Disney Cars slotcar set product reviews

In some ways, slotcars have come a long way over the years - the cars have become sleeker, lighter and more varied in looks and performance. In some ways, they haven't changed at all, they still run in a slot, have metal brushes to carry the current from the rails, and look awesome racing around the looped tracks.

This kit was extremely easy to assemble, though I found some parts of the instructions a little less than clear... this resulted in a bit of swapping curved sections around until I had them all correct. If you look at the little video below very carefully, you'll see when the mistake was spotted and corrected.



Parts of the kit that I thought were brilliant include the lap counter - extremely effective yet so simple as to remain durable, and probably fairly easily repaired should anything break. (I didn't want to risk breaking it by pulling that unit apart for examination.) I was also pleased to see how the controller and power plugs were 'keyed' to prevent incorrect placement. You can even swap the power plugs around to reverse the direction the cars travel, to add some variety to the play.

With some careful experimentation, I was able to shuffle the track pieces around to make a couple of other shapes, meaning those with creative and lateral thinking brains will find more ways to enjoy this... and of course if you have other, compatible, tracks you can get really creative. I am hoping to add at least one full vertical loop and some more under-&-over weaving.

My only gripe with this set isn't actually that much of a negative... more an inability to fully utilise a big positive... because this track, in it's default configuration, has only two fairly short straight runs, the use of the built in 'turbo' function - whereby an extra burst of voltage is delivered to each track individually thus giving the car(s) a sudden burst of speed - is almost always guaranteed to cause derailment of the chosen car. This seems like such a shame to me, but provided great amusement to my co-racer, my 10yr old son.

Overall, though it's not exactly a cheap set, it warrants it's price in the quality of construction. Where many cheaper sets have track sections that just clip together, these sets also come with securing clips that lock into holes on both sections, locking the track bits into one solid whole unlikely to come apart during play, or movement. They do take a bit to UNclip though - they are almost too good at their job. Perhaps a little spatulate tools should be included in the kits as 'clip remover'. Failing that, I found a small, flat screwdriver did the job well enough. Also, the box design requires full disassembly of the track for repacking... I turfed the box, and used a cheap 22 litre plastic clip-lock container from The Warehouse, and now the track can be reassembled in moments, as I can leave the track in larger, partial assembledchunks., with room for at least 4x as much track.