Toys to avoid — episode 1

Here’s a couple of experiences with toys we’ve bought were we have been seriously disappointed, and I’ll tell you why…

Nerf “Electrostorm” Super Soaker

Going through childs head: “This is going to be AWESOME, I get to run round and spray people and won’t get a blister on my trigger finger”.

This one should be called a “Super Fail” rather than a super soaker. The lads got bought these for their birthday — which is in the summer — so they sounded like the perfect thing. I could imagine them running round the garden giving each other a good soaking with these amazing-sounding water guns.

Boy were we disappointed.

The guns themselves need batteries, obviously, as they have a motor that provides the power for the water stream. After battery installation, the guns did work fine and the lads had a couple of 10–20 minute sessions with them in the garden. They did like them and they did have fun with them.

Negatives are that the water tank is very small so they will need to be filled up regularly. As they have batteries and electronics, it seemed wise to prevent the kids from dipping them in a bucket to refill, instead using a trickle of water from the tap to directly fill the tank.

Biggest fail was that BOTH guns broke after just a couple of uses!

Now if we’d had just the one, we’d assume that we got unlucky and got a lemon, but as both broke in the same fashion — literally, they just stopped working — then it’s clear these are total duds. Pulling the trigger just failed to activate the motor and hence no water came out. Literally, nothing happened — no noise, nothing.

Clearly we tried changing the batteries. I checked the battery compartment for water ingres, there was none.

Realising the guns had had it, and they were a present and hence we had no receipts, I tried to open them up to see if there was any “parent-fixable” parts. Nope. All hot-glued together inside, so literally there was nothing I could do.

Hasbro, you should be ashamed. You’ve let the Nerf name down with these duff toys.

Hexbug “Aquabot” Fish

Going through childs head: “WOW! I can have a robot pet! It’ll be great, he’ll swim like a dolphin and I shall call it ‘George’.”.

These great-looking toys sound and look superb in the adverts and of course are attractive to kids as a result.

They are apparently supposed to swim around in water, diving and surfacing and changing direction etc. It all sounds great, and no dirty goldfish bowl to clean — the perfect pet!

Again, we had 2 of these, bought from a local toy store and they came with a hexagonal plastic bowl, so they where ready to go as soon as you got them out of the box.

You fill the tank with water, put the fish in — they switch on automatically on contact with the water — and sort of give them a little shake to presumably get rid of any air. Then off they go, diving and frollicking.

Except they don’t.

They just flick their tails and swim slowly but directly to the side of the bowl, where they proceed to rattle around the edge of the bowl. We never saw any direction changing and certainly no diving.

Wishing to give the new pets a fighting chance, we tried them in the bath, clearly there was plenty of room in there, so we should see all the amazing acrobatics, surely?

Nope. Same deal. The fish sort of langorously flip their tails and slowly cruise along the top of the water. Any bumping into the sides means they usually stay at the sides.

I even went to the trouble of contacting Hexbug on Twitter for this one and while they offered some advice on how to use the fish the “correct” way, it made no difference.

Not a toy I’d recommend.

On a final note, using more than one in the same water space is prone to failure as they have strong magnets in the tails for the flipping mechanism. If two or more fish get anywhere near each other they stick together immediately.

Star Wars Spyware “Voice Changer”

Going through childs head: “Holy smokes, is that Darth Vader on the front? I want to talk like Darth Vader!”.

This was a toy one of my lads bought with his birthday money. He loves Star Wars and anything related to it, so this stood out on the toy shop shelf.

It sounds fabulous from the packaging as you’d expect, and it looks really awesome, like some sort of bounty-hunter breathing apparatus.

It had to be good, right?

Nope. Another fail.

First things first: while it may look like breathing apparatus and hence that it should be able to be worn like a mask, you can’t. There’s no straps for this. You hold it up to your face when you want to talk. Otherwise you carry it around in your hand like a doofus.

Second: the voice changing effect is subtle to the point of being non-existent. There’s no entertainment value here. You’re not going to sound like Darth Vader while talking through it, that’s for sure.

This toy got used maybe once, and gets picked up and looked at by visiting school friends, then put back down again.