A Boy And His Dad's Blog

Toys, toys, toys. Who doesn't love toys? Seeing some of the toys that are made today, really makes me envious in that, "Man I wish I had that as a kid," type of feelings. But there's still some things that today's toys cannot match in awesomeness in regards to what I played with and seen in my youth. But one of the things that I didn't get to mess around with are video game themed toys. The only thing that came close to that to which I owned were the board game versions of Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man and the best one of the bunch, Pac-Man. Now, there's tons of stuff out there, which are mostly in toy figure form, but that was better than nothing back then.

This past year, while out Christmas shopping for our nephews and nieces, my son had spotted something in the remote control car section at the toy department at Target. "Dada, come check this out!" I went over and saw on the shelf, miniature remote controlled Mario Karts. I couldn't believe how small these things were. Of course he wanted them right then and there, but I told him to wait until it's Christmas, while at the same time, making a mental note of possible things to get him for Christmas or what to recommend to relatives if they ask what he wants for Christmas. So he got three of them, Mario from us, Wario from my parents and Bowser from my wife's parents.

So how great is it? Eh...it's alright, but these things have some issues. First off, the rubber tires in the front always comes off. Why the front tires are not secured on there, like the back tires, I have no idea. Second, the range to how far the kart can go from you is limited, very limited. In the picture, you see the white square remote, which is also small itself. You have to keep pointing it to the kart in order for it to move. And if you're thinking of racing the kart from one end of the house to the other, well do your best impression of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and hunch over, keep pointing the remote to the kart and walk behind it in order for it to keep it moving.

But still, it's pretty neat to mess around with. We would create our own race course with Legos or Lincoln Logs and have some live action Mario Kart racing in Noah's room. No throwing shells or drifting, but with some ramps for jumps, its all good.