Customer Reviews

Hot Wheels 4 Lane Raceway

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My son got this for his 3rd birthday. He absolutely LOVES it! It is so easy to set up and then folds back down for easy storage. He has great fun racing down the cars and then looking to see who was first by which flag pops. WHile it is recommended for 5+ years, it is certainly a great toy for even the younger ones!

I use this toy for speech therapy and it is a lot of fun. It is easy to set up and is fairly sturdy-I gave it 4 stars for durability because it will collapse if the child leans on it, but mine has not broken, even with rough toddlers. (However, I don't doubt that determined and unsupervised toddlers can do permanent damage to any toy.) The track segments, which typically just fold together, can become detached, but again, they've never broken. I just snap it back together. The release mechanism is easy for little hands to manipulate, including children with some fine motor problems. Older kids like that there is an impartial way to judge the winner (as opposed to just "eyeballing" it). There are little plastic things (flags?) that pop up when hit by the cars, and the first one to be pushed up shows through a little window at the bottom of the track. No arguments about who won.

I like that it does not require batteries, keeps children's attention, and has quick and easy set up. As far as educational value-well, I'm not a teacher, so I don't feel completely qualified to judge. I believe it would facilitate teaching the concepts of ordinal numbers (first, second, etc.), stop and go, fast, slow, turn taking, mine, yours, supposition (guessing which car will win), some basic physics (again, in guessing which car will win, due to size, weight, aerodynamic features), win, lose, future and past tense (will win, won)... probably other things.

Good buy. I've used it with girls and boys, ages 2-11, everything from autism to cochlear implants to phonological processes. I believe typically developing children would like it as well.

I was looking for a toy my three grandsons (9,6 & 3) could play with together when they came to visit. They all love cars, so I picked this up in a store just as something to keep at my house. They all loved it. It went together so easily, and doesn't break, even when it gets toppled over. Best of all it packs up in minutes and can be put away in a limited amount of space. I am now purchasing one for my twin grandsons, who live quite a distance away, but enjoyed it also during a recent visit. Most race track toys have room for only one car at a time, which causes problems, but because this track has room for 4 cars, they all get to enjoy it and compete for the title of "fastest" car. I love it.

For Christmas, my car-obsessed four-year-old son wanted the Hot Wheels Flip-n-Go Spin City Playset. "No way," I told my wife. We've had bad experiences with those modern Hot Wheels "closed loop" playsets: they are flimsy, hard to put together, and my children quickly lose first interest, then pieces. Reviews on websites confirmed my suspicions about the durability and attention lifespan of the Flip-n-Go, which is not cheap, either. Then my search led me across the 4-lane Raceway, and I knew right away that it was going to be a winner. This "old school" raceway requires no batteries, it folds and unfolds to set up and store, and - unlike the toy equivalents of screensavers that Hot Wheels is cranking out lately (like Flip-n-Go), which offer mindless repetition and limited interactive possibilities - this Raceway has unlimited replay potential, because it has a POINT: finding out which Hot Wheels car is the fastest! Unavailability forced me to buy mine on Ebay for more than double the list price. I don't care; I still think it was a great purchase. It has proved to be everything I had hoped. It is easy to set up and put away, and it's nice and big when set up, and conveniently small when stowed (and it even has a carrying handle). It has proved completely durable, even in the hands of 8- and 4-year-old boys, and occasional abuse by a 15-month-old when his brothers forget to close their door. And, best of all, it gets hours of use every single day. Just as I predicted, it has become the one toy/game that draws my two oldest sons together to play in a cooperative manner, as they try endless combinations of their many, many Hot Wheels (and other brand) cars on the four lanes to see which will come away with Boy's Room Bragging Rights. When I come home from work, I don't have to ask where the boys are -- from their upstairs room, I can hear the unmistakable sound of Hot Wheels cars sliding down the plastic track followed by excited shouts. Educational? I wouldn't have thought so, but my sons even put their imaginations to work setting up a Tomy railroad to transport cars from the bottom of the raceway back to the starting gate so they could station one person at each end and keep running races without having to get up and carry the cars (laziness - not necessity - appears to be the mother of invention!). The oldest has begun to spend his allowance money on new Hot Wheels cars instead of saving up for video games, and both of them have started to scratch the surface on such scientific concepts as the impact of aerodynamics, weight, and wheel/axle condition on a car's performance on the gravity-based raceway. I caught the 8-year-old "cheating" by taping pennies to the bottom of his beloved blue Enzo Ferrari, a concept he learned at the Cub Scout Pinebox Derby, in a vain attempt to challenge my world-beating Porsche Carrera GT3 (yes, I get involved, too!). If there is one drawback at all, it is that the place indicators, which are cleverly designed to pop up and show the order in which cars finished, are not always accurate. For some reason, lane 2's indicator seems to always beat the others to the winner's circle, when it is visually obvious a car in a different lane won. Of course, there's no convincing my sons of this, especially when my GT3 is not on lane 2... but this is pretty minor, considering the unprecedented amount of play time this toy is getting. After less than a month, it is clearly the most popular toy any of my boys have ever received, over skateboards, bikes, RC cars, speed stackers, and a million other things they just HAD to have.

I like this track for its simplicity..... easy to set up, easy to take down, easy to take along! It doesn't have any bells or whistles, but my kids didn't even notice that! I really appreciate the flip-up numbers for 1,2,3,4 place. There is no arguing with who really won the race! It is also durable! My kids take it everywhere, and nothing has broken on it! Great toy!

Honestly, I just had to give a review of this toy, because I was reading some of the others that complained that this toy was poorly made. Well, it is not.

I have seen tons of these Hot Wheels sets, and this is the most fun, most durable, most non ugly (not orange) playset that I have seen. Many of these track type things have these tiny pieces, that if you lose one, the whole set is garbage. This set has no small pieces that you can lose.

It folds up into a suitcase , and has clips on the edges to keep it together when it is folded for easy transport. When you first un-fold it, it sometimes comes apart, but not because it is poorly made... it is WELL made. What happens is Mattel designed it to come apart at it's joints, to prevent people from "accordion" folding it in the wrong direction and thereby snapping it and breaking it. Instead of breaking when it is improperly folded up... or folded out... it comes apart. It can be EASILY EASILY EASILY snapped together again, with large ball in loop clips that any moron could easily put back together. THe track is 6 feet long, and it is easy to get confused when unfolding it, especially for a little kid, so this "come apart" safeguard is sensible, in my opinion. When it is in use, it never comes apart, not at any joint.

Once it is stood up, there is a sweet spot. Where the tall support sort of clicks into it's proper position. Once it's in position, the set NEVER falls down. We have had our track for 3 years, from my son being 2 - 5 years of age... and it has never come apart or fallen down while he was playing with it.

It has numbers to tell you which car wins, which I LOVE, because little kids like to cheat. This way they can't. Also, the starting gate is fair, because there is a release button, that releases all four cars at the same time, so no car gets a head start. It's fun to have Dad, Mom and my son all pick a car... and then race. We have raced ALL of our cars and found that our 1995 ambulance is the fastest (who'd of thunk it?).

The reason I bought this track in the first place is... when my son was 2, we were visiting a friend who's 5 year old had this track. They both played with it for hours. I knew my son would love to have his own. And... I should mention, that the child we were visiting is not gentle with his toys, and his father commented to me how it is the only HotWheels set he's had that has held up to his son's abuse.

It is hard to find, but I continually make the effort to buy this for other parents who have kids that are into Matchbox and Hotwheels cars. My child still plays with it, and every time he gets a new car from someone, the first thing he wants to do is see if it is faster or slower than some of his others...so out the track comes!

Maybe some people have defective sets, but more likely, the parents having trouble are not bothering to set it up and stand it up properly.

The second leg support is removable, but ours has never come off by accident, but that is a part that could be lost I suppose, but it is large, so unlikely.

I highly recommend this toy! I generally hate Hot Wheels playsets of all kinds, I prefer the matchbox ones. But his one is the BEST!

My son received this as a gift at age 4 and he still plays with it a year and a half later. He loves anything to do with racing and hotwheels or matchbox cars, so this toy was perfect. This track is so durable. It holds up to my son who is quite rough and tumble. If it comes apart, it snaps back together with ease. He loves that you can tell who wins the races when the numbers pop up at the end of the 4-lane track. He has endless races with all of the different cars he owns. The best part is that it all folds altogether with a carrying handle for portable play. We take it to the beach house with us and grandma's house too. I highly recommend this toy and my son does too.

This has stood up very well to my rough 4 year old and his friends. He has learned to assemble it himself (I keep it on a shelf when not in use) and put it away when done. It is a lot of fun and he enjoys seeing which cars will go the fastest. Unlike a lot of hot wheels tracks, this one is compatable with almost all of his cars.

Get the thing at WalMart for less than twenty bucks, don't pay ANYONE a almost a hundred. This guy must be dreaming.

I bought the Four Lane Highway for my youngest son's third birthday and was very pleased. His five year old brother, two teenage brothers and I all have enjoyed playing with this cool item.

It is fairly long when opened, but vey compact when closed. I like the fact that my 3 y/old can set it up on his own as well as (almost) fold it back into it's compact carrying case position. He has tons of Hot Wheels and loves finding out which ones are fastest.

This type of track seems to hold the kids' interest much better than the automated self-propelled, powered tracks. On this one, the kids actively participate in setting the cars up at the starting line, resetting the flags that show the order of finish, and choosing the cars to race in each heat.

On the battery-powered tracks, the kids put a car on, push a button, and then just sit and stare at it. They usually only last 5 minutes staring at those types of tracks.

This track is much better and the kids will play with it for hours.

As other reviewers have noted, the 4 track sections, while folding up/out, do fall apart if the kids are rough with it or trip over it. However, once set up initially, the kids can put it back together themselves (at 4 years old). As an adult, I see this as a miss in the design, but it doesn't seem to bother the kids. I didn't deduct stars in my rating for that, but can see how it would irritate other reviewers.

I initially laughed when the review form asked about Educational Value. But I think there actually is some. In a world where kids are given trophies for participating and no one loses (or wins), I think it is not bad for them to learn that in the real world, someone wins, and someone loses. The kids also learn that the heavier cars will tend to win due to their weight. And contrary to the 5-disc DVD set of the old Saturday morning cartoons, Speed Racer does not always win (but he learns from his mistakes and losses).

Highly recommended.