Customer Reviews

Hexbug Inchworm - Colors May Vary

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this alongside a number of other novel office 'toys' for my husband's birthday this year. Of the Hexbugs, we also purchased the Ant, but overall I think I'm more fond of the Inchworm. Mostly because the Ant has some problems with collecting household dust and mucking up its gears until it can no longer move (the higher clearance on the worm, and its slowness prevent this issue from occurring with it).

It looks nothing like a worm of course, though I can understand where the name was derived, since it does technically use an inchworm style of moving about. However, had they not named it Inchworm, I honestly wouldn't have related the two. The end result is much as I expected, a far more alien creature whose movements can only be described as vaguely creepy; which is much as I had hoped. I think my significant other will find it cool since he's a fan of gadgets and horror novels. You can kind of imagine a super-size version of the worm maybe invading the world with sinister plans in mind. Or maybe a whole fleet of them moving about in that slow, methodical way. Watch out Playmobil people!

It's a fun little thing to watch as it lumbers to and fro; it's not fast at all, but I think its speed suits it well. My kids (2 & 4 years) love it; they got to demo it before wrapping it up. It does have mechanical whirrings, but they are not what I would consider to be too loud.

There are two rocker-switch style buttons on the (very tiny) controller. One moves the creature either forward or backward, the other spins the creature on the four-prong base about to allow movement in absolutely any direction.

All in all, I'm pleased with this little toy; it equally met the expectations I had for it. For anyone whose interest lies in these sorts of toys, I don't think you could go wrong. It'll make a nice desk toy too, because of it's slow manner. It's not going to escape and call for a big search party like its cousin the Ant.

Edit to add: Some people are apparently perturbed that *anyone* liked this toy (thanks for the thumbs down guys!), but do note the following facts: We have owned this toy for a year, played with it occasionally, never broken it, and never had to replace the batteries. My two and four year old enjoy playing with it, and have not broken it. But they are gentle girls. My best friend's 'wild thing' of a boy played with it for an hour straight the other night giggling with glee all the while, and despite some serious manhandling, the worm inches onward. Just food for thought. Now keep those thumbs down a'comin'!

We ordered the inchworm despite the negative reviews we saw here. It's great! Slow only compared to the hyperactive ant, but they are all slower compared to the ant. Yes the remote is small, for adults, because it it obviously designed for little hands. As with other Hexbugs it needs to be handeled carefully, but I just want to say had I followed the reviews this time, we'd be missing out on a great toy.

Where else can you get a remote controlled mini-spider thingy?

The battery lasts amazingly long. The toy is pretty durable despite drops from kids and snatches to see who plays it first.

However, for adults, the movement of the toy is pretty slow and draggy, so it might not be as entertaining as the Hexbug Nano. Still, a great toy to have if u want to disturb your cat, or entertain ur toddlers.

I picked up a couple of these from Radio Shack about 2 years ago when there was an after-Christmas clearance sale. My son and I didn't use them in a standard way. They don't move very quickly (seriously, have you ever see a speeding inchworm?) and they are not made to be played with or handled roughly. And with normal use you don't really want to sit there for hours and watch one.

Even though I rated it a 2 for durability, ours have survived 2 years used in the manner that I describe below.

However ....

Each bug bot (inchworm) controller has a toggle for 2 different channels and each little bot can be set for a different channel as well. So if you have two of them one person would be using Channel A while the other had his controller and inchworm set for Channel B. This makes things a whole lot more interesting.

We took a large children's book, one with a semi slick cover, and raised one end of it up a couple inches. The bug bots could move downhill pretty easily but not so easily uphill because they had to fight gravity and the surface of the book did not provide a lot of friction. (hang in there, I have a point with all of this)

My son and I would start off at the "top of the hill" in different corners and the goal was to try and push the other bot off the book - or be the last one standing. The downward slope also made it easy to shove your opponent along like a bulldozer - something not possible if you were trying to do this on a level surface. So if you want to have battles, raise up one end of your book or your arena just enough so that your bot doesn't move as quickly uphill. The feet are plastic so they don't get much traction.

Because these inchworms can move forward and backward, and can also lift themselves slightly to rotate to face a new direction, this made things a LOT of fun and it was addictive. Even though he was only 6-7 at the time we had a blast with the bug bot battles. Even his grandfather and I would compete after my son went to bed.

So in summary: The bots don't move quickly but that is a plus if you are using them as I've described above. They are fragile if you drop from them from table height onto a hardwood floor but ours have survived several drops to the carpeted floor. They are **GREAT** for bot battles on a tilted and smooth surface (glossy covered kids books were what we used, a magazine with a book under it works well too). The small coin batteries last a pretty long time if they were fresh to begin with. You adjust which channel the remote controller uses so that two people can use the bots in the same area. If you want to introduce your kid into robotics in a fun way, then the bot battles are a great way to do it. You do need to turn off both the controller and the inchworm after you are done with them otherwise the batteries will run down.

One final thing. Because the bots can rotate around in a full circle it is easy to forget that your directional buttons are reversed if you only spin half-way around - which is hilarious in the middle of a king-of-the-hill type battle. You think you are going to move one way and yet you go the opposite direction. Even older players will make the mistake which allows the younger ones to pounce and shove them out of the arena. (or you cause yourself to tumble over the edge by accident).

As a bot toy it is somewhat of a novelty which would become boring in a short amount of time unless your kid was using it as a monster to invade little cities of his other toys. But the bug bot king-of-the-hill battle scenario made the replay value very high. At bedtime I'd offer to let him stay up for 10 more minutes if he could win 2 out of 3.

I was thrilled & hyped to start playing with the thing, but one of the buttons on the remote control broke within, like, five minutes. It no longer clicked when depressed, and the inchworm just kept spinning in circles. So, I'm taking it back tomorrow, VERY disappointed I won't be able to play with it. I don't know if I will exchange for a replacement or not. I really want the crab but they didn't have that one at the store. :(

First of all, I saw it for display at a toy store. i tried it out, and it was, like, so totally AWESOME! So I bought it with my OWN money. I had LOTS of fun with it for a couple of minutes, and it's expensive batteries ran out of juice. so i brought it back to the toy store, and they put new batteries in it. on the way home, i tried it out, and i STILL did not work. so we turned around and just got a new one. This one included fresh batteries, but it STILL did not work. so we went to a battery store, they replaced the batteries and it STILL DID NOT WORK!!! I couldn't believe it! I finally just to return the worthless thing. instead, buy a hexbug nano. they are great!!

I bought one at the store for my son. Brought it home and he played with it for about 3 minutes and the remote control button broke and it stopped working. Called the company and they sent a new one for free - nice :-). Unfortunately, after opening the new one the fun lasted no longer than 2 minutes when this one stopped working too - no apparent reason, it just sits there. Very disappointed - especially since this thing cost almost $20 - WOW! THAT SUCKS! Not sure what to do now - I guess I'll just lick my wound and mope for about 30 more seconds thinking about all the fun I could have had, and then forget about it. Humph!

This little robot toy will move over a smooth surface, inching away therefore the name, the toy can move forward, backwards, turn and spin. I am semi happy with this robot, first of all it is relatively cheap for a remote controlled robot, even small ones usually cost many times as much as this one, however the Inchworm do not have many functions, it is just remote controlled and it walks. In fact since it do not have any movement of it's own it might be a bit misleading to call this a robot at all. The main problem with this toy is that it is to frail to be given to small children, it is made up of thin plastic and it probably will not survive rough play for very long, while at the same time it has so few functions that it will quickly bore a older child. I think the customers most likely to like this toy are people like me, adult robot collectors or others who appreciates the novelty of it.

Now another problem with the Inchworm is that it can at times be hard to control, if the body is not in the exact right hight it will not turn, and the controls are very stiff. However that being said this thing have the smallest and cutest little remote control I have ever seen, my geek heart can not get over how adorable it is and the gadget factor is quite high. The remote control have a A and B frequency so two people can play with their Inchworms at the same time without interfering with one another.

The inchworm runs of batteries and are not rechargeable unlike most small RC toys, this have benefits and drawbacks, on the plus side you can play with this toy for quite a while before having to change the battery, many RC toys you might get five minutes of play for half an hour of charging, this toy do not have that problem, on the downside this uses expensive specialty batteries, I do not know if it can also take normal watch batteries, and getting at the batteries to change them can be a pain as you have to half dismantle the whole robot to do so. The batteries last for a long time, but if you play allot with this robot it will get expensive.

The Hex Bug Inchworm is cute, colorful and is an interesting little robot for a collector, however I would only give this to an older kid, 10 plus and I think that kid would have to really love RC toys to not get bored with this quickly. However all in all this is cheap and fun, but it is far from the best among Hexbug's products.

We received three of these as gifts for our 3 children. They were a cute novelty but I was surprised that they cost $20 each.

Two of them broke within 2 days -- in both cases one of the grey plastic struts broke when they fell from about table height. The struts are too thin to be glued back together, and the joints can't be taken apart (otherwise I'd salvage parts from one Hexbug to repair the other).

Novelty-wise these are amusing little toys and kept our kids' attention for a good amount of time, given that the inchworm only has 3 motions (forward, reverse, and rotate). But given how fragile they are I wouldn't recommend them for kids under 10. Even adults may drop and break them inadvertently -- and be out $20 just like that.

Bought this guy two years ago for a Christmas gift for my daughter. She played with it for about two minutes and then it stopped working. I tried different batteries, but that didn't seem to help. I got an return material authorization from the manufacturer, but I thought that $8 shipping back to Texas was too pricey for a $25 toy, so I never sent it in.

It was pretty cool when it worked, but I don't think the quality is very high.