Kids toys that take forever to put together!

[rowdy]

Well I've just finished putting one of my lads toys together at half past one in the morning, a grand total of 5 hours to put together a bloody mechano radio controlled car.
Wouldn't be so bad if it was a proper radio controlled job but it was only the body that required building!
Thing that makes it worse is it says on the box suitable for 8 year +.

To be fair, I'd like to see an 8 year old child put the damn thing together, the body is nissan 350z style but all the panels are straight and require bending into shape (sometimes 3 panels thick) whilst simultaneously holding a bolt with an allen key in one hand whilst trying to place a tiny nut on the end and do it up with an equally tiny spanner with the other hand.
If this is the sort of thing 8 year olds are capable of building easily then our future engineering industry should be in safe hands.

Either that or I'm a completely useless twot .

No, i totally understand. Ive got 3 kids so birthdays are always the same routine - they open present, i spend hours upon hours constructing said present, they play with it for an hour or two, it ends up in a thousand pireces again, never to be reconstructed
IMHO lego is definitely the worst, my kids are bright and at the tops of their classes but they cannot get to grips with the instructions for toys below their ages even, and i consider myself relatively intelligent with an amount of common sense but these things take FOREVER.

If you're a twot Rowdy then you are not alone, i'm right up there with you

Micro Machines, guys. The biggest sticker sheet you've ever seen, hundreds of tiny little street lights, buildings, fences... and then the challenge of making it fold up into the car battery/toolbox/whatever it's all alleged to fit into.

I shall cross those off the xmas lists that are already forming then

give em a brick... its what tim wilky used to get and it hasn't made him grumpy... more just opinionated...

[flymo]

isnt the point behind Meccano partly the building of said toy? Thats half the experience. Take your time and your kids might surprise you.

Or you could just buy a pre-built radio controlled car.

I'm afraid I'm the winner here, I built this... http://www.nce.co.uk/news/structures...206528.article

[rowdy]

Originally Posted by flymo

isnt the point behind Meccano partly the building of said toy? Thats half the experience. Take your time and your kids might surprise you.

Or you could just buy a pre-built radio controlled car.

You are quite right flymo, but I would be extremely surprised if an 8 year old could put it together, it took half the time to swap the forks on my bike at the weekend, and probably less of a fiddly job to do as well.

Oh and there are many pre built radio controlled cars knocking about in the house, the last of which was taken out its box and the rechargable battery pack ripped to pieces because my lad thought the batterys needed unwrapping (doh) so is now an unused useless ornament.

I saw the thread you put up about this a while ago MrTom, you are indeed the winner.
When is the series going to be aired? ( I live not to far away from the site of the Lego house, I hear the que to get in to see it is about 4 hours! so could probably take a meccano set and build it while you wait)

.

I remember my grandmother buying me a very fast RC car that I was far too young to be able to control. Batteries in, controller on, and immediately it went flying down the stairs.

Luckily it wasn't damaged in the plunge and my mother made her take it back to the store.