Callapidder Days

When I was asked to give the new K’Nex Dueling Racers a try and to blog about our opinion on them, I couldn’t turn it down. The boys in this house (including my husband) are all about building stuff. Legos, K’Nex, Tinker Toys — you name it, we’ve built it. And building stuff with motors sounded like an extra bonus.

The Dueling Racers set comes with instructions to build four different motorized vehicles. There are enough pieces to build two cars at the same time and have them race each other (thus, the dueling). It runs for about $21 on Amazon.

I don’t think the box was in our house for more than a few hours before someone had opened it and started building. [Hint: That someone is over the age of 20, so it wasn't one of the kids. And it wasn't me.] As soon as C. saw what was going on, he grabbed the other instruction book and started building, too. I really like that about this set — the fact that there are 2 instruction books. That way, two people can get building right away without having to wait for their turn with the instructions.

The instructions were clear and easy to follow, so the cars were assembled quickly. C.’s official opinion about the four car designs was that “They’re very cool.” He also liked the fact that the cars had motors. It’s one thing to build a car and push it around; it’s quite another to be able to flip a switch and send it racing down the hall to traumatize the cat.

The only thing we had trouble with is that some of the Lego-like pieces did not stay together very well, which caused frustration whenever the car would run into a wall and a piece would fall off. We ended up just permanently removing that part. However, we only ran into this problem with one car design, so it’s easy to avoid.

Overall, we’ve had lots of fun with these dueling racers. C. would recommend them to anyone who “has a thing for cars and for the satisfaction of speed.” His words.