Track Builder' sets for an unlimited amount of fun. While the pre-built configurations are a bust, it is fun to build your own. They connect easily as well, always a plus.

The Launchers are a really cool and fun feature. I'm not sure if you can buy them separately, but despite the overall flop of the track, the kids were really excited to use the launchers in their own sets.

Another cool section of the set is the 'finish line' which is a series of gates with elastic powered numbers. Basically, whoever passes first, the number pings up into the 'empty hole' at the top of the gate, meaning whoever passes first, their number will show there. This makes it easy to tell who won if you can ever get past the finish line.

One thing that's a bit lame here, is they don't give any replacement elastics. I got a cheap Barbie toy before that cost only 30 and yet came with a lot of replacement elastics, so at this cost, it's unacceptable not to see any.

On a positive note, the cars it comes with are really gorgeous and cool looking. They come in cool colours and even the underneath of them is nice looking.

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Features
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Folds-up into a case: This feature is really welcome. While it does take some time to assemble and disassemble, and isn't as simply as just folding and unfolding, it's still really helpful. It means when they go through phases where they love other toys and don't want to play with cars, this can be put away neatly, taking up very little room. Let's be real, this is not going to be disassembled and packed away every time, but when you're cleaning up or they go long periods without playing, this is an appreciated thing. It also works well to take for travel to relatives or friends house.

Track A - Drag Race - Well Folks, there's no oversized wigs or snappy comebacks here (what a poorly named track!), this track is a simple straight track with launchers at one end and a loop de loop at the far end. The problem is, it almost NEVER (and I mean never) is able to take the loop. The cars either fly off randomly at the mid-point or fail to achieve speed to get through the loop, no matter how hard you punch the launcher. Even the adults were unable to make this work well.

Track B - Mega Jump - You'll notice in my pics that this is not a jump. That's because no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't make the 'ramp' stay up or lock in place. As a result, it ended up being a rather straight race. Maybe it's because the ramp wouldn't work, but this track also suffered from 'crash syndrome'. In other words, cars fly off and almost never reach the end. A lesson in boredom and frustration. At first, kids found this 'funny', but just like the adults, you have to have a balance between destruction and actual racing to keep them entertained.

Track C - Gravity Drop - The one saving grace. Oddly enough, this one doesn't use the Launchers. It's simple a long slanted drop, leading into a loop and the end of the race. Mostly because it works and partly because of the 'gravity' of the situation, this one really is fun. Finally a track they could actually race on. This one created whoops, cheers and screams of delight, but again, the cost for only one good track and some good pieces is far too high.

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Set-up
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Assembly is wonderfully easy. There's a clear visual guide and the tracks are lettered to make it even easier. They all hook together with the same blue tabs, easy to push together or take apart. The loop de loop is sometimes a little stiff. Younger kids will need help building, but older kids can handle this by themselves. Easy. About 10 minutes to set it up or less if you're used to it.

No Batteries Required.

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SUMMARY
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Pros
+ Easy to assemble.
+ Good for travel, folds up.
+ Cars are nice.
+ Many good 'additions' for building other tracks.
+ Gravity Drop is a lot of fun.

Cons
- Overpriced.
- Tracks A and B don't work well and aren't fun.
- No replacement elastics included, despite high price.
- Cars crash constantly and hardly ever work (with the exception of 'Gravity Drop')
- Can be tricky to setup for younger kids.

Recommended: No. I suppose if you can get it on a really big sale, some of the pieces, the cars, launchers and loop are worth it, but because of the poor function on two of the recommended tracks, I really can't recommend it at full price.