I Love Construction Vehicles (and I Love Rescue Vehicles) review

With an almost 5 and 7 year old in the house I Love Construction Vehicles and its sister, I Love Rescue Vehicles is tailor made for them. These are activity sets, with a book, models they put together, reusable stickers and a vehicle that they can play with.  Each of these sets are great gifts, to quote a popular game show, if the price is right.

 

Each of these has a play area that you can build. To do this just put the open ends of the box back to back, punch out the cardboard models, assemble them and place accordingly in the box. Adults will have to assemble the play area and you might even consider gluing the pieces together to avoid your kids coming to you every five minutes after they come apart. This happened often with our youngest, who really liked the play set, but got frustrated with its construction.

He also loved the stickers. But again he got frustrated when they would stick all the way down. That’s been our frustration with reusable stickers too. In our mind, stickers stick and aren’t designed to be reused.

One thing that he really liked was driving the vehicle up and over the ramp that traverses the box tops.  The vehicles included in the sets are the self-propelled type that goes forward when you pull them back. Keenly aware of that, he wanted it to go up and over the boxes on its own, but it didn’t. He was a little bummed out about that, but rebounded quickly to finger push his car over.

Both of them liked the books that came with their sets. This is especially true with the older one who likes looking at the variety of vehicles in their respective work environment. Each book has lots of color illustrations and the vocabulary is on par with a second to third grade reading level.

The I Love Construction Vehicles set is something that kids will like. Our almost 7 year old became tired of the play aspect of the set within a couple days. He does still like the book and put the poster up on his wall, but the enjoyment of a majority of the set faded quickly for him. The retail cost of the set is $19.99. That’s an expensive thing for a child to quickly lose interest in. If you can purchase it at half off then it’s a much more enthusiastic recommendation.

We saw it on sale at Costco for $9.99 and that is a sweet spot for enjoyment. At that price it’s a fun project that you can do with the kids and not feel guilty if it falls by the wayside.  I would not buy this for $19.99. At that price you could purchase any number of LEGO toys (with $5 to spare) that you know they’ll enjoy for a long time.

In a way this is a guilt-gift. It’s the gift that you give for a kid’s birthday party that seems like a slam dunk because of the bulk of the box. It feels like a big gift. And it is a good gift, if you can pick it up for under $10.