Sit back and imagine you're in the market for a new toy. Perhaps you have a niece or nephew on your holiday shopping list. You want to impress your sibling by purchasing their kid an "educational" toy, but you don't want to saddle the poor child with (yawn) yet another painted wooden Euro plaything. No, you want the kid to tear open the package, panting with excitement at what his favorite auntie or uncle brought just for him.It needs to be BIG.
And LOUD.
With FLASHING LIGHTS.
It should NOT contain lead paint or date rape drugs.
Enter the Ready Set Learn! Radio Control Fire Truck from the Discovery Channel Store. It's educational...if you consider teaching your toddler how to operate a radio control vehicle a valuable lesson.
Now here's the deal: Do you like the sound of screaming sirens filling your living room? How about the crash of an oversized toy truck slamming into walls, furniture, pets and and small children? No? Then by all means do not buy this toy for your child. Buy it for someone else's kid. (You'll piss off that child's parent, but not as much as you would if you'd bought the kid AquaDots.)
Now I'm pretty lucky. Z isn't all that into annoying battery-operated toys. She'd rather play dress up or let's pretend than operate a remote control vehicle. She (quite rightly) demanded to know why only one of the included fire fighters fit onto the truck (a design flaw in my opinion), and after figuring out how the two button remote worked, she lost interest.
Which I can't say for her playmates--particularly boys. They pretty much went ape shit for the fire truck, setting off its irritating alarms and running it into the dining room chairs until I quietly flipped the power switch and proclaimed the toy "broken."
One final note: if you stop playing with the fire truck but you neglect to flip it over and turn it off, it will act possessed, powering itself up and vrooming short distances on its own. This scared the crap out of me (and my cats) until I figured out what was going on.
Disclaimers: This review was made possible by Parent Bloggers Network. The ladder pictured in the photos is from another toy. Z decided that every fire truck needs a ladder and added it of her own accord.
